It is difficult to put a finger on a moment as the beginning of my interest in Digital Humanities- but maybe sometime around the writing of my dissertation in 2009- a postcolonial inquiry about canons and canon making in the discipline. However, life and tenure track sets its own priorities and directions but the interest … Continue reading Nirmala Menon on marrying technology and the humanities
Siddhartha Chakraborti on his DH Journey
Any personal journey into a growingly universal medium and mode of living, which is what the Digital in an overarching and permeating manner has proven itself to be, becomes a monologue of the ‘self’ as a protagonist, that must be (and will be) read only with suspicion. We must be able to move from the … Continue reading Siddhartha Chakraborti on his DH Journey
Souvik Mukherjee, Indian gaming culture, and DH
I started DH as an M.A. student in 2001 researching digital games and storytelling. Having faced much academic ostracism back then, it is heartening to see the interest in gaming cultures and (the) digital humanities, today. I completed my MPhil on videogames and narratives from Jadavpur University in 2005 (being probably the videogames researcher from … Continue reading Souvik Mukherjee, Indian gaming culture, and DH
Arjun Ghosh: On conferences, political communication and DH
I have a keen interest in studying political communication through cultural texts. In my doctoral dissertation and my first book I explored the experiences of one of India’s most active theatre groups who have been practicing street theatre for almost five decades. One of the insights that emerged from this work was the need for … Continue reading Arjun Ghosh: On conferences, political communication and DH
Maya Dodd: DH Through History, Archives and more
During graduate school I took a course called The Wired Historian which opened my eyes to the possibilities of technology for archiving. Subsequently as I worked on the Indian Emergency of 1975-77, a relatively recent historical event, the paucity of sources underlined the need to digitize the materials to make them accessible to a wider … Continue reading Maya Dodd: DH Through History, Archives and more
DH is a collective journey: Dibyadyuti Roy
Trying to craft a personal journey for DH (especially in India) is difficult since from Day Zero, I have seen it as a collective journey. If pressed for a year, I would say that my journey with Indian DH began in 2013 when as a PhD student from the US, I was part of a … Continue reading DH is a collective journey: Dibyadyuti Roy
Ashoka Thorat’s DH Journey
I’ve been working as the Director of Institute of Advanced Studies in English (a research institute duly affiliated to S P Pune University) from its inception in 2003. Dr Dhanashree Thorat, my daughter, who has completed her higher studies and doctoral research from American universities, takes keen interest in the Institute activities. In December 2013, … Continue reading Ashoka Thorat’s DH Journey
“Our collective work is particularly important in challenging or supplementing the dominant epistemic archives of colonial Britain…”
...DH for me is a networked process that always inherently, when not explicitly, pedagogical. It focuses more on the creation rather than memorization of archives, and also compels us to think creatively about literacy and textually in the 21st century. Our collective work is particularly important in challenging or supplementing the dominant epistemic archives of colonial Britain. Because of its violent suppression of indigenous languages, customs, cultures, traditions, genders, sexualities, and other aspects of South Asian cultures that lend to our current understandings of xenophobic tendencies around the globe, our work in DHAI and will allied organizations is crucial and timely. My current research draws support from the DHAI community as it harnesses and explores these recent tensions around the notion of “digital homes” in contemporary India.
Doing digital humanities in India … must involve a renewed engagement with the politics of humanities knowledge…
Doing digital humanities in India may not only be a matter of reconfiguring humanities methods and concerns to address digital objects of study, and of making digital methods to study objects of humanities practices. It must involve a renewed engagement with the politics of humanities knowledge in India, and potentially an engagement that is attuned to the questions of ‘digital’ mediation...
“Our interest is in looking at how the digital can be useful in helping rethink Humanities research and teaching in India…”
As far as Digital Humanities in India is concerned, our projects certainly fall under that broad umbrella category that we have pitched for DH. We also train our undergraduate students in DH in a gen-ed course run by the department of English. In the past, we have invited scholars and industry personalities from all over the world to deliver lectures. As part of our efforts, we are more interested in broader collaborative projects and reaching out to potential partners across institutions and outside academia rather than individual projects. Besides theorizing about DH or working on projects, our interest is in looking at how the digital can be useful in helping rethink Humanities research and teaching in India, in general. Also, we are interested in dialogues with the government about recognising DH as a discipline that can be taught as part of university curricula and the skillsets of which are formally recognised by the UGC and the DST...
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