Hi, class I wish you all a Happy Solstice, a Good Yule, a belated Happy Hanukkah, a Merry Christmas, and a Blessed Kwanzaa, and a very safe, healthy, and happy New Year.

It has been a pleasure to learn and grow with all of you.

For my final project, I decided to put my own spin on Urban Dictionary – specifically, an academic, humanistic, DH-centered spin. I proposed a Dictionary Academicus, an academic Urban Dictionary that is also a platform for debate, as well as a ledger of new concepts and terms in DH.

New academic terms, phrases, and concepts are continually being introduced to the literature and canon of Digital Humanities. Often, this influx of jargon can be overwhelming to newcomers to the field, and those in adjacent academic fields. The Dictionary Academicus can change this. In its capacity as an interactive glossary of terms, it has great potential for educating new students and creating consensus amongst the DH community. The Dictionary Academicus can also serve as a platform for debate amongst scholars of DH and related fields.

Caitlin Cacciatore

The Dictionary Academicus is intended to be scalable, and has the potential to expand into other humanistic fields and the other social sciences.

Just as a pearl begins with a single grain of sand, I see the Dictionary Academicus as a scalable website and platform for discourse. It has the potential to expand into other humanistic fields, such as anthropology, sociology, literary studies, history, and philosophy. The possibilities are limited only by the capacity of the human imagination and ability to record, examine, and analyze the facets of life and of culture. In a similar vein to how the Urban Dictionary made common vernacular accessible and immediate to its audience, so too can Dictionary Academicus accelerate the rate at which new concepts, ideas, and turns of phrase trickle into the academic lexicon we share as scholars of the Digital Humanities and adjacent fields.

Caitlin Cacciatore

Ultimately, my project was inspired by the reading we did this semester, and the new terms, concepts, ideas, and turns of phrase I found myself grappling with. At some point in the semester, Professor Gold suggested during a class session that we keep our own Excel document of the ideas we’ve encountered throughout the semester, and that we come across in graduate school. His words stuck with me, and while I was ruminating on the expansion of the English language, the idea of the Dictionary Academicus came to me.

I immensely enjoyed the process of fleshing out the idea of an academic Urban Dictionary, from the original seed of the idea to the seedling it has grown into.

I look forward to working with you all next semester. May your season be merry and bright.