The annual convention of the Modern Language Association (MLA) is the greatest show on earth for the humanities and for some years now, digital humanities—using computer technology to understand literature and the arts—have been all the rage. They present new ways to approach the work of humanities scholarship, and they’ve already delivered not just new results but new kinds of results. Digital humanities have also become integrated into the academic job market. That raises the question: Will expertise in digital humanities get graduate students the academic jobs that so many of them seek? Sidonie Smith, an English professor at U-M and a former president of the MLA thinks this new work has a chance to revolutionize what humanists do. She declares in her 2015 book, Manifesto for the Humanities, that the new digital environment “ratchets up the urgency of pursuing a 21st-century vision of doctoral education.”
