Tuesday Jan 14

Submitted by iamdan on Thu, 01/09/2020 - 12:22

Read the articles at the links below, and then add or respond to a comment with your thoughts:

   What is Digital Humanities and What is it Doing in English Departments

   The History of Humanities Computing

Comments

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Submitted by SabrinaZirkle on Thu, 01/09/2020 - 19:15

I thought that the iterative process of naming this discipline was interesting. Personally, I like the name "ehumanities". I was encouraged to hear that so many attendees of the DH conference tried tweeting about it. Even though dialogue on social media can often be stringent, it is becoming the new place for public discourse and the marketplace of ideas. In order to remain relevant, embracing social media is a step that some programs should thoughtfully consider. In regards to the second article, I am actually a recipient of the Thomas J. Memorial Watson Scholarship, so it's always interesting to learn things that relate to his activities.

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Submitted by emmakoslow on Sun, 01/12/2020 - 22:00

One of the most interesting and surprising things that I noticed in the 1st article, What is Digital Humanities and What is it Doing in English Departments, was the presence of Twitter and how it impacted the Digital Humanities Conference. It truly showed how modern the field of DH is and how it is spread around during this time period. Years ago, these fields and ideas would be spread slowly by going to conferences where the ideas would be exchanged. While the conferences are clearly still present, instead of slowly exchanging the ideas, it is spread through social media, making the thoughts and ideas of one person impact several thousand to millions of people within a second of posting. In the second article, I enjoyed the organization of the article as it explained the growth of Digital Humanities through several time periods. I never realized how the field started so many years ago as it is really seen as a recent idea. One inventive that I never thought about having importance to DH was the original Apple Macintosh and how text characters could be manipulated on it. This impact on the field is something I would love to study further in the course.

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Submitted by Shawna Sheperd on Sun, 01/12/2020 - 23:03

I find it interesting how finding the “correct definition” of digital humanities has been seemingly so collaborative but yet so confusing still. Even more interesting, is before a definition could be established the term itself must have been decided. It makes me wonder if the field / methods would have been restricted or marginalized if the term “digital humanities” was replaced by “ehumanities”  or “humanities computing.” Since these terms place more emphasis on the computer aspect and not the humanities realm, I believe the field itself could have been misconstrued or encompass soley a detached tech focus. Moreover, by reading the history of how digital humanities has become more popular has illuminated my knowledge of the extensive grounding and collaboration needed to create an online resource such as the Articles+ tool or Search and Find through the UNC online library.

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Submitted by dannych on Mon, 01/13/2020 - 14:55

I found reading up on the history of digital humanities especially illuminating. As a Gen Z student, the use of the internet in my education has dated back to my earliest memories -- I have no recollection of my family not having internet. In the past, I have taken courses in computer science and studied the history of computing from a technological/mathematical standpoint - but I never really considered the implication of each advance (i.e. the development of being able to use magnetic tape over punch cards, or the creation of a graphical user interface (GUI)). Learning how each technological advance allowed for advances in research within the humanities, especially English, was very interesting. I have always taken online archives and databases for granted when completing research, but the reality is even having online catalogs at a library is a major advancement, let alone the new digital archives that exist for original texts. I am incredibly grateful to have been born in a generation that can reap the fruit of the labor from previous scholars and benefit from the rich computer resources that exist now.

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Submitted by cschnitz on Mon, 01/13/2020 - 15:02

In reading these two articles, it seems that the major innovation digital humanities brought to the humanities is envisaging text(s) as workable and manipulable data, in both a quantitative and qualitative sense. The TEI, discussed in Hockey's article, provides a clear case study for this merging of quantitative and qualitative in texts, along with Kirschenbaum's assertion that "after numeric input, text has been by far the most tractable data type for computers to manipulate" (Kirschenbaum). Prior to the advent of the digital and digital humanities, was there analog scholarship or other, non-digital methods that looked at text as manipulable, quant/qual data? Is there a lineage where this viewpoint on texts comes from that predates the digital? 

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Submitted by phoebepowers on Mon, 01/13/2020 - 16:24

I was shocked to learn that the first case of computers assisting with an authorship occurred as early as 1962. Yet at this time the work required was far more laborious than it is today, including punch cards and magnetic tape as means of storing data.

One line in the second article that caught my eye was: "The personal computer is now a necessity of scholarly life." This implies that those without the necessary resources are unable to reside in the scholarly bubble. Especially with many areas not having access to broadband internet services, or delayed services, they are put at a disadvantage when it comes to the realm of digital scholarization. I would be interested in exploring this aspect of digital humanities: those without access to the same high-speed internet capabilities. 

