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[ 335 Digital Humanities and the“Ugly Stepchildren” of American Higher Education luke waltzer F orthepastthreedecades,thehumanitiesinAmericanpublichighereducation havesufferedrecurrentcrises.Inmomentsof generalfiscalausterity,classsizes in the humanities have risen, departments and programs have been threatened or eliminated, and searches for open faculty positions have been abandoned. Even in times of stable budgets, tenure-track positions have remained elusive, and resources available to those scholars doing work in the humanities have been scarce. This context has been so persistent that it has taken on an air of permanence. The general implications for instruction and pedagogical innovation in the humanities from this “new normal” are well documented: contact time with students has declined, and the ratio of classes being taught by contingent faculty has increased. General education curricula have, for the most part, not kept pace with changes in institutional structure that have led to more adjuncts teaching larger classes with strained institutional support. Most university curricula have not adjusted to the material realities of the college experience, where the vast majority of students lead lives that are exponentially more digital and networked than they were when those curricula were designed. General education requirements have not been sufficiently reoriented to the changing demands of the job market, which require, at the very least, that students be able to navigate increasingly complicated information systems. Most universities have failed to relay to students why studying the humanities is important or relevant in this context, and so it is little wonder that ever-increasing percentages of students are landing in nonhumanities majors, choosing instead courses of study that promise to certify them for a specific place in the economy, which may or may not in fact exist (Menand, 50–54). These conditions are encouraging too many college students to see knowledge as something they purchase in the form of a degree, as opposed to something flexible and broadly applicable that they gain through deep, engaging experience. This new normal has done much to undermine the place of the humanities in college part v ][ Chapter 19 luke waltzer 336 ] instruction.Inthiscontext,pedagogy,curriculumdevelopment,andthescholarship of teaching and learning remain what Steve Brier has called “the ugly stepchildren of the university.”Those particular paths of inquiry continue to be undervalued by institutions and less energetically pursued by academics than the discipline-based research with which the majority of humanists began their careers. In contrast to these troubling realities, the digital humanities appear to be on the ascendance. The job market for academic humanists in the past three years has been the weakest in over a generation, yet jobs in the digital humanities are becoming more plentiful. In 2010 through 2011, there were cluster hires of digital humanities faculty at a number of research universities, including the University of Iowa, Georgia State University, the University of Maryland, and the University of Wisconsin, among others. There has also been an increase in what Bethany Nowviskie has called“#alt-ac”positions doing the digital humanities—“alternative academic careers”—including postdocs, jobs in libraries, and administrative and staff positions at newly founded or expanding digital humanities centers (“#altac ”). New conferences and camps seem to emerge monthly, and they’re always well attended despite eroding travel support from colleges and universities. The Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations, formed in 2005, brings together previously disparate international organizations, supports five influential journals, and organizes a massive annual conference in the field. At each of the past two Modern Language Association meetings—perhaps the most influential general meeting in the humanities—various reports lauded “the arrival of the digital humanities” (Pannapaker; Howard; and “News: Tweetup at the MLA”). Although the extent to which that arrival is complete has been debated, there can be little argument that the field is a more significant presence in the academy than it was ten, or even five, years ago. With the increase in the number of humanists who blog and use Twitter, the digital humanities conversation is always happening. Contributing to this sense of arrival, beyond the jobs and intensifying discourse , was the creation of an Office of the Digital Humanities (ODH) at the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) in 2008. The ODH funded 145 projects from 2008 through spring of 2011; and, while its annual operating budget of around 4.5 million dollars pales in comparison to endowments managed by many universities and the investments in university-based research and development made by science and industry over the past half century, the initiative has...

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