New Dialogues in Spanish and Portuguese Studies: Pedagogical and Theoretical Perspectives from the Digital Humanities

Abstract

New Dialogues in Spanish and Portuguese Studies:Pedagogical and Theoretical Perspectives from the Digital Humanities Susanna Allés-Torrent, Megan Jeanette Myers, and Élika Ortega The Digital Humanities (DH) has been for many years, even decades, in constant development and self-definition and has been able to gather a diverse and international community that goes beyond the traditional framework of academia. Different initiatives underscored the need to advocate for linguistic and cultural diversity and adopted inclusivity as one of its core values (Galina Russell 2014; Gil and Ortega 2016; Mahony 2018; Spence 2014).1 In this process of self-(re)presentation, one of the most particular lines of debate has probably been the relationship of DH with other disciplines. Consequently, practices, theories, and fields of studies come together to seek to redefine themselves in light of digital methods of critical analysis reshaping their academic practices and scopes, creating what Ortega (2019) has termed a "Digital Humanities ecology of knowledges." Critical Digital Humanities advocates for the need of stronger theoretical frames and deeper engagement with cultural criticism (Fiormonte 2016; Liu 2012). Black Digital Humanities explores the relationship between DH and Africana, African American, and Black Studies, and how technology can bring forward an understudied field by exposing "humanity as a racialized social construction" and by reconsidering the canon (Earhart 2012; Gallon 2016). Postcolonial Digital Humanities brings to light how legacies of colonialism of knowledge production still pervade the digital cultural record (Risam 2018). Data Feminism exposes how data science can be informed by the ideas of feminisms and justice (Klein 2020). Digital Black Atlantic investigates the ways in which digital tools can better be interconnected with African diaspora studies (Risam and Baker Josephs 2021), and so forth. In this sense, Modern Languages (ML) also finds itself in the process of establishing the terms in which it intersects with the Digital Humanities. This intersection of DH and ML does not consist of the adoption of a digital literacy as a mere instrument, but as an indispensable critical and culturally sensitive component for understanding digital culture and digital methods. We should emphasize, furthermore, that this crossroads of disciplines goes in both directions, meaning that the DH can provide ML with new digital approaches to study and analyze language, literature, and culture. And simultaneously, ML can enrich the linguistic and cultural meaning of DH. A decade ago Kirschenbaum (2010), in a key article for the field, analyzed the role of English departments and the reasons for being at the vanguard of DH: the centrality of texts, which are the most suitable data to process; the long tradition of composition unavoidably [End Page 535] associated with computers; the boom of theories around digital archives and editions since the 1980s, and practices of electronic literature; the openness of English departments to cultural studies, including digital material culture; and the interest for the digitization of books and reading supports (6). Obviously, the analysis was made from the US-perspective, but it paved the way to better contextualize the then burgeoning DH field within that precise setting. In the case of ML departments, no self-assessment has yet been done. We can find "histories" of digital methods in certain countries (e.g., Spain, in Toscano et al. 2020), geolinguistic communities (Ortega and Gutiérrez 2014), or disciplines (e.g., Medieval Studies), but not in a ML context. It seems therefore that the relationship with DH is still undefined, and this is especially true from a pedagogical perspective (Taylor and Thornton 2017). Modern language departments have traditionally focused on fostering the study of language and culture. So, as ML shares some of the developments highlighted by Kirschenbaum, units devoted to ML are institutionally kept busy with communicating and teaching the foreign component with digital tools. The urgency and popularity of language teaching has, in many cases, rendered an "instrumental" use of such tools (e.g., case of language courses), rather than fostering the critical and reflective integration of DH approaches.2 It is within this context where the challenge remains of determining how the digital is adopted and taught. Scholars are already examining the multiple ways to adopt and implement methods, skills, tools, and projects both in their teaching...