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Submitted by delamb on Mon, 01/13/2020 - 18:07

I found it particularly noteworthy that both articles commented on the role of digital humanities tools and methods played in the development of the discipline itself. Kirchenbaum commented on the role of a Google search in the discipline coalescing around the terminology "digital humanities" in 2006. While I'm sure there was much more to the the evolving Google search algorithms even in 2006, text, metadata, and traffic volume all play significant roles in Google results rankings. I wouldn't necessarily have thought of Google as being a digital humanities tool, but Google' use of metadata and traffic volume in rankings — and that digital humanities scholars saw those as useful features in determining the most appropriate name for their discipline — clarified what digital humanities is to me in a striking way (as someone new to the subject). Kirchenbaum also made use of Wikipedia's detailed article authorship and version archiving to determine that the Wikipedia digital humanities article and definition had received contributions from some noteworthy scholars in the field, which was another example of digital humanists using tools of their field to recursively and iteratively define the field itself. Kirchenbaum and Hockey both noted the role of electronic communication like email and Twitter as a way for scholars to network and collaborate, generating text and metatext corpuses that can be studied using digital humanties methods.

Hockey's historical article added some enlightening context for me. I was aware of some early use of computing for quantitative text analysis in cryptography (Alan Turing and the British Bletchley Park team's cracking of the Nazi enigma codes in WWII), but I was unaware of Father Busa's work. I also hadn't considered pre-computing quantitative text analysis like the Shakespeare authorship work at the turn of the century as a forerunner of digital text analysis. Hockey's description of early work on text analysis, particularly lemmatization/relational databases/metatext, reminded me of Umberto Eco's novel Foucault's Pendulum from 1988, where a word processor with a possibly sentient program is a character, and his earlier The Name of the Rose, which involves text concordances in medieval manuscripts. I need to reread both!

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Submitted by Jane McGrail on Mon, 01/13/2020 - 18:12

Matthew Kirschenbaum writes that the digital humanities “is about a scholarship (and a pedagogy) that is publicly visible in ways to which we are generally unaccustomed” (Kirschenbaum). Similarly, Hockey describes how “humanities computing” can make scholarship accessible to “lifelong learners and the general public” (Hockey). To me, this is what is most exciting about digital humanities work—that it allows for the possibility of publicly engaged scholarship. More traditional modes of research often silo academic work as something esoteric, but the very nature of digital humanities work seems to be inherently public-facing because of the structure of the internet. This makes it more possible and more likely for academic work to engage communities that exist outside of the university.

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Submitted by ifsmith on Mon, 01/13/2020 - 19:54

These two articles describe the conceptual, intellectual, technological, and social life of digital humanities. Kischenbaum focuses more on the recent history of digital humanities as it has operated within the academy-- noting the development of institutes, centers, and conferences focused on DH. Kirschenbaum writes that "twitter has inscribed the digital humanities as a network typology." He articulates this typology as the linkages formed between scholars, texts, and meetings (such as the tweets surrounding the annual MLA conference). I often think of social media and its corresponding data as the most exciting part of current digital humanities and digital scholarship. I follow lots of geographers on twitter that help me learn about important and current conversations going on between scholars. I enjoyed reading the anecdote in this chapter about Brian Croxall and his experience as a contingent faculty member and his inability to attend the MLA conference due to lack of funds. His story made me consider the ways in which DH is democratizing because it facilitates conversation but could also be restrictive due to lack of access to software or computers. 

 

The history presented in the Hockey article revealed some of the important moments in digital humanities, including early text analysis, digitization efforts, and electronic mail. It is difficult to imagine the world before computers or before the internet. The history of digital humanities is temporally short but intense in content. The introduction of things like the word processor or the internet completely alter the makeup of the discipline. I would be interested to read an even more detailed history of key moments in DH since 2000. 

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Submitted by KaylaGibson on Tue, 01/14/2020 - 00:01

Kirschenbaum points out how "in the space of a little more than five years, digital humanities had gone from being a term of convenience used by a group of researchers who had already been working together for years to something like a movement." He also points out how Unsworth dates the term "Digital Humanities" back to 2001. Nearly 20 years, and we still don't have a solid definition for what exactly Digital Humanities is, but I think that's part of what makes the topic so interesting. It's an ever-changing, ever-adapting concept. To me, Digital Humanities takes classic ways and methods of thinking (and often presenting data) and says "how can we make this more accessible, more interactive, and more effective?" 

I've taken classes dating back over five years ago that had to do with Digital Humanities, and even now, I feel there's always something new to learn about it. That's what resonated the most to me about both of these pieces--Digital Humanities may have a relatively short history so far, but it certainly does not have a short or insignificant impact. 

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Submitted by natalie.p98 on Tue, 01/14/2020 - 01:09

I found the Kirschenbaum and Hockey readings to be both informative and interesting, and I believe they both helped to clarify and confirm some aspects of digital humanities for me.

While reading Kirschenbaum's work, I thought his overall questions were pretty fundamental. One, what is digital humanities? Two, what does it have to do with the field of English? The name "digital humanities" conveys a lot about the field, and I found it intriguing to read that other names were being considered, such as "humanities computing" and "ehumanities." I think naming and categorizing is pretty important regarding the identity of something, and I like that "digital humanities" was chosen since it carries many implications about the field; it implies that it's something that crosses into our digitized era and discusses/analyses the humanities in an intellectual way. Additionally, I like how Kirschenbaum begins talking about projects involving the digital humanities' relation to English, such as text analyses, citation networks, and searchable digital facsimiles, to investigate issues such as stylistics and linguistics in writing. As someone who studies both information science and English, I think the digital humanities contains overlap between the two fields, and I am really intrigued by the capabilities. 

