As a new media scholar, I often feel like my research interests aren’t “serious” enough for academia. Other people at school: “And what do you work on, Bonnie?” Me: “I look at video games and cybersex and humans hitting each other on the internet.” Other people: “Oh, we work on the canon of Western theory. But what you do sounds… fun.” When I meet with professors, I seem to be constantly advocated for the legitimacy of my proudly perverse corner of the “digital humanities.” No, Baudelaire didn’t play iPhone games. Yes, they’re still valuable sites of analysis.
However, I realized the other day that the inferiority complex goes both ways. I was in a meeting of German scholars, most of whom don’t focus on the digital humanities. “Apparently it’s the future of academia,” they said, more with uneasiness than disdain. “In twenty years, those of us who just study literature are going be irrelevant.” And it hit me that the luddite scholars are scared, scared that the changing social landscape will consider their work illegitimate, scared that the thing they’re passionate about will get left behind in our “whirlwind times of Facebook.”
Do I feel good about this? On the one hand I feel vindicated: I strike fear into the hearts of my predecessors. On the other hand, I worry that the academics around me see “new media studies” as a buzz word, a band wagon to jump on. A few years back, when I mentioned to a fellow grad student that I specialize in technology, she said, “Oh, that’s a smart move. Hiring committees eat that stuff up. Make sure that’s all over your CV.” But it’s not a “smart move.” It’s not a ploy for a job. It’s what I’m passionate about. And that doesn’t mean that I want to leave anyone behind.
This is awesome and thoughtful. Just found your site while researching for a Lolita paper, and I admire and respect everything I see here. (Sometimes the internet has a real crippling effect on me, ha.) So! Thank you for posting and sharing your thoughts.