My question relates to how “collaboration” is being defined. If scholars in humanities collaborate, it is to produce something like an article or a digital project. And, judging by the articles by Spiro and Rosenzweig, scholars need to collaborate more when it comes to the humanities and creating digital projects. Yet, I wonder if the previous model of humanities scholarship was not just an archaic form of collaboration. Articles by singular authors are never published in a vacuum and most go on to be read, reviewed, cited, lauded, rejected, or otherwise.

Certainly, the previous model of scholarship connotes detached and isolated scholars. By actively “collaborating” they can shed this connotation, but I can’t help but wonder if it is any different. Writing an article and publishing it is the same as proposing an idea at a collaborative meeting. And having it peer-reviewed is then just like receiving feedback for your idea a the same meeting.

Are the humanities are moving away from producing ideas to be considered at large and moving more towards producing tangible, consumable things like articles and websites? Is that good or bad?

My past interests have been American Expansionism, American Empire, Manifest Destiny and the like. I am extremely interested in the more outlandish forms of expansion, from our instigation of a war with Mexico and seizure of almost half of its land in the 1840s, to lesser attempts to conquer Cuba to add slave states to the union, and Cornelius Vanderbilt supporting an American “filibuster” to become President of Nicaragua so that he may have control over the only Pre-Canal route across Central America.

Most of these stories have roots in NYC, since Cornelius Vanderbilt was here at the time. Fundraisers and rallies were held in New York for the benefit of the efforts to take Cuba, but archival material seems to be scarce and newspapers are the typical source for this information. I may need to refocus my research attempts. Perhaps a more contemporary topic would be appropriate in order to increase the possibility of findin visual materials as opposed to textual documents.

I’m also interested in my home state and the relationship it has with New York and the city itself. I began recently looking for materials relate to Vermont as a getaway destination for wealthy New Yorkers and whether there is significant/interesting material on how this tourist industry grew.

My thoughts come from the “Scarcity or Abundance” problems that Rosenzweig discusses. Archiving all digital material as a “grass-roots/enthusiast” response to these problems in contrast to the Pitt Project’s selective methodology seems to be cumbersome. Rosenzweig seems to admit yet not flesh out the idea that archives and historical scholarship are the result of hundreds of years of trial and error. The idea that somehow we will be able to within a generation draft and implement an effective way to archive digital material seems a little far fetched. I think the wealth of scholarship on the subject of what the internet’s role in culture is a testament to the fact we still don’t know what we are dealing with, let alone able to document it for future generations. His phrase “futures of the past” really inspired this curmudgeonly post, because it seemed idealistic and romantic.

Also, I lost all my Zotero research because I didn’t fully understand how the internet-browser-based plug-in didn’t save any information to the internet… my bad.

delicious = johndbence

I found particularly interesting the idea of progression and the inevitable post-internet utopia. Introduced to it in detail by Friedman and given a historical snapshot of this kind of thinking by Bush, the utopian aspects of the expansion of technological capacity seem to be central to the scholarship of this kind. Speaking generally, it is interesting to think that many advances in human history improved our general condition in the world but did not result in the creation of a utopia. I also like to think that humans are too imperfect for perfect world and that any advances we make, whether it domesticating plants or developing the internet, will never be enough to stop our most basic, inherent instincts. This may be more of a criticism of the idea of utopia than anything else, but it still feels relevant to ask why we (as humans) are so good at imagining the (so far) unattainable.

Hello!

My name is John Bence and  I just started the Archives and Public History program this semester. I got my BA in History from Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio.  I moved to New York last week having spent a year in DC. I am originally from Vermont.

While doing my undergrad, I worked as a archival assistant in both the school’s archive and in a special, sociological archive. I have little technical experience so I jumped at the chance to register for this class. I am interested generally in intellectual and social history of the postbellum and progressive eras.