While reading Hockey's work, the following quote stuck out to me: "One development far outstripped the impact of any other during the 1990s. This was the arrival of the Internet, but more especially the World Wide Web." She goes on to emphasize the creations of "archives" and publishing collections online, which is an amazing development within the digital humanities since it allows for the storage and revisiting of data, both of which are large emphases in the field of information science and library science. In addition, the wave of the World Wide Web brings a new foundation for collaboration amongst peers in the field. 

Ultimately, I enjoyed this introduction to the digital humanities, and I am sure this is just the beginning to the possibilities within the field.

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Submitted by Mason Laney on Tue, 01/14/2020 - 02:03

I find it interesting how much disagreement there is over what the term "digital humanities" even encompasses despite its increasing popularity. Kirschenbaum states, 

"Digital humanities, which began as a term of consensus among a relatively small group of researchers, is now backed on a growing number of campuses by a level of funding, infrastructure, and administrative commitments that would have been unthinkable even a decade ago. Even more recently, I would argue, the network effects of blogs and Twitter at a moment when the academy itself is facing massive and often wrenching changes linked to both new technologies and the changing political and economic landscape have led to the construction of “digital humanities” as a free-floating signifier, one that increasingly serves to focus the anxiety and even outrage of individual scholars over their own lack of agency amid the turmoil in their institutions and profession".

I wonder if the exploding popularity of DH will lead to an overhyping of the field by the public. This is pretty common in computer science, where terms such as "deep learning" and "blockchain" become buzzwords. The public then looks to these technologies expecting them to be the future of computing without really understanding the concepts or their limitations. I'm curious if DH will follow a similar path to becoming overly "trendy", where the public starts to view the field as the "savior of the humanities" and create a lot of buzz around DH without stopping to consider whether it is actually capable of solving the problems at hand.

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Submitted by mari98 on Tue, 01/14/2020 - 05:24

It’s very interesting to see how “digital humanities” came to be in the 1940’s and the meaning is still evolving to this day. Additionally, reading the history of “humanities computing” which started with a priest wanting to create a version of a dictionary had me surprised. 
 

Growing up in this era, I’ve seen how e-books and social media such as Instagram & Twitter came to be. It’s hard to think of twitter as part of digital humanities since the term digital humanities can be intertwined with education; yet, I cannot see Twitter as being part of my English education. It’s a way to blow off steam or it’s what I do when I’m bored. 
 

A quote which stuck out to me is “

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Submitted by natalyv on Tue, 01/14/2020 - 05:32

The first reading was helpful in discussing the origin of digital humanities as a term and a concept and the organizations that stem from the fields it encompasses in technology and the humanities and their use of modern technology like Twitter to promote and educate about their organizations and ideas in the humanities and how computing is useful in the field.

The author in the second article took a couple lines to place an emphasis on the word "humanist," adding to the growing and broad definition of digital humanities and the broad topics it includes like data analysis of humanities through constantly advancing technology that is consistently changing through the decades to create more opportunities and unite people and ideas.

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Submitted by mari98 on Tue, 01/14/2020 - 05:39

It’s very interesting to see how “digital humanities” came to be in the 1940’s and the meaning is still evolving to this day. Additionally, reading the history of “humanities computing” which started with a priest wanting to create a version of a dictionary had me surprised. 

Growing up in this era, I’ve seen how e-books and social media such as Instagram & Twitter came to be. It’s hard to think of twitter as part of digital humanities since the term digital humanities can be intertwined with education; yet, I cannot see Twitter as being part of my English education. It’s a way to blow off steam or it’s what I do when I’m bored. 

A quote I noticed was “the network effects of blogs and Twitter at a moment when the academy itself is facing massive and often wrenching changes linked to both new technologies and the changing political and economic landscape have led to the construction of “digital humanities” as a free-floating signifier, one that increasingly serves to focus the anxiety and even outrage of individual scholars over their own lack of agency amid the turmoil in their institutions and profession.” Blogs & social media have pushed people’s focus those who they follow instead on themselves. I’m part of this generation and have been guilty of this.

The introduction reading has given me a good foundation on digital humanities; however, I know it’s a complex subject.

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Submitted by alexmorton on Tue, 01/14/2020 - 06:11

I found the readings by Kirschenbaum and Hockey to be very interesting and effective in elaborating on what exactly the “digital humanities” are and how it has become more prevalent.

Kirschenbaum describes digital humanities as a “social undertaking,” which clearly asserts a main point of the field. One of the main questions I had about digital humanities was what exactly made it different from a more accepted or perceivably concrete field like computer science. Presentation and perception are key aspects of digital humanities. If something doesn’t instill fascination or enhance understanding, it is not an effective mode of communication. This is an idea that digital humanities encompass, evidenced by the use of Twitter in conferences.

Hockey’s piece fascinated me because it made me evaluate my own perceptions about forms of analysis over time. To me, digital humanities seems very fluid. It applies to things like cryptography, English texts, and modern technology, while seemingly maintaining a sort of ongoing adaptation. 

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