Data versus Literature?

The Digital Humanities and Literary Studies

Author(s): Heather Dubrow
Source: PMLA, Vol. 131, No. 5, Special Topic: Literature in the World (October 2016), pp.
1557-1559
Published by: Cambridge University Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/26158956
Accessed: 01-01-2024 10:16 +00:00

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13 1-5
Forum
PMLA invites members of the association
to submit letters that comment on ar
ticles in previous issues or on matters of
general scholarly or critical interest. The
editor reserves the right to reject or edit
Forum contributions and offers the PMLA
authors discussed in published letters an
opportunity to reply. Submissions of more
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ered. The journal omits titles before per
sons' names and discourages endnotes
and works-cited lists in the Forum. Let
ters should be e-mailed to pmlaforum@
mla.org or be printed double-spaced and
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guage Association, 85 Broad Street, suite
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Data versus Literature? The Digital Humanities and
Literary Studies
To the Editor:
I respect Andrew Kopec's essay "The Digital Humanities, In
Literary Criticism and the Fate of a Profession" (vol. 131, no. 2, 201
pp. 324-39) on many grounds, not least his commitment to connect
important developments in our profession to what he aptly terms "so
institutional contexts" (325). And I share his interest in the technolog
he celebrates: this letter comes not to bury the digital humanities but
praise them. Nonetheless, many of his contentions about the culture
large, the academy, and the connections between them are problemat
In writing that "by liberating themselves to match the pure fle
ibility of postindustrial work, the digital humanities can be deploy
anywhere, in any context, unhindered by a craft tradition," Kopec pl
two models of spatiality against each other, linking the practices he
vors with the flow and fluidity not coincidentally associated with gl
modes of criticism, while the bad old days of craft and guild are imp
itly linked to blockage and stasis (331). But the effects of the digital
manities on the workplace, whether in the academy or elsewhere, incl
significant risks as well as benefits: Kopec's view of these postindust
practices is as idealized as the agrarian nostalgia he rightly protests
Yes, the opportunity to work from home or a table in Starbucks, sett
one's own hours, has advantages for some people, but it is not neces
ily good for those with small children and limited space. And althoug
Kopec rightly emphasizes that working remotely does not preclude t
potential for teamwork, in practice the home office is often isolati
Such arrangements can also encourage employers to assume that peo
are available 24/7. And surely this type of postindustrial work facilita
regarding its participants as outside contractors, thus contributing
©
© 2016
2016HEATHER
heather DUBROW
dubrow
PMLA 131.5 (2016), published by the Modern Language Association of America 1557
1558 Forum PM LA

the attending loss of benefits andthe

security
binary andsuf
often oversimplified view of it
in Marjorie
fered by our own adjuncts—treatment that Levinson's
to influential PMLA es
his credit Kopec deplores—and to say
the decrease
"What Is New Formalism?" (vol. 122, no. 2,
in tenure-track positions. Moreover,
2007,the stereois also open to challenges.
pp. 558-69),
type that older workers cannot fulfill theeschewing
Far from digitalthe study of history, many
new formalists
responsibilities their positions might entail hascite it as the distinction be
tweenof
led to the dismissal, in several senses, themselves
peopleand earlier formalists. (That
who still have a lot to offer.
claim has, however, been disputed, notably by
Far from merely being a hindrance
Susan J.or an
Wolfson. In "Reading for Form with
exemplum of the antimodern, the medieval craft
out Formalism" [Literary Matters, vol. 3, 2010,
tradition established practices andpp.
values that
14-15, www.alscw.org/publications/literary
may provide a positive precedent -matters/index.html],
for the acad she emphasizes that ear
emy today: a respect for traininglier
and skill;were
formalists an in fact engaged with history,
obligation to apprentices and other, newer
a point mem with several other obser
she develops,
bers of the group; and, above all, guild
vations tradi
germane to my letter, in "Romantic
tions that anticipated the labor unions that
Poetry; havewithout Formalism" [Oxford
Formings
offered valuable protection to our Handbooks Online, edited by Colin Burrow
colleagues.
Although Kopec occasionally, especially
and Thomas Keysmer, Oxford UP, 2016, doi:
in a few endnotes, acknowledges10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199935338.013,112]).
distinctions
among the critical movements he condemns,
Pace Kopec's own analysis and John Guil
on the whole the essay neglects significant
lory's powerfuldif
insights into tensions between
ferences among the American New Critics
close readingand
as an academic practice and the
conflates the American New Criticism, closefostered by the new media
types of reading
reading of other types, formalism, and Reading:
("Close the new Prologue and Epilogue"; ADE
formalism in their many incarnations. To
Bulletin, no. be2010, pp. 8-14), many prac
149,
sure, some of the American New titioners
Criticsof do dis
formalisms, old and new, neither
trust, even demonize, historical ignore
analysis, and
nor scorn the digital humanities. The
dichotomy
others merely give lip service to its between data and literature that Ko
significance.
But, to cite just two examples, the pec posits is undercut
importance of by these practitioners'
studies,
not only literary but also other forms of which often draw on data gleaned from
history
is celebrated by Reuben Browerdigital
andanalyses
Richard
to generate and substantiate for
Poirier in their introduction to the collection In malist and new formalist analyses. Witness, for
Defense of Reading (E. P. Dutton, 1962, pp. vii-x) instance, the work in genre studies, a field cen
and realized in studies like Clay Hunt's Donne's tral to both older and newer formalisms, in an
Poetry (Yale UP, 1954). Moreover, by devot essay by Jonathan Hope and Michael Witmore,
ing nearly one-third of the essay to the branch "The Hundredth Psalm to the Tune of'Green

