CFP: German Studies Association Seminar – September 27-30, 2018, Pittsburgh, PA

Title: Digital Humanities and Pedagogy Across the Disciplines (Sponsored by the Interdisciplinary Digital Humanities Network)

Conveners:
Sibel Sayılı-Hurley, University of Pennsylvania
Claudia Baska Lynn, University of Pennsylvania

“How could Digital Humanities have evaded us, the digital natives, after two decades of immersing ourselves in not only the humanities, but also technology?” puzzled students in the Undergraduate Manifesto on Digital Humanities. (Bloomsburg U. Undergraduate “Manifesto” on Digital Humanities. n.d.). While conventional wisdom has it that millennials firmly reside in personalized digital environments (music, entertainment, relationships, communication, education), they in fact often lack critical strategies to analyze digital knowledge creation and representation. To fully realize the transformative potential of DH tools in education and to avert innovation for innovation’s sake, DH pedagogy must continually be realigned with technological innovation and fluid methodologies. Digital Humanities pedagogy is overcoming its “bracketed” state (Hirsch, 2012) but the continual re-articulation of a robust pedagogy remains essential to close technological and methodological knowledge gaps, facilitate the adoption of DH tools, and advance a growing community of expert practitioners. This seminar will engage 12-15 participants to focus on faculty-student collaborations, which utilize digital tools to engage learners as critical, reflective, and agentive participants in all processes of digital culture.

We are seeking projects from a range of disciplines, such as foreign language, literature, history, and art history to encourage an interdisciplinary discussion of DH methods in the classroom.

Topics include but are not limited to:

- pedagogical rationales and learning objectives for using DH in the classroom;
- approached, methodologies, and assessment in DH;
- best practices to overcome common constraints on collaboration with students;
- access to hardware and software
- privacy and copyright issues
- role of coding, open access, learner agency

To Apply:
Applications for seminar enrollment are due by 26 January 2018. All prospective participants must be paid members of the German Studies Association (see www.thegsa.org for membership information). Interested participants should apply electronically directly through the GSA website (https://www.xcdsystem.com/gsa). This seminar strongly encourages graduate students and junior faculty to apply.

The conveners of the seminars will make their determination of the membership of their seminars by 2 February. The GSA Seminar Program Committee will inform applicants whether they have been accepted by 5 February.  

Please contact the conveners with any questions.

Contact info:
Sibel Sayılı-Hurley, says@sas.upenn.edu
Claudia Baska Lynn, cblynn@sas.upenn.edu