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Digital Humanities: Overview

What Are Digital Humanities?

The digital humanities embrace the intersection of research, teaching, and creation in the humanities and the opportunities of computing. Digital humanities scholars use computational techniques and visualization technology to address current research topics and develop new questions and approaches. Examples are the data mining of large sets of cultural data and the digitization of printed and visual works to bring materials normally only available in an archive directly to the public.

Food for Thought

Have you read How We Think: Digital Media and Contemporary Techniques by N. Katherine Hayles (University of Chicago Press, 2012)? Hayles examines how humanities scholars and students view their work differently in light of digital methods. Find the book in Belk Library stacks, P96 T42 H39 2012.

Where do digital projects fit in the traditional realms of scholarship and service? 2014 Boyer Award winner Edward L. Ayers, president of the University of Richmond, thoughtfully addresses this question. Read his remarks here.

Start Here

This Library Guide is intended to lead you to news and resources dealing with digital humanities. Start with some of the sources below for overviews and updates, and find more discipline-specific resources by selecting from the tabs at the top of the page. Visit often as new resources are added.

Digital Humanities Now. An excellent web site that reports the latest news and most innovative research, teaching, and creation in this quickly growing multidisciplinary field.

 

Selected Publications About the Digital Humanities

Bode, Katherine, and Paul Longley Arthur, eds. Advancing Digital Humanities: Research, Methods, Theories. AZ105 A35 2014.

Apollon, Daniel, et al, eds. Digital Critical Editions. 2014.

Bartscherer, Thomas, and Roderick Coover, eds. Switching Codes: Thinking through Digital Technology in the Humanities and the Arts. AZ195 S95 2011.

Berry, David M., ed. Understanding Digital Humanities. AZ105 U64 2012.

Bodenhamer, David J. The Spatial Humanities: GIS and the Future of Humanities Scholarship. G70.212 S654 2010.

Borgman, Christine L. Scholarship in the Digital Age: Information, Infrastructure, and the Internet. Also available in print, AZ195 B67 2007.

Bryson, Tim, comp. Digital Humanities. 2011. Z671 A85 No. 326.

Burdick, Anne, et al. Digital Humanities. AZ195 D54 2012. Compact guide to the digital humanities, including geospatial analysis, data mining, corpus linguistics, visualization, simulation, and more.

Cohen, Daniel J., and Tom Scheinfeldt, eds. Hacking the Academy: New Approaches to Scholarship and Teaching from Digital Humanities. 2013.

Davidhazi, Peter, ed. New Publication Cultures in the Humanities: Exploring the Paradigm Shift. Z286 E43 N49. 2014.

Ernst, Wolfgang. Digital Memory and the Archive. P90 E685 2013.

Gardiner, Eileen. The Digital Humanities: A Primer for Students and Scholars. AZ105 G37 2015.

Gold, Marttew K., ed. Debates in the Digital Humanities. AZ182 D44 2012.

Gregory, Ian N., and Alistair Geddes, eds. Toward Spatial Humanities: Historical GIS & Spatial History. D1;6 T74 2014.

Gross, Alan G., and Joseph E. Harmon. The Internet Revolution in the Sciences and Humanities. Z286 I57 G76 2015. Covers archival web sites, peer review, publication, and more.

Hayles, Katherine. How We Think: Digital Media and Contemporary Technogenesis. P96 T42 H39 2012.

Jones, Steven E. The Emergence of the Digital Humanities. AZ195 J66 2014.

Parikka, Jussi. What Is Media Archaeology? P90 P336 2012.

Schiuma, Giovanni, and Carlucci, Daniela. Big Data in the Arts and Humanities. 2018.

Schreibman, Susan, et al, eds. A New Companion to Digital Humanities. 2016.

Svensson, Patrik, and David Theo Goldbert, eds. Between Humanities and the Digital. AZ105 B44 2015.

Terras, Melissa, et al, eds. Defining Digital Humanities: A Reader. 2013. Other copies available here and here.

Travis, Charles, and Alexander von Lunen, eds. The Digital Arts and Humanities: Neogeography, Social Media and Big Data Integrations and Applications. AZ195 D535 2016.

Vandendorpe, Christian. From Papyrus to Hypertext: Toward the Universal Digital Library. P211 V3613 2009.

Warwick, Claire, et al. Digital Humanities in Practice. Also available in paper, AZ195 D5;74 2012.

 

 

 

Paradigm Change?

A new kind of digital humanist is emerging who combines in-depth training in a single humanistic subfield with a mix of skills drawn from design, computer science, media work, curatorial training, and library science. --Digital Humanities by Anne Burdick et al, p. 116

An alternative view can be found in "The Dark Side of the Humanities" posts on the Center for 21st Century Studies.

Davidhazi, Peter, ed. New Publication Cultures in the Humanities: Exploring the Paradigm Shift. Z286 E43 N49 2014.

Hall, Gary.Pirate Philosophy for a Digital Posthumanities. AZ195 H35 2016. Call for humanities scholars to rethink who they are and how they publish.

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