Lecture: Getting from here to there (original) (raw)
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Observations on the current stage of the Digital Humanities and their environment identify four dangers: (1) The focus on infrastructures for the Digital Humanities may obscure that research ultimately is driven by analytical methods and tools, not just by the provision of data or publishing tools. (2) Information technology can support the Humanities in many forms and national traditions. That textual analysis is much discussed right now, should not hide the view of a broader disciplinary field. (3) The mobile revolution looming may once again lead to a repetition of highly destructive processes observed at the PC and the internet revolutions. (4) The Digital Humanities may have to take a much stronger part in the development, not only the reception, of technology. – A series of concrete and controversial questions, which allow the discussion of some of these trends, is derived. 1. Background and motivation for a discussion of the Digital Humanities “Computing in the Humanities” ha...
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International Journal of Computational Methods in Heritage Science
Regardless of whether one supports Digital Humanities as a discipline in its own, ‘traditional' Humanities are transforming with the incorporation of computational approaches. In this short position paper, we outline ten challenges that we consider important and propose to kick-off an in-depth dialog for the future shaping of Digital Humanities, without prejudices and preconceptions. The presentation of the challenges situates them with respect to trends and evolutionary developments in society and technology, and some first comments are being made in kicking-off the dialog for the shaping of the future.
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Literary and Linguistic Computing, 2011
Digital Humanities faces many issues in the current financial and educational climate. In this closing plenary from the Digital Humanities conference 2010 at King's College London, major concerns about the current role and function of Digital Humanities are raised, demonstrating the practical and theoretical aspects of Digital Humanities research in regard to an individual project at University College London: Transcribe Bentham. It is suggested that those in the Digital Humanities have to be more aware of our history, impact, and identity, if the discipline is to continue to flourish in tighter economic climes, and that unless we maintain and establish a more professional attitude towards our scholarly outputs, we will remain 'present, not voting' within the academy. The plenary ends with suggestions as to how the individual, institution, and funding body can foster and aid the Digital Humanities, ensuring the field's relevance and impact in today's academic culture. This paper is a transcript of what was planned to be said at DH2010, although the spoken plenary digresses from the following in places. The video of the speech can be viewed at http://www.artshumanities.net/video/dh2010\_keynote\_melissa\_terras\_present\_not\_voting\_digital\_humanities\_panopt icon.
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PMLA/Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, 2013
This question of disciplinary meaning—which I ask from the viewpoint of the humanities generally—is larger than the question of disciplinary identity now preoccupying “DH” itself, as insiders call it. Having reached a critical mass of participants, publications, conferences, grant competitions, institutionalization (centers, programs, and advertised jobs), and general visibility, the field is vigorously forming an identity. Recent debates about whether the digital humanities are a “big tent” (Jockers and Worthey), “who's in and who's out?” (Ramsay), whether “you have to know how to code [or be a builder]” (Ramsay, “On Building”), the need for “more hack, less yack” (Cecire, “When Digital Humanities”; Koh), and “who you calling untheoretical?” (Bauer) witness a dialectics of inclusion and exclusion not unlike that of past emergent fields. An ethnographer of the field, indeed, might take a page from Claude Lévi-Strauss and chart the current digital humanities as something like...