What are the Digital Humanities?
Defining the Digital Humanities
“Digital humanities (DH) is an area of scholarly activity at the intersection of computing or digital technologies and the disciplines of the humanities. It includes the systematic use of digital resources in the humanities, as well as the analysis of their application. DH can be defined as new ways of doing scholarship that involve collaborative, transdisciplinary, and computationally engaged research, teaching, and publishing. It brings digital tools and methods to the study of the humanities with the recognition that the printed word is no longer the main medium for knowledge production and distribution.”
THE DIGITAL HUMANITIES MANIFESTO
“Digital Humanities is not a unified field but an array of convergent practices that explore a universe in which: a) 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; and b) digital tools, techniques, and media have altered the production and dissemination of knowledge in the arts, human and social sciences. The Digital Humanities seeks to play an inaugural role with respect to a world in which, no longer the sole producers, stewards, and disseminators of knowledge or culture, universities are called upon to shape natively digital models of scholarly discourse for the newly emergent public spheres of the present era (the www, the blogosphere, digital libraries, etc.), to model excellence and innovation in these domains, and to facilitate the formation of networks of knowledge production, exchange, and dissemination that are, at once, global and local.”
“[DH is] the development, exploration, and evaluation of computer-based technologies and resources for enabling the pursuit of research questions in the humanities.”
WHAT IS DH DOING IN ENGLISH DEPARTMENTS?
“At its core digital humanities is more akin to a common methodological outlook than an investment in any one specific set of texts or even technologies … Yet digital humanities is also a social undertaking. It harbours networks of people who have been working together, sharing research, arguing, competing, and collaborating for many years…. a culture that values collaboration, openness, nonhierarchical relations, and agility”