As more diverse groups of people have entered the academy and the field of digital humanities, the contours have been redefined. We are sometimes the square pegs that expose the unacknowledged round holes.
Bailey, Moya Z. “All the digital humanists are white, all the nerds are men, but some of us are brave.” Journal of Digital Humanities, vol. 1, no. 1, 2011, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvs32szz.6.
I thought that this was a really interesting way to look at both the digital humanities field, and academia in general, in which there are lasting effects on marginalized groups that prevent and restrict them from entering certain fields. This metaphor brings up the idea that the digital humanities field is quite unique in the sense that it is elastic and always changing, which actually makes it a perfect place to start the change towards more diversity within the field.
It was pretty inspiring for me to see all the different groups mentioned, including #transformDH, Black Girls Code, and many more are actively working to change the makeup of who is seen as digital humanists. I have had several past experiences where I was in a STEM class, and it was clear that there were a minority of women in the room. This left me feeling alone, and much worse about myself, due to the fact that society often tells women that they are less than men. I think that all fields have work to do to make sure minorities get the same opportunities, and also have others to look up to in their field, and I think it is crucial for the digital humanities field to not only recognize its own faults, but also to work on making it both a more diverse, and accessible community.
I would like to work on data visualization because I have an interest in statistics and math in general, and I think it would be very cool to figure out different ways to look at data, and also make it easy for a viewer to understand. I would also like to learn more about GIS mapping because I don’t know much about it, but it seems very interesting, and useful for another field that I am interested in, environmental studies.
