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Reader’s Report #1 (Second Report)

1 Leave a comment on paragraph 1 0 The revised piece aims to “historicize digital history and the wider digital humanities by confronting its past and present claims to ‘democracy.’” To do this the author surveys recent digital projects while pointing out and evaluating “foundational democratic aspirations.” The article argues convincingly that digital history, despite its best efforts, is not wholly democratic.

2 Leave a comment on paragraph 2 0 The authors successfully took reader comments under consideration and engaged closely with Sharon Leon’s work. It was refreshing to see the authors draw on Leon’s insights which strengthened the article’s argument as it helped to enrich that digital history remains, in some ways, problematic.

3 Leave a comment on paragraph 3 0 It is also clear that the authors took the time to integrate the contributions of several WoC digital historians by linking directly to the interventions made by these women of color and quoting them directly. This article can now serve as a model on how to effectively engage with scholars from underrepresented backgrounds and point specifically to their interventions. Very nicely done.

4 Leave a comment on paragraph 4 0 I was especially impressed with the discussion on the neoliberal university. This is a very important point. The article charts the rise of neoliberalism in the university and illuminates how the digital humanities fits within that neoliberal ecosystem. It is of course beyond the scope of this article to discuss the labor involved in writing grants for funding digital history, but it is a known fact that institutional resources and the intellectual capital of scholars writing these grants(read tenure status, size of professional network, Ivy-affiliated or research 1 connected) influence the potential availability of digital historians to even embark on the time consuming task of writing a grant. Additionally, the labor of support staff, students (graduate and undergradute) are often not seen as intellectual pursuits but more drone-like, because of the repetitive and/or tedious nature of transcribing, proofing, data-entry. It seems an ethical imperative is in order to intentionally value this level of work more and compel principal investigators to strive to enlarge the potential of how this kind of labor can benefit support staff and students in their own careers.

5 Leave a comment on paragraph 5 0 Democratization takes place in many forms, and this article helps the reader conceptualize the broad strokes of how digital history has progressed and what areas need further work.

6 Leave a comment on paragraph 6 0 The discussion on open access is timely. Given our current moment in the era of COVID, and the austerity measures that are hitting many university campuses, open-access models are transformative in many ways.

7 Leave a comment on paragraph 7 0 It is my belief that this article be submitted for publication. The authors clearly took my comments seriously and the piece has been strengthened in exciting ways.

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Source: https://ahropenreview.com/HistoryCanBeOpenSource/readers-report-1-second-report/