Humanities: From the Classroom to the Metaverse

The conversation of the Digital Humanities is a highly-debated topic across universities, however, at UCLA, advocates and enemies of this new culture are going as far as writing white papers and manifestos to take a stand on the subject. One faculty member wrote a blog denouncing the furthering of digitalism in the classroom because humanities departments at UCLA are in serious peril if administration decides to “cut budgets” by dispersing language classes into the summer months and only remaining as online classes during the regular academic year. Bob Samuels refutes this proposal in “Race to the Bottom: A Critical Response to the UCLA Humanities Task Force” by explaining that technology cannot replace traditional live classroom instruction and that it would actually hinder UCLA’s finances even more to implement online courses in the humanities because of the cost of technology. More importantly, students are also less likely to finish online courses because of how autonomous online learning is; therefore, online courses in the humanities are also detriments to students’ growth and development. As someone who studies English, I would testify that it is not “laziness” that causes students to drop out of online courses, but the lack of humanism in learning on a computer screen—we are called the HUMANITIES after all. A software cannot take the place of agile discussion that happens in the classroom because when a student reads texts on a computer, they are presented with just one perspective, but being in a room with many different English students enhances the text with the array of perspectives brought into the conversation which ultimately helps us, humanities students, better understand the world around us. On the flipside, there is value in the Digital Humanities, as written in “A Digital Humanities Manifesto” by proponents of this new culture within the UCLA community. To digitalize humanities is to fuse the arts and the sciences, and is that not human? The Humanities should be all-encompassing of what people have created, destroyed, and recreated over time which is what digitalizing our discipline can do; it can democratize information. In the 60’s and 70’s, counterculture was re-seeing the way we do art, music, and literature alongside the major breaking through of diversity with the Civil Rights Movement and Women Rights Movement; history was being reshaped into something more attune with progression and, hopefully, toward a type of utopia (which is near impossible, but isn’t that something we should strive for?). Counterculture then became the new culture and a culture that is not only tolerant, but fully open to different ideas, people, and ways of life. We are in the midst of another revolution and it’s a digital one. We have opened up the canon so much since one-hundred years ago that it would be waste to seal it back up again. Like the countercultural revolutions, we must continue to revolt against the old and embrace the novel because that is how we move one step closer to a better society. Haven’t we learned that by now? I’m not saying that online courses should completely replace traditional lectures, but it’s time that we open up the field for a new means of growth which is what technology can offer humanities scholars. Bob Dylan wisely sang about how times are changing and they are only going to keep changing, therefore, we must learn to once and for all embrace these changes with open-arms. However, the question isn’t ARE we going to accept change, but HOW? How can we open up the humanities to technologicalization without butchering the tradition of literature and composition?