What does “Digital Humanities” mean?

Much ink and many vector graphics and pixels have been used to figure out the meaning of the term, yet what matters is less the definition of a field and more an understanding of the activities called digital humanities. As Todd Presner, Jeffrey Schnapp, Peter Lunenfeld et al point out, digital humanities are “not a unified field but an array of convergent practices that explore a universe in which:

  1. print is no longer the exclusive or the normative medium in which knowledge is produced and/or disseminated; instead, print finds itself absorbed into new, multimedia configurations;
  2.  digital tools, techniques, and media have altered the production and dissemination of knowledge in the arts, human and social sciences.”[1]

Key phrases

  1. a world in which “print is no longer the exclusive or the normative medium in which knowledge is produced and/or disseminated.”
  2. “convergent practices” and “new multimedia configurations” and changing the “production of knowledge.”  

Because educational institutions are committed to examining, revising, and creating knowledge, they have become fertile sites for digital disruption.

Offered here are resources that can shed light on the digital humanities, a term that, perhaps, can best be viewed as a useful sign pointing to methods and collaborations integrating the sciences with the arts and humanities. In this broad sense, we can speak about the digital humanities as innovative and synergistic practices that seek to thrive in the interstices of the liberal arts, while extending their scope and enriching their value.

Scholarship

Companion to Digital Humanities Blackwell Publishing/Wiley Online Library

Debates in the Digital Humanities

Defining Digital Humanities: A Reader by Melissa Terras, Julianne Nyhan, and Edward Vanhoutte

What is digital history? American Historical Association

Statement on Electronic Publication Modern Language Association

Digital Rhetoric: Theory, Method, Practice Douglas Eyman

What is digital writing and why does it matter? National Writing Project

Journals/Magazines

Digital Humanities Quarterly

Digital Studies/La Champ Numérique

Digital Scholarship in the Humanities Oxford University Press

Journal of Digital Humanities

New Media, Digital Humanities, Information Studies MIT Press

Organizations

Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations

Association for Computers and the Humanities

Australian Association for Digital Humanities

Black Digital Humanities

Japanese Association for Digital Humanities

Taiwanese Association for Digital Humanities


Posted by John Muthyala, February 2024


[1] Presner, Todd, Jeffrey Schnapp, Peter Lunenfeld, et al. “Digital Humanities Manifesto 2.0.” toddpresner.com July 22, 2009  http://www.toddpresner.com/?p=7