Some things to think about before you exhort everyone to code | Miriam Posner’s Blog

In an exploratory, ungraded in-class activity yesterday, I introduced students in my upper-level English seminar to code. Yes, there was some coercion, given the realities of the education system, and some students may have preferred a lecture or more structured format, but I tried to invoke community and play. How successful was I? Too early to say — we will be doing some more in-class coding next week, and the only assessment will be in the form of an in-class presentation. I’m letting the students set the parameters for what they want to accomplish.

Here, there, and everywhere, we’re being told: A DHer should code! Don’t know how? Learn! The work that’s getting noticed, one can’t help but see, is code. As digital humanities winds its way into academic departments, it seems reasonable to predict that the work that will get people jobs — the work that marks a real digital humanist — will be work that shows that you can code. And that work is overwhelmingly by men. There are some importantexceptions, but the pattern is pretty clear. —Some things to think about before you exhort everyone to code | Miriam Posner’s Blog.