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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 March 2020
The spate of sharply critical think-pieces published over the past few years might seem to suggest that the digital humanities are in crisis, but the discipline continues to thrive: public and private funding bodies remain robustly supportive of digital humanities initiatives, laying the groundwork for research that is orientated towards the capacity for communication beyond traditional readerships. The digital humanities glow with such promise that some of us – among whom I must include myself – have quietly set aside our misgivings, instead finding ways of incorporating digital technologies and methodologies into our work. But mute complicity is not the only alternative to vocal censure, as is made clear by the many accounts of experiments and other personal experiences posted on blogs and, increasingly, published in peer-reviewed journals. Grounded in self-reflective practices, this sort of autoethnography offers a productive means of coming to terms with our complex and sometimes contradictory motivations for engaging with the digital humanities. In this essay, I reflect on a digital network visualization and analysis project I have pursued over the past five years, the final iteration of which – entitled ‘Visualizing the French Voice’ – attempted to use algorithms to make sense of the relationships between professors and pupils active at the Paris Conservatoire around the turn of the nineteenth century. I try to understand my motives at each turn, which are clearly bound up with that seductive promise of a broader readership, but also, albeit much less clearly, of ‘impact’.
I would like to thank the editors of this journal and the anonymous reviewers of this article, as well as Amanda Eubanks Winkler, Jonathan Hicks, Eric Lubarsky, Darren Mueller, and Cormac Newark for their many helpful suggestions.
1 Among the most cited of these are Daniel Allington, Sarah Brouillette and David Golumbia, ‘Neoliberal Tools (and Archives): A Political History of Digital Humanities’, Los Angeles Review of Books, 1 May 2016, https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/neoliberal-tools-archives-political-history-digital-humanities/ (accessed 8 September 2019); Timothy Brennan, ‘The Digital-Humanities Bust: After a Decade of Investment and Hype, What Has the Field Accomplished? Not Much’, The Chronicle of Higher Education, 20 October 2017, www.chronicle.com/article/The-Digital-Humanities-Bust/241424 (accessed 21 August 2019); Adam Kirsch, ‘Technology Is Taking Over English Departments: The False Promise of the Digital Humanities’, The New Republic, 2 May 2014, https://newrepublic.com/article/117428/limits-digital-humanities-adam-kirsch (accessed 8 September 2019); Sanjena Sathian, ‘The Humanities Need an Ally: Could It Be Computer Code?’ Ozy, 9 April 2014, www.ozy.com/opinion/the-humanities-need-an-ally-could-it-be-computer-code/30301 (accessed 8 September 2019); Rebecca Schuman, ‘Will Digital Humanities #Disrupt the University? First I Have to Figure Out What It Is’, Slate, 16 April 2014, https://slate.com/technology/2014/04/digital-humanities-and-the-future-of-technology-in-higher-ed.html (accessed 8 September 2019).
2 Among the latter are Giannetti's, Francesca ‘A Review of Network Approaches in Music Studies’, Music Reference Services Quarterly 19/2 (2016): 156–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bailey's, Moya ‘#transform(ing) DH Writing and Research: An Autoethnography of Digital Humanities and Feminist Ethics’, Digital Humanities Quarterly 9/2 (2015)Google Scholar, www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/9/2/000209/000209.html (accessed 9 October 2019); and Earhart's, Amy E. ‘Digital Humanities Futures: Conflict, Power, and Public Knowledge’, Digital Studies/Le champ numérique 9 (2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, http://doi.org/10.16995/dscn.1 (accessed 9 October 2019).
3 Garcia advocated for the use of the laryngoscope to examine otherwise hidden vocal organs – such as the glottis, pharynx, and larynx – in his Traité complet de l'art du chant, Part 1, 2nd ed. (Paris: chez l'auteur, 1847).
4 Melchissédec published two method books over the course of his career, Pour chanter, ce qu'il faut savoir …: Ma méthode (Paris: Editions Nilsson, [1913]) and Le Chant: La Déclamation lyrique, le mécanisme et l’émission de la voix (Paris: Editions Nilsson, [1925]).
5 Both Maurel and Bonnier contributed to the turn-of-the-century literature on vocal science. See, for example, Maurel, 's Le Chant rénové par la science, Conférence sur l'enseignement de l'art du chant à Milan en 1892 (Paris: A. Quinzard, 1892)Google Scholar and Bonnier, 's La Voix, sa culture physiologique: Théorie nouvelle de la phonation. Conférences faites au Conservatoire de Musique de Paris en 1906 (Paris: Alcan, 1907)Google Scholar.
