Digital Humanities and Religious Studies: A “Why” To Guide

In 2018, the American Academy of Religion hosted a special “wildcard” panel on digital research and teaching projects that encourage students to engage with their local communities. Titled “Teaching Local Religion with Digital Humanities: Objects, Methods, Pedagogies,” the session featured ten educators who contributed to eight different projects. Some of the projects were based at major research universities and worked with communities across the country. Others were housed at small liberal arts colleges and focused on one place of worship. But almost all of the projects connected with the scholars’ research agenda and employed the tools and methods of digital humanities (DH) in order to benefit from the work of student collaborators.1 Despite the panel’s explicit focus on teaching, the question and answer session that followed forayed into other matters. The very first question from the audience asked how—or even if—such projects counted in tenure and promotion portfolios. Another wondered how the projects’ directors received credit for their work. Finally, one audience members seemed to question the entire premise of the panel altogether, asking whether the time spent developing these projects would be better spent producing journal articles or monographs. Such questions are important ones. They get at some of the tensions around integrating digital scholarship into the academic study of religion. But they also missed the point of the session.While the presenters were eager to talk about the pedagogical and intellectual benefits they had gained by employing digital methods, the audience was concerned with the professional issues that surround digital work.