Eighteenth International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities

Abstract

We are of a post-digital culture; we have been so saturated by digital technologies that the vast majority of experiences of everyday people doing everyday things are screen-mediated. And while this condition allows for the discovery of new patterns and paradigms in humanities work (see Gold & Klein’s Debates in the Digital Humanities), it also routinely reduces humans to nothing more than data streams, to be sifted, sorted, and secured like any other data. This is, of course, a matter of concern. But within these ever-present digital techné also resides an emergent techno-humanism—one where human and technology collaborations allow us (and our students) to tell better stories, produce better engagements, perform better arguments, and craft better experiences. And it is from this evolving techno-humanism that this workshop/interactive session takes its cue—showing how emerging mediating platforms help cultivate different kinds of critical and creative engagement with(in) humanistic inquiry. Part 1 will focus on the frame of techno-humanism, orienting humanities education toward a post-digital student learner. Part 2 will offer a set of strategies for leveraging different digital techné to augment/compliment existing humanities education. Part 3 will ask participants to engage with free digital tools to (a) build a digital-visual representation of a key principle from their research or (b) create an activity for their courses using a scrolling digital (and mobile) authoring platform. The take-away will be to show how digital technologies can be seamlessly integrated into the current/future humanities education.