6 Scott Weingart provides a nuanced overview of some of the possibilities – and problems – associated with applying algorithm-based analysis to humanistic research in his ‘Demystifying Networks’, www.scottbot.net/HIAL/index.html@p=6279.html (accessed 9 October 2019).
7 See Gephi's ‘Learn’ page for several official tutorials, as well as links to community-generated tutorials, https://gephi.org/users/ (accessed 29 November 2019). Other tutorials I found useful include Martin Grandjean's ‘GEPHI – Introduction to Network Analysis and Visualization’, www.martingrandjean.ch/gephi-introduction/ (accessed 9 October 2019), Miriam Posner's ‘Creating a Network Graph with Gephi’, http://miriamposner.com/dh101f15/index.php/creating-a-network-graph-with-gephi/ (accessed 9 October 2019), and Brian Sarnacki's ‘The Complete n00b's Guide to Gephi’, www.briansarnacki.com/gephi-tutorial/ (accessed 9 October 2019).
8 As Johanna Drucker reminds us, after all, such algorithms tend to ‘optimize legibility within the limits of screen real estate, organising their nodes and neighbourhoods for efficiency rather than for semantic or meaning-driven origins within the original materials’. Drucker, , ‘Graphical Approaches to the Digital Humanities’, in A New Companion to Digital Humanities, 2nd edition, ed. Schreibman, Susan, Siemens, Ray and Unsworth, John (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2016), 241Google Scholar.
9 AJ 37, 118–37, Fonds Conservatoire National de Musique, Archives Nationales de France, Pierrefitte-sur-Seine, France.
10 I am grateful to Alexandria Turner (MM in Vocal Pedagogy, Syracuse University, 2018) for her assistance with the initial phases of digitising the Conservatoire's tableaux annuels des classes.
11 For an overview of Kumu's capabilities, see the ‘Tour’ page of Kumu's website, https://kumu.io/tour (accessed 29 November 2019).
12 In 1907, perhaps in retaliation for being passed over for a position as singing professor, Melchissédec launched a print campaign against the Conservatoire's singing curriculum – which, he claimed, had produced ‘résultats déplorables’ (‘deplorable results’) for more than half a century – in Comoedia, a new daily newspaper devoted to discussions of the arts, especially musical and theatrical culture. Melchissédec's ‘La Voix – Le Chant’ series ran for nearly a year before Comoedia cancelled it, with instalments published in the following issues: 17 Dec. 1907; 9 Jan. 1908; 22 Jan. 1908; 4 March 1908; 16 April 1908; 9 June 1908; 3 July 1908; 30 July 1908; 13 Nov. 1908; 15 Nov. 1908; 18 Nov. 1908; and 24 Nov. 1908.
13 Of the 625 students enrolled in chant, grand opéra, and opéra-comique classes between 1894 and 1914, 156 resigned, transferred or were dismissed (whether involuntarily or at the student's request) from individual studios on 208 counts; put more simply, nearly 25 per cent of students vacated at least one studio over the course of their careers at the Conservatoire, and several vacated more than one. In part, the high rate of attrition from Melchissédec's studio can be attributed to the sheer number of students with whom he worked: whereas professors of chant instructed no more than ten students each year, per the Conservatoire's regulations, professors of déclamation lyrique were under no such restrictions, routinely teaching more than ten students – and sometimes nearly double that number – in a given year. Documents detailing the Conservatoire's policies are compiled in Pierre, Constant, Le Conservatoire National de Musique et de Déclamation. Documents historiques et administratifs (Paris: Imprimérie Nationale, 1900)Google Scholar and Bongrain, Anne, ed., Le Conservatoire de Paris: Documents historiques et administratifs (1900–1930) (Paris: J. Vrin, 2012)Google Scholar.
14 AJ 37, 71, Fonds Conservatoire National de Musique, Archives Nationales de France, Pierrefitte-sur-Seine, France.
15 Leonard Cassuto, ‘The Job-Market Moment of Digital Humanities’, The Chronicle of Higher Education, 22 January 2017, www.chronicle.com/article/The-Job-Market-Moment-of/238944 (accessed 8 October 2019).
16 théâtrophonics was designed in Spring 2018 by undergraduate students at Syracuse University enrolled in ‘Music, Space, and Place’, an upper-level seminar that investigated the musical sites and sounds of Paris around the turn of the nineteenth century, http://theatrophonics.org/ (accessed 30 November 2019). I co-organized the Syracuse University Digital Humanities Research Symposia in collaboration with Casarae Gibson (African American Studies, Syracuse University), Darren Mueller (Musicology, Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester), and Meina Yates-Richard (English, Syracuse University; now African American Studies and English, Emory University), with funding from a variety of departments and colleges across Syracuse University and, in 2019, from the Central New York Humanities Corridor.