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Professor Lauren Klein’s talk will introduce two concepts, carework and codework, that strongly resonate in a digital humanities context. Carework most commonly refers to the subset of feminized reproductive labor that is undertaken out of a sense of compassion with, or responsibility for others, rather than with a goal of monetary gain. Codework, a term coined by Alan Sondheim, describes the genre of electronic literature that mixes computer code with natural language. According to Sondheim, codework is characterized by “the computer stirring into the text, and the text stirring the computer.” In applying the concept of codework to DH, this talk will explore how we might facilitate the creation of digital tools for stirring into the archive, while also allowing the archive to stir the tools. Professor Klein will argue, moreover, that by thinking about digital tools in terms of codework, we can more fully account for the carework involved in their creation, as well as in the creation of the archives that, in designing our tools, we seek to more fully understand.
Lauren Klein is an Assistant Professor in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication at Georgia Tech, where she also directs the Digital Humanities Lab. Her research interests include early American literature, food studies, media studies, and the digital humanities. She is at work on two books: the first on the relation between eating and aesthetics in the early American archive, and the second that provides a cultural history of data visualization from the eighteenth century to the present day. Her writing has appeared in American Quarterly, American Literature, and Early American Literature. Her digital humanities projects have been supported by grants from the Mellon Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. With Matthew K. Gold, she edits Debates in the Digital Humanities (Univ. of Minnesota Press), a hybrid print/digital publication stream that explores debates in the field as they emerge. The most recent volume in the series, Debates in the Digital Humanities 2016, is available in print and online at http://dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu.