Brief reactions...
Quoting Dan O'Donnell daniel.odonnell@uleth.ca:
What do others think? I'm thinking of asking the same question on Medtext and, phrased more generally, on Humanist. But before I do, I thought I'd ask here. I suspect the issue is more important for medievalists and classicists than it is for scholars in more modern periods: more of us seem to work more closely with things that can be digitised. Or is that discipline prejudice?
No, I think that's true. We ancient and medieval types have probably also been involved with technology for longer than, say, modern history or literature, or philosophers, for the very same reason. Paradoxically, we have more than our pair share of Luddites (meant in the most respectful way possible--in the sense of traditional philologists who believe that using the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae database to look up a word, or the Perseus digitised Lewis and Short dictionary to gloss a meaning, would weaken them, would cause them to lose their essential mental powers and become no better than the students they scorn for doing so). These Luddites are not necessarily older generation scholars, by any means: I know plenty of young scholars from Oxford or Harvard who cast themselves in precisely that mould, partly to emulate their mentors, no doubt, and partly to show off that they _do_ have these traditional skills. Much like the peacock's impractical tail, I suppose, that shows the male bird is strong enough to survive with an inconvenient physically burden.
Ahem--random weekend digressions aside--I agree that it is very important that graduate students be exposed to the technologies that help to shape the development of their disciplines. Should this teaching be delivered by and as part of the medieval/classics courses? Surely. Do medieval and classics departments have the resources and experience to teach such courses? I'm not sure. If not, are there enough good Humanities Computing centres to take on the responsibility? It is essential to be having this discussion, and I thank Dan for opening it, and taking it to other fora.
(Not so brief after all...)
Best,