New Media in the Humanities: From Inevitability to Possibility

Abstract

The study ‘New Media in the Humanities: from metaphors of inevitability to metaphors of possibility,’ argues that using digital technologies in humanities classrooms (at the post-secondary level) is transformative for both students and professors. It begins by identifying and then allaying the fears that scholars in the humanities harbour: the computer reduces literacy, diminishes knowledge to mere information, annihilates the metaphysical in the academy, and disconnects the student from his/her humanity. The second section of the article outlines in detail the exciting possibilities of engaging electronic media in the classroom, which include moving beyond a single literacy to multiple ones (post-/polyliteracy), recognizing digital technologies as potential cognitive systems parallel to our own (post-humanity), evolving from notions of a single subjectivity to global interconnectedness (post-identity/ post-nation), transcending one's chosen discipline in order to discover new interdisciplines via the Web (post-/transdiscipline), and exploding the confines of print in order to discover new e-discourses (post-symbolic). The study also provides case studies of Canadian and international scholars in the humanities who are putting these novel ideas into practice in the classroom.