Making(s) of DH journeys in India: notes from the field

This article explores the role of Indian Higher Education Institutions in envisioning the Digital Humanities space as necessarily heterogeneous: constantly grappling with conflicting attitudes while attempting to coalesce them into a harmonious whole. We describe the location-specific politics that play a significant role in determining Digital Humanities (DH) curricula and pedagogy in the national context—as evidenced by our extensive semi-structured interviews with various stakeholders (faculty, students, and professionals in DH) and comparative case studies of selected DH curricula offered by four Indian Higher Education Institutions at various academic levels. Themes discussed are: (1) the implications of interdisciplinarity, (2) the relationship between DH and the notion of skills, (3) the prevalence of techno-positivism in academia, and (4) the basis for conceptualizing a DH curriculum and pedagogy. To bridge the many gaps between teaching and learning in an interdisciplinary field, academic institutions in countries like India must establish explicit connections between the global and local narratives—between theory and practice. Through its novelty of methodological approach and a strong focus on individual perspectives, this study contributes to the debates on DH curricular practices and pedagogy situated in an essentially Indian context.