There are a growing number of resources and opportunities available to introduce academics to the digital humanities.  My colleague, Lisa Spiro has written an excellent piece for newcomers, “Getting Started in Digital Humanities“, which was selected for publication in the new Journal of Digital Humanities.  NITLE offers digital scholarship seminars which are intended to raise awareness of digital humanities at and for small liberal arts colleges.  THATCamps are another great option for plugging into this community.  DHCommons hosted a Getting Started in Digital Humanities pre-conference workshop at the 2012 MLA conference and will do so again at MLA 2013. I’ve taught a number of introductory digital humanities workshops, as have many others.

But, what’s the next step?  What kind of intermediate digital humanities professional development opportunities are out there?  (DHSI leaps to mind.)  What else would you like to see?  How can we help new digital humanists take the next step?  At NITLE we are exploring some ideas for filling in gaps for the intermediate digital humanist, especially at small liberal arts colleges or other places that lack the support of a digital humanities center.  I’d appreciate any input you have on what that should be.  To give us something to do in the session, I’d also like to develop a survey that I can send out to all those who’ve done those introductory events, like the digital scholarship seminars, to get a clearer idea of needs.

A number of different groups and individuals have pointed out the ways in which DH, as a field, could do more to include women and people of color. Similarly, there have been calls to encourage more engagement with theories of intersectionality, feminisms, queer studies, and similar ethical and political positions.

While it can be hard to transform a field even as we try to gain footholds within LACs, it might be the case that we are in unique positions to help address these issues within the larger field. This session would be a forum for brainstorming ideas for action within LAC contexts.

A friend or two has asked me for advice on session ideas for THATCamp, and since I’m running a workshop at THATCampLAC I figured I’d post my response in lieu of an actual session proposal:

My advice is to take a look at the camper page and drill into the camper profiles.  It’s a really diverse group of people, from all levels of degrees, all kinds of fields, institutions, and backgrounds.  If you look at enough profiles, you’ll probably discover one or two people  who you’d like to have a conversation with.  Propose that conversation idea — even if there are only two people in the list you think it’d appeal to, I think more will come out of the woodwork once the session idea is up.  And if they don’t, that’s fine — some proposals don’t “make”, and many of them are merged with other proposals into the same session.

There will be about twenty different sessions at this THATCamp.  Most of those sessions will be fairly free-ranging conversations in which the session proposer just kind of acts as a moderator/facilitator.  (At the last THATCamp I went to, in one session people passed a whiteboard eraser around to talk, just like the conch shell in _Lord of the Flies_).  So you don’t have to stand up and talk for 75 minutes (with the exception of workshops, but those are already set).  It’s okay to propose a panel on a subject you’d like to learn but don’t know much about — so long as there are some experts around, quizzing them can be a very effective session, and you may be able to figure out people’s expertise based on their bios.