ABSTRACT
Engaging in Digital Humanities in the Mexican context for researchers and students is complicated for several reasons, such as the limited number of events, conferences, and projects and the need for Digital Humanities courses. As I teach undergraduates in philosophy, a discipline with a weak tradition in Digital Humanities, attracting students to this field is even more challenging. Since 2008 the Biblioteca Digital del Pensamiento Novohispano, a project on digital editing of Mexico’s early modern manuscripts, books, and documents, has been the primary way of introducing students to Digital Humanities.
In the last decade, I tried two approaches to attract students to the project. At first, I emphasize a dominant humanistic approach, putting ahead the study of Mexican philosophy and, secondarily, the methods of Digital Humanities. My focus has shifted over the last three years, and I have placed the Digital Humanities in the center. In this chapter, I evaluate the results achieved by both approaches, focusing on the nature of students’ engagement in the project and Digital Humanities in general. I will argue that both directions have strategic value in specific contexts with different levels of engagement of the students. Still, one crucial thing to consider is that its pedagogical objectives must be explicit for the project to add value to students.
