A Short Guide To The Digital - Humanities: Questions & Answers
A Short Guide To The Digital - Humanities: Questions & Answers
A Short Guide To The Digital - Humanities: Questions & Answers
specifications
how to evaluate digital scholarship
project-based scholarship
core competencies in processes and methods
learning outcomes for the digital humanities
creating advocacy
QUESTIONS & ANSWERS 1 What defines the Digital Humanities now?
FUNDAMENTALS World War II, but after the advent of personal com-
puting, the World Wide Web, mobile communication,
and social media, the digital revolution entered a
SG 2 SG What is the Digital Humanities?
new phase, giving rise to a vastly expanded, global-
Digital Humanities refers to new modes of scholar- ized public sphere and to transformed possibilities
ship and institutional units for collaborative, trans- for knowledge creation and dissemination.
disciplinary, and computationally engaged research, Building on the first generation of computational
teaching, and publication. humanities work, more recent Digital Humanities
Digital Humanities is less a unified field than an activity seeks to revitalize liberal arts traditions
array of convergent practices that explore a universe in the electronically inflected language of the 21st
in which print is no longer the primary medium in century: a language in which, uprooted from its long-
which knowledge is produced and disseminated. standing paper support, text is increasingly wedded
Digital tools, techniques, and media have to still and moving images as well as to sound, and
expanded traditional concepts of knowledge in the supports have become increasingly mobile, open,
arts, humanities and social sciences, but Digital and extensible.
Humanities is not solely “about” the digital (in the And the notion of the primacy of text itself is
sense of limiting its scope to the study of digital being challenged. Whereas the initial waves of com-
culture). Nor is Digital Humanities only “about” the putational humanities concentrated on everything
humanities as traditionally understood since it ar- from word frequency studies and textual analysis
gues for a remapping of traditional practices. Rather, (classification systems, mark-up, encoding) to
Digital Humanities is defined by the opportunities hypertext editing and textual database construction,
and challenges that arise from the conjunction of the contemporary Digital Humanities marks a move
term digital with the term humanities to form a new beyond a privileging of the textual, emphasizing
collective singular. graphical methods of knowledge production and
The opportunities include redrawing the boundary organization, design as an integral component of re-
lines among the humanities, the social sciences, search, transmedia crisscrossings, and an expanded
the arts, and the natural sciences; expanding the concept of the sensorium of humanistic knowledge.
audience and social impact of scholarship in the It is also characterized by an intensified focus on the
humanities; developing new forms of inquiry and building of transferrable tools, environments, and
knowledge production and reinvigorating ones that platforms for collaborative scholarly work and by
have fallen by the wayside; training future genera- an emphasis upon curation as a defining feature of
tions of humanists through hands-on, project-based scholarly practice.
learning as a complement to classroom-based learn-
ing; and developing practices that expand the scope, What isn’t the Digital Humanities?
enhance the quality, and increase the visibility of
humanistic research. The mere use of digital tools for the purpose of
The challenges include addressing fundamental humanistic research and communication does not
questions such as: How can skills traditionally used qualify as Digital Humanities. Nor, as already noted,
in the humanities be reshaped in multimedia terms? is Digital Humanities to be understood as the study
How and by whom will the contours of cultural and of digital artifacts, new media, or contemporary
historical memory be defined in the digital era? culture in place of physical artifacts, old media, or
How might practices such as digital storytelling historical culture.
coincide with or diverge from oral or print-based On the contrary, Digital Humanities understands
storytelling? What is the place of humanitas in a its object of study as the entire human record, from
networked world? prehistory to the present. This is why fields such as
classics and archaeology have played just as impor-
tant a role in the development of Digital Humanities
as has, for example, media studies. This is also why
some of the major sectors of Digital Humanities
research extend outside the traditional core of the
humanities to embrace quantitative methods from
the social and natural sciences as well as techniques
and modes of thinking from the arts.
specifications
SPECIFICATION 2 a content-driven project and how do these intersect?
Project-Based Scholarship
How can the intellectual labor of the design and develop-
ment of the “tool” be assessed in tandem with the
“content”? To what extent are they inextricable and why?
Methods
SG 10 SG Project-based scholarship exemplifies
Does the project have a thesis or guiding methodo-
contemporary Digital Humanities prin- logical principle? How did the digital platform allow
ciples. It differs from traditional scholarly it to be explored, tested, argued, demonstrated, or
publication in being team-based, dis- even refuted?
tributed in its production and outcome,
dependent on networked resources Born digital and/or digitized artifact
(technical and/or administrative), and in Digital projects often combine analog materials that
have been scanned or digitized and elements that
being iterative and ongoing, rather than
are born digital—analysis, research, processing, or
fixed or final, in its outcome. It necessar- newly authored files. Elements of information structure
ily involves many dimensions of concep- are also born digital. How are each of these elements
tion, design, coordination, and resource understood and what role do they play in the
use that build extra layers of complexity overall project?
specifications
SPECIFICATION 3 Metadata standards
Core Competencies in What process of metadata selection was used and how
While the most visible intellectual element is usually Long-term plans for sustainability can include migra-
the content, it is important to recognize that Digital tion of the project into an institutional repository, or
Humanities projects present arguments and knowledge archiving on a server or paid service provider, or
experiments in many different ways, often contribut- creation of a revenue stream and business model for
ing to the creation of new knowledge through complex its ongoing support and maintenance. Collaboration
interactions, visualizations, data and data structures, with institutional entities, particularly libraries and
and even code. Digital Humanities projects are not just data repositories, will be necessary for preserving data
about the content (although this is often primary), created for and by a Digital Humanities project. Can
but also about the design of multiple levels of the data be “outputted” easily from the project and
knowledge and argument from the operations on the archived in standard formats that are widely readable?
back-end database to the front-end access points of a What kind of data management plan has been created
user interface. and how will it be implemented? Are there any privacy
or security concerns that need to be addressed?
