Praxis 2.0

The 2012-2013 Praxis team has assembled! We’ve moved into our lounge (who knew Alderman Library could be so comfortable?) and started to think about chartering this year’s team project. More on the charter and the project in the weeks to come…

Although we’ve just met, if I had to describe my fellows in a single word, I’d probably say that we are a “diverse” team. We hail from across the humanities–from sociology to history, music, english, and philosophy. (I am a sixth year graduate student in the philosophy department, interested primarily in topics in ancient philosophy, applied ethics, and aesthetics. My dissertation, The Ascent to Beauty: the Epistemology of Goodness in the Middle Dialogues, proposes a unified theory of knowledge in the ascent passages from this period in Plato’s work. My research tackles questions like “Why is goodness the ‘highest’ form?” and “Why does Plato identify goodness with beauty?”)

The fact that we Praxis fellows have such different backgrounds seems to be what really distinguishes us. Digital humanities is known for its interdisciplinarity; even so, most DH projects seem to be undertaken with specific individuals filling certain predetermined roles. A visualization project might, for example, consist of one or more researchers, usually from a single or neighboring disciplines, a project manager, digital technologists, and designers. Our team seems really unique in that, in addition to a team of skilled digital researchers, technologists, and designers, we hail from five different humanities disciplines. What’s more, unlike other DH teams we were not chosen to address any particular research question. Over the next several weeks, we’ll have the rare opportunity to design and undertake a project of our own devising. We might pick up where last year’s team left off or, who knows, we might enter into completely uncharted territory? Whatever we decide, this year’s project will, I hope, showcase the successes, failures, and inner workings of a truly interdisciplinary team.