Critique is the Steam: The Tactical Humanities Lab at Rensselaer

November 1st, 2019

Case Library & Geyer Center for Information Technology 

How humanities scholars construct the laboratory–as a space, as a culture, as an imaginary, as a process, as an apparatus–shapes Digital Humanities (DH) labs: their spaces, cultures, practices, and products. This talk will use Science & Technology Studies’ (STS) “Laboratory Studies” literature to examine DH labs and their practices through stories of how the Tactical Humanities Lab (THL), an STS-situated DH lab at Rensselaer, grapples with its own identity, the constructed boundaries of STS and the Humanities, and the social construction of the boundaries of laboratory work. The THL operates as an inverse of the typical imagination of the relationship between DH theory and practice. Rather than asking how technical tools can be applied to humanities questions, the THL focuses on how method and inquirer are mutually shaped through research practices, and on how the “divide” between technical and interpretive scholarship and methods is a historical and contingent one. This flipped model encourages faculty, graduate students, and undergraduate students in the THL to co-theorize about the multiple social constructions of the digital in humanistic and social scientific cultures, and to experiment with using DH to produce new situations for social justice.

Jim Malazita is an interdisciplinary researcher whose work draws from Science and Technology Studies, Media Studies, Game Studies, and the Digital Humanities. Originally trained as a game designer, animator, and web developer, Malazita applies design thinking to the humanities, using both cultural studies and design methods to blur the boundaries between technical production and social and political critique.