|

Reader’s Report #1

1 Leave a comment on paragraph 1 0 *Note: The period for public comment ended April 10, 2020.*

2 Leave a comment on paragraph 2 0 This article endeavors “to provide a critical evaluation of OER’s place in the historical profession—its history, the nature of open licensing, debates over neoliberalism, the problematic emphasis on digital “access,” the promise of mass collaboration, and an evaluation of major trends in contemporary digital history projects.” It is well written and provides an elegant framework for exploring certain guiding questions that surround open access and its relationship to the expansion of the digital humanities as a field.

3 Leave a comment on paragraph 3 0 As a reader, I was glad to see the impressive contours that traced digital history’s inception. However, if we look to Sharon Leon’s recent work we find that, as Leon notes,  that “the community of digital historians today have an obligation to question the conditions that have contributed to women’s erasure[within the field], and to consider what systems and conditions become visible when women are returned to the origin stories for the field.” To that end  the authors may want to review Leon’s article, Complicating a “Great Man” Narrative of Digital History in the United States to assure that the origin story of digital humanities is balanced in terms of gender.

4 Leave a comment on paragraph 4 0 Since one of the important threads driving the article is democratization it is fair to think of democratization in its myriad forms. Not only as a mode of knowledge access by also as a means of who produces knowledge in the digital humanities.

5 Leave a comment on paragraph 5 0 This reader was glad to see Kim Gallon, Safiya Noble, Lisa Nakumura, Jessica Marie Johnson and other PoC scholars mentioned, however it seems they are all clustered in one section which suggest that the piece does not actively engage the deeply complex scholarship that each of these scholar’s digital humanities investigations provides. The authors will want to make sure that scholars of color’s work is considered on the same basis as some of the early adopters quoted throughout the piece. Again, with democratization being a central principle the methods of analysis used to frame the piece along with citation must reflect this as well.

6 Leave a comment on paragraph 6 0 Overall the piece was extremely impressive. It is my understanding that the piece should be considered for publication once the authors consider integrating the aforementioned scholar’s work more prominently to reflect the democratization theme driving the piece as well as the gendered origins of the emergence of the digital humanities that can be explored through  reading Leon’s work.

Page 3

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