Themed Issue 27
Minimalist Digital Humanities Pedagogy
Issue Editors:
Patricia Belen, Fordham University
Stefano Morello, CUNY Graduate Center
Gregory Palermo, Emory University
Danica Savonick, SUNY Cortland
Brandon Walsh, University of Virginia
The Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy (JITP) seeks scholarly work for a special issue on minimalist digital humanities pedagogy. Scholars have defined minimal computing as "computing done under significant constraints of hardware, software, education, network capacity, power, or other factors." Drawing inspiration from this work, this special issue explores minimalist digital humanities pedagogy, a broad approach to teaching and learning in DH that works within significant technological, infrastructural, resource, or pedagogical restrictions, whether undertaken intentionally or as a response to circumstance.
At the broadest level, we are interested in what it might mean to work with what we have while at the same time advocating for what we need. We ask:
- What does it mean to teach DH with minimal infrastructure?
- How can we teach DH and digital literacy in ways that address the often inadequate material working and learning conditions of faculty, staff, and students?
- How can we take tactical approaches to teaching amidst unjust and often woefully underfunded institutions, while also advocating for structural change, and a world in which everyone has the resources and support to undertake every DH project they dream of?
- Might we sometimes need to use proprietary technologies (for example, using existing tools like Google Docs rather than building our own more ethical alternatives) to enact liberatory and transformative learning?
- How might we use minimalist approaches for maximal pedagogical ends?
We encourage multiple approaches to the topic and pieces in a variety of formats. Submissions should make an argument, be situated as part of a larger conversation, and be legible to multiple audiences across disciplines. We are especially interested in submissions that use these tactical pedagogical approaches to challenge and question the educational status quo rather than accepting restrictions as a given.
Possible topics might include
- Low-cost, low-tech, low barriers of access and entry approaches to teaching and learning in DH
- Strategies for embracing limitations, constraints, or scarcity as opportunities for intentional, student-centered pedagogy
- Situated DH pedagogies: intersectional and embodied teaching methods that account for differences in race, class, gender, sexuality, and ability, and practices that consider local contexts and needs, particularities of a situation, and material conditions of teaching and learning
- Approaches to DH in particular settings such as community colleges, HBCUs, HSIs, high schools, and community organizations
- Minimalist DH as a mode of resistance to austerity, censorship, or other attacks on education and academic freedom
- Adaptive strategies for operating with limited human infrastructure and accessing funding schemes that typically prioritize large-scale digital humanities projects over minimalist approaches
- Resource costs of the pressures to incorporate artificial intelligence in the classroom
- The limitations of minimalist work
Brief Guidelines for Submissions
Research-based submissions should include discussions of approach, method, and analysis. When possible, research data should be made publicly available and accessible via the Web and/or other digital mechanisms, a process that JITP can and will support as necessary. Successes and interesting failures are equally welcome. Submissions that focus on pedagogy should balance theoretical frameworks with practical considerations of how new technologies play out in both formal and informal educational settings. Discipline-specific submissions should be written for non-specialists.
For further information on style and formatting, accessibility requirements, and multimedia submissions, consult JITP’s accessibility guidelines, style guide, and multimedia submission guidelines.
Submission and Review Process
All work appearing in the Issues section of JITP is reviewed by the issue editors and independently by two scholars in the field, who provide formative feedback to the author(s) during the review process. We practice signed, as opposed to anonymous or so-called “blind,” peer review. We intend that the journal itself—both in our process and in our digital product—serves as an opportunity to reveal, reflect on, and revise academic publication and classroom practices.
As a courtesy to our reviewers, we will not consider simultaneous submissions, but we will do our best to reply to you within three months of the submission deadline. The expected length for finished manuscripts is under 5,000 words or an equivalent length or scope for timed or other forms of media (e.g. roughly 20–25 minutes of dialogue, 45 minutes of a spoken presentation, etc.). Both text-based and multimedia should be prepared to undergo review for their relationship to scholarly and related conversations, as well as be amenable to revision. All work should be original and previously unpublished. Essays or presentations posted on a personal blog may be accepted, provided they are substantially revised; please contact us with questions at admin.
Important Dates
Submission deadline for full manuscripts is June 15, 2025. Anticipated publication via Manifold Scholarship is December 2025.
Please view our submission guidelines on our commons site for information about submitting to the Journal.