The phrase digital humanities gets thrown around on college campuses a lot these days. It’s the kind of thing that is creating a lot of excitement and debate. And not just for professors, either: journalists are increasingly interested in the field as well.
But what is it, exactly?
The Office for the Digital Humanities at the National Endowment for the Humanities describes it this way:
In a short period of time, digital technology has changed our world. The ways we read, write, learn, communicate, and play have fundamentally changed due to the advent of networked digital technologies. These changes are being addressed in fascinating ways by scholars from across the humanities, often working in collaboration with scientists, librarians, museum staff, and members of the public.
How that works is much clearer when you see some examples.
Let’s say, for instance, that we wanted to give you the quick history of how digital humanities developed, and then give our take on what effect that’s having on the world. In a traditional newspaper or humanities journal, we’d write a series of paragraphs explaining those developments. You’d read them in order and hopefully come away with a better understanding.
But this isn’t a traditional newspaper listen. You’re reading this article on some kind of digital device that’s connected to the Internet, and thus that is connected to millions of other devices, databases, resources, and more. listen Those who are interested in the digital humanities are interested in how you can use that fact to change the way you tell a story, to improve our understanding of the issues, and even to change what questions you can ask—all by using digital technologies alongside the written word. listen
In some cases, that’s just about presenting information in a different way—which you might have gathered from watching videos that are interspersed in news articles nowadays, or if you’ve been clicking the audio links throughout this article. Those could provide additional context, the same information in a different way, or could change the experience of reading the article. listen
Think about two different examples. In talking about the digital humanities, we might want to show you that it’s very popular, and that lots of people are studying it. One way of showing that—rather than just telling you—is to use this digital platform to display the different work happening in an easy-to-comprehend way. Like, say, a map:
Or we might want to show how the field has grown over time, in which case a timeline might be a better fit.
Maps and timelines and audio clips are just the tip of the iceberg, though. As those examples showed, part of digital humanities work is using computational methods to analyze issues, or bringing that kind of computer science skill to other areas. Instead of explaining what you’ll see during the eclipse, Vox used programming, geolocation tools, and digital platforms to make an interactive article where you can find out.
As these tools and skills develop more, digital humanities advocates hope that they can continue to open up new paths, new questions, and even better answers.