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:
- 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;
- digital tools, techniques, and media have altered the production and dissemination of knowledge in the arts, human and social sciences.”[1]
Key phrases
- a world in which “print is no longer the exclusive or the normative medium in which knowledge is produced and/or disseminated.”
- “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 Studies/La Champ Numérique
Digital Scholarship in the Humanities Oxford University Press
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
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