NB: I wrote the first draft of this post the morning after Amy’s talk. I didn’t take notes at her talk, so I’ve kept the majority of what I wrote then to emphasize the immediate impact Amy Earhart’s plenary had on me. I embedded some tweets to help demonstrate how powerful her talk really was. Click here for the link to the Storify record of her talk.
I’m sitting on a plane flying from Ottawa to Victoria, thinking about Amy Earhart’s powerful keynote that ended the CSDH/ACH conference last night. I think I understand now why Amy was so intrepid in making her way to the conference, in spite of weather and travel challenges that turned others back. She came to talk from her heart to the people who work in DH across North America. In the best, most generous, most thoughtful, and at times emotional way she came to shake us out of our complacency and bemusement and challenge us to take responsibility for the place of DH in the academy. What she said really rattled me (as I expect it did to many in the room) and I feel the need to think out loud for a while.