of the New Criticism associated with agrarian
nostalgia, Kopec gives short shrift to the many
American New Critics whose politics are more
progressive. Not to mention, of course, William
Empson himself. Indeed, instead of being "in emphasizes the necessity of digital tools in ex
vigorated" by the Southern Agrarians and oth
ers holding similar political views (326), many
modern close readers and formalists persua
sively distance themselves from those positions.
Kopec's representation of the new formal
ism, which borrows some of the categories from
Sleeves': Digital Approaches to Shakespeare's
Language of Genre" (Shakespeare Quarterly,
vol. 61, no. 3, 2010, pp. 357-90). Similarly, in
"Shakespeare's Construction," Daniel Shore
ploring what he terms "linguistic forms," and he
practices what he preaches through some subtle
close readings (Shakespeare Quarterly, vol. 66,
no. 2, 2015, pp. 113-36). Sometimes described
as one of the founders of the new formalism,
I myself recently applauded and employed the

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 13 1-5 Forum 1559

digital humanities
site of boldness in our era of "new modesty" (Jef
such as frey
"'Some
J. Williams; "The New Modesty in LiteraryNew
and Recent
Criticism"; The Chronicle
Critical
of Higher Education,
inthe John
5 Jan. 2015, www.chronide.com/article/The-New
Donne J
While Kopec's essay
-Modesty-in-Literary/150993/). In this short re
about many types
ply, though, I would like to respond to the con
movements that
cern that seems most pressing to Dubrow—that mi
In particular, how
the "dichotomy between data and literature... is a
ing in deconstructio
undercut by" recent digital scholarship.
But given
In fact, studies like the
the one by Jonathan inte
article so often
Hope and Michael Witmore to which Dubrow disp
agreements
alludes reinforce, ratheris less
than undercut, my v
goes wrong
claim about the dialecticalwhere
opposition between i
lead to
data challenge
and literature. us
In considering the con
bold theses and
vergence of digital humanities and formalist th
when we write—an
disciplinary constructs, my essay concludes
tory of our professio
with Ryan Cordell's work on Nathaniel Haw
thorne, '"Taken Possession Of: The Reprint
Heather Dubrow
ing and Reauthorship of Hawthorne's 'Celestial
Fordham Univer
Railroad' in the Antebellum Religious Press"
(.Digital Humanities Quarterly, vol. 7, no. 1,
Reply:
2013, www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/7/
I appreciate Heather Dubrow's thoughtful l/000144/000144.html). Although I did not
response to my essay "The Digital Humanities, make this argument in my essay, it struck me
Inc.: Literary Criticism and the Fate of a Profes as I was writing it that the conflict between data
sion," which finds in the digital humanities and and literature had not been resolved insofar as

new formalisms competing objects of profes
sional desire. Dubrow objects to what she sees as
several important flaws in my article, including
its "idealized" portrait of postindustrial flexibil
ity, its distorted genealogy of the new formalism,
and its overly bold style. A few potential lines
of response to these charges come to mind: the
irony of the fact that I'm writing this letter at
home on a laptop while my two small children
play in the background (#ScholarSunday); my
essay's attempt to link an explicit economic po
lemic to the present without endorsing the "cul
tural politics" that most, if not all, formalists
denounce; the corporatization of the university
recently made concrete for me when my home
institution, under the rubric of "strategic align
ment," eliminated majors in women's studies,
philosophy, French, and German; and the iden
tification of "critical university studies" as the
Cordell's fine scholarship appears in an issue of
Digital Humanities Quarterly (a special issue
on "the literary") rather than in a mainstream
literary-studies journal. Cordell's subsequent
publication in a venue like American Liter
ary History ("Reprinting, Circulation, and the
Network Author in Antebellum Newspapers";
American Literary History, vol. 27, no. 3, 2015,
pp. 417-45), of course, does bridge the tradi
tional and the digital. So too does the issue of
Shakespeare Quarterly that contains Hope and
Witmore's article, a special issue titled Shake
speare and New Media, which I was unfamil
iar with before reading Dubrow's letter. And
yet, as of October 2016, these crossover suc
cesses strike me as exceptions that prove the
rule. In her introduction to the same issue of
Shakespeare Quarterly, Katherine Rowe offers
a well-theorized account of the digital and its

© 2016 ANDREW KOPEC

>n of America
PMLA 131.5 (2016), published by the Modern Language Associatio

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