So You Want a Ph.D. in Digital Humanities, Digital Studies, New Media, Electronic Literature . . .
I occasionally get asked where one should go for a Ph.D. in one of the above fields. I thought I’d offer up a general response to that question here.
Matthew Kirschenbaum offers up some solid advice for humanities students who are considering pursuing a PhD.
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Hm. See my response to Matt’s otherwise excellent post.
I think your points are certainly well taken Vika, though in Matt’s defense, I think he was pretty up front as to his own limits regarding his knowledge of work across all humanities disciplines.
How’s life at VHL?
I should’ve made it clear that I have only the deepest respect for Matt and things that he writes. On the other hand, the assumptions I wrote about are so deeply ingrained that it would be very easy to take them along with us into the Next Era of the Humanities. Matt’s blog is widely read; the comment is more for the audience. I should’ve also invited conversation more explicitly, although that is probably more appropriate elsewhere.
Life at VHL is getting pretty hectic! Encoding of large and complicated texts always takes way longer than seems seemly. But now that’s done, and I’ll be spending the holidays debugging, regulalizing and fixing inevitable inconsistencies.
This being one of my favorite work-related things to do ever (no sarcasm), not so bad. Except for all the time it’ll take. 🙂
Your family is beautiful.
I completely understand the concerns that you highlighted in your comment, one that – as you point out – is a systemic problem in the humanities. It would be great if you could add to your previous comments there and provide some perspective on useful ways to pursue digital humanities via language departments. What universities have a particular strong language (non-English) and technology faculty/grad student population? I’m sure your added perspective and advice would be quite valuable.
I’m glad to hear VHL is going well, if keeping you a little busy! I personally love debugging, tweaking, etc. – it’s one aspect of my old job that I miss. So it sounds like fun to me 😉
And thanks for the compliments regarding my family; I feel incredibly lucky and blessed. It’s amazing how fast the little one grows (pants that had to be rolled up last month now barely touch the top of her shoes).