The CIT is sponsoring a session on “Scholarly Making” in its many forms. Follow along on Twitter at #mla19 #s151.
Session 151, Friday, 3 January, 7:00–8:15 p.m., Hyatt Regency – Atlanta
Speakers: Emily Brooks (U of Florida), Ann Hubert (St. Lawrence U), DB Bauer (U of Maryland, College Park)
Panel Description
The maker movement — a DIY culture of technological tinkering affiliated with Make magazine — has had a significant impact on how many scholars teach, and on how some of us think of our research as well. Maker pedagogy, from website-building to coding to experiments with Arduinos, is on the rise; meanwhile, digital humanists have argued that making things can also be a form of research (the best-known articulation of this being Alan Galey and Stan Ruecker’s “How a prototype argues”). Meanwhile, feminist and critical race scholars have intervened in the definitions of making, seeking to challenge the association of making with fields dominated by, as Leah Buechley bluntly puts it, “rich white guys.” Instead, scholars like Buechley and Debbie Chachra call for the revaluation of the material forms of labour practiced by women and marginalized communities, from knitting and weaving to lowrider cars and DJing.
The presentations on this panel expand our definition of scholarly making by asking what kinds of things we, as scholars, make, from pedagogical experiences to material artefacts to new publics. At the same time, they invite resistance to this expansion of the term “making; as Chachra argues, “To characterize what I do [teaching] as ‘making’ is to mistake the methods—courses, workshops, editorials—for the effects.”
Presentations
1: Makeademia: Paper-Digital Prototyping as Multimodal Composition
Emily Brooks, U of Florida
2: Medieval Drama on the Modern Stage: Reflections on Five Years of Community Making
Ann Hubert, St. Lawrence U
3: Critical Plastic: Crafting Humanities Research with 3-D Printing
DB Bauer, U of Maryland, College Park
