Hard Coded Humanities: DH Conference April 15-16, 2016

full name / name of organization: 
Mellon Graduate Program in Digital Humanities at the University of Rochester

In 2008, Matthew Kirschenbaum challenged an emergent field to develop an "awareness of the mechanism": to consider seriously the relationship between the physicality of electronic technology and the seemingly immaterial power of transformed code on our screens.

In digital humanities, software platforms and physical computers are often considered separately, the former used as a practical tool for data analysis and the latter usually studied as an historical artifact. Yet in recognizing that the seductive simulations of the computer monitor are rooted in the clicks and whirs of hard drives, and that code produces physical and not merely virtual effects, digital humanists can productively challenge the traditional distinctions between software and hardware in scholarly contexts.

How might our awareness that software and hardware are not merely interdependent but perhaps indistinguishable transform the digital humanities landscape? How might digital humanists extend this awareness in order to challenge other binaries in their work or in the field at large?

Hard Coded Humanities, a conference organized by Andrew W. Mellon Fellows in Digital Humanities at the University of Rochester, seeks project-based inquiries that similarly challenge strict notions of "hardware" and "software" in contemporary digital scholarship. In other words, the conference seeks presentations that analyze the nature of scholarly production in the humanities, using hardware/software as a model to consider the physical means and immaterial ends characterizing the labor and products of today's DH.

Topics may include but are not limited to:

  • maker culture and physical computing
  • new media, gaming, and mobile applications
  • media archaeology
  • archiving the digital
  • hardware as research object and/or as research tool
  • material culture and/of digital humanities
  • public and academic digital projects

The conference format consists of panels of short presentations followed by extended Q&A and discussion. Presentations may include short papers, project demonstrations and critiques, or some combination.

Panels will be part of a two-day conference that includes a multimedia gallery exhibition, a hands-on demonstration and workshop, and keynote addresses by Matthew Kirschenbaum and Kari Kraus, professors of English at the University of Maryland.

Please submit a title and 300-word proposal to www.hardcodedhumanities.com. In your proposal, please indicate any A/V requirements.

Deadline for submission: December 1, 2015