For my digital humanist interview I spoke with Dr. Julia Flanders, director of the Women Writers Project and part of the Center for Digital Scholarship at the Brown University Library. First I would like to mention what a delightful interviewee she is! Dr. Flanders responded to my initial email promptly and was very friendly and casual throughout our Skype conversation, which helped lower my nerves about interviewing a fancy digital humanist! The interview quickly evolved into an enlightening conversation about digital humanities and the opportunities within the field.
Dr. Flanders revealed to me that she entered into the digital humanities by “accident”. As a graduate student at Brown she was presented with an opportunity to work on the Women Writers Project, a project taking the writings of pre-Victorian women “out of the archives” and making them accessible (digitally) to a wider audience. It was through her work on this project, which she now oversees, that she entered into the realm of digital humanities. She enjoys the project—moreover the digital aspect of it—because of the careful consideration and questions on editing it has raised; the question of how to edit early modern women’s writings for a digital space intrigues her and drives her work in the field.
One aspect of her career that she is particularly grateful for is the relaxed collegial atmosphere she feels is the essence of the digital humanities. She finds the work more enjoyable than traditional academia. A comment of hers that really stuck with me is when she stated,
“In my professional profile I do everything from grant writing and technical work, to teaching and serving on committees and serving on standards bodies and editing journals and all kinds of things. It’s very much a mix of things that are interesting that all kind of hang together and give me autonomy. If I want a different balance of these things in my career I can find it (within digital humanities).”
The picture she painted of her career as a digital humanist inspired me and made me hopeful that a similar career—although more along the lines of History than English—may be possible for me.
As far as any training or education required of her to enter the digital humanities, I got the sense that she was on the horizon of the field when she began working in it (around 1992). Therefore, she had no guideline or course of study required of her as there is today. She did mention that in order to get the position she has she did have to have a certain set of skills, for her it is text encrypting as well as a broad knowledge of traditional humanities. However, she said these skills could be different depending on what kind of digital humanities a person is interested in working in. For example, someone may need to learn data modeling versus text encrypting for a specific career, it just depends on what type of digital discipline he or she is interested in pursuing.
An important question for me was whether or not she experienced getting wrapped up in the “digital-ness” of the field and losing sight of the traditional humanities side of it. She answered with a confident “no”, stating that she felt the two (digital technology and humanities) really synced together well. The only problem she has had in her field is finding enough hours in the day to do her work! She also stated that the most interesting questions posed in her field are those that align with the more traditional humanities side, and that digital technology offers help in answering them.
Overall I got the sense that Dr. Flanders truly loves her career in digital humanities, as a profession and a discipline. As I stated above, she gave me inspiration and made me hopeful of my (possible) future in digital history!