A committee chaired by German professor Gerd Gemunden will review several applicants to fill the newly created position of digital humanities chair. The committee will complete the search this term, with a senior hire expected in May.
Currently, the digital humanities chair is not attached to an official department but students can obtain a minor in the digital arts from the computer science department, or an individualized major from classes offered through a combination of departments. The hiring of the chair will facilitate this process.
"The chair will not only be responsible for teaching classes but also for curricular development, programming and bringing speakers to campus," film studies professor Mark Williams said.
Although other schools have similar curricular structures, Williams said that Dartmouth's situation is a unique one.
"To my knowledge this is the first endowed chair in the digital humanities," he said.
Yvonne Spielmann, professor of Visual Media at the University of Braunschweig's Institute for Media Research in Germany is the second candidate to come to campus. She will give a talk titled "Digital Media Cultures" in the Rockefeller Center on Tuesday afternoon. Another candidate will speak next week.
According to Williams, the candidates come from many different fields - some specializing in scholarly work and theory, others in areas of production.
"They each have their own qualities for what we want this position to achieve," he said.
Williams said that the committee is looking for someone with a first-rate scholarship or production background, along with the capacity to administer and facilitate. He said that the candidate should also have the great teaching skills of a typical Dartmouth professor.
He also said that a generous amount of discussion and debate has been created by the topic of digital humanities, proving the professorship as another example of Dartmouth's forward thinking.
Committee chair Gemunden said in a June 2006 issue of the Vox at Dartmouth newspaper that creating this new position means "we are acknowledging the significance of the digital revolution."
"The digital revolution affects all fields - how we learn, how we write," he said.
Other institutions have created similar programs. The Center for New Media at the University of California, Berkeley, and the MIT Program in Media Arts and Sciences are examples of similar attempts to investigate the correlation between the humanities and technology.
Dean of the faculty Carol Folt was also quoted in Vox of Dartmouth as saying that "the Dartmouth administration is seeking an academic of the highest caliber who can coalesce nascent efforts, build on core strengths ripe for advancement, effect major changes in curriculum and scholarly development and influence global discourse."
Williams said that interest for the position stemmed from various seminars regarding the connection between technology, humanities and new media held through the Leslie Center for the Humanities.
Several professors - including Williams, English professor Brenda Silver, music professor Lawrence Polansky and animation professor David Ehrlich of the film studies department - have all developed "new media" curricula within their respective academic fields.
The new position was created through a $10 million endowment from the Sherman Fairchild Foundation in 2005. This post is one of the two professorships in emerging fields endowed by this donation.