Cross-cultural communication
Has consideration been given to the ways in which the
design of the project will work cross-culturally? Is it
meant to engage communities whose language and/or
cultural orientation will be varied?
Generative imagination
Is the project generative and will it continue to create
new content, dialogue, debate, and engagement, or is
it largely a packaged repository of content meant to be
viewed and used but not altered through contributions
or extensions? Both of these are worthwhile and serve
different needs, audiences, and intellectual goals.
specifications
SPECIFICATION 4 Develop critical savvy for assessing sources
Digital Humanities
Judging the reliability of information and knowledge
presented in a digital environment requires skills of
discernment that examine the source, the authority,
and the legitimacy of the digital material. With regard
SG 14 SG While core assessment standards re- to data, this means examining how they were obtained,
main continuous with those of traditional marked-up, stored, and variously made accessible to
classroom-based humanities pedagogy, end-users.
the Digital Humanities recognizes the
importance of additional outcomes Ability to use design critically
produced by hands-on, experiential, and Understand the importance of knowledge design in
project-based learning through doing. communication, project development, and long-term
preservation of digital data in ways that go beyond
Digital Humanities pedagogy empha- competence to a critical understanding of tools, their
sizes teamwork and implies an increased uses and limitations. Develop ability to use computa-
role for peer assessment, as well as at- tional design thinking to produce forms of argument
tention to a widened set of skills beyond and expressions of interpretation.
text-based critical thinking and commu-
nication. Outcomes emphasize the ability Ability to assess information and information
technologies critically
to think critically with digital methods to
Interrogate digital, visual, and multi-modal information
formulate projects that have humanities
as evidence and critique its formation and validity.
questions at their core. Among the learn- Critique the digital features of publications for
ing outcomes for the Digital Humanities, a) scholarly relevance, b) best practices (e.g., online
we prioritize the following: footnoting and citation, transparency of sources and
data), c) attribution, d) authority and argumentative
rigor. Understand and critique the epistemologies,
worldviews, and structuring assumptions built into
Ability to integrate digitally driven research digital platforms, technologies, visualizations, and even
goals, methods, and media with discipline- computational languages.
specific inquiry
Acquire and demonstrate new fluencies from working Ability to work collaboratively
within and navigating across various information plat-
Think across disciplines, media, and methodologies on
forms to conceptualize and carry out discipline-specific
multi-authored research projects, project proposals,
research. In practice, this means bringing together the
reports, and presentations aimed at both academic and
traditional tools of humanistic thinking (interpreta-
nonacademic communities. Work in teams and par-
tion and critique, historical perspective, comparative
ticipate in peer assessment. Acquire knowledge of the
cultural and social analysis, contextualization, archival
development life cycle of a Digital Humanities project
research) with the tools of computational thinking
and the ability to understand the needs and priorities
(information design, statistical analysis, geographic
of each phase of development. Meet aggressive dead-
information systems, database creation, and com-
lines and produce completed, fully functional digital
puter graphics) to formulate, interpret, and analyze a
prototypes, products, research tools, and publications.
humanities-based research problem.
Identify and assess specific contributions and roles in
collaborative projects for the purposes of peer review
Ability to understand, analyze, and use data and intellectual credit.
Demonstrate ability to synthesize data from multiple
sources and harness multi-modal and multimedia
technologies to produce digital arguments. Create
capacity to formulate a research problem or question
that lends itself to a computational approach. Develop
ability to analyze problems by applying digital methods
to humanities-based data and to interpret the results
of digital analysis and computationally produced out-
comes in a critically significant way.
Creating Advocacy All media conceal as well as reveal the rules according
to which they include certain kinds of expressions and
prevent others. What is possible in any given digital
space or project and what is not? We must be reflexive,
dialectical thinkers aware that any “solution” always
Among its other activities, digital schol- prevents certain questions and problems from arising, SG SG 15
arship asserts the possibility of changed while privileging the very ones to which it is the answer.
relations between consumers and pro- All technologies are coercive in some respect, and
many have become so naturalized that we no longer
ducers of cultural work. Listed here is a
consider them coercive but rather self-evident and
set of considerations for addressing the necessary. It is up to digital humanists to denaturalize
cultural significance of humanities work, these technologies and create fissures for new, imagi-
of transforming individuals into prosum- native possibilities to come about.
ers with critical insight into the workings
of digital platforms. It also contains a Thinking beyond the ideologies of templates
handful of crucial points on which to ad- and structured discourse
vocate for Digital Humanities as a field. How do we read the embodiment of power dynamics
and relations in the organization of structured spaces
and processes? The digital environment structures its
Value of the cultural record ideological expression in the graphical interfaces, the
Humanistic scholarship is engaged with the production, data types, the database relations, as well as in the
preservation, and interpretation of the cultural record. content of each project. Epistemological defamiliariza-
Gauging the value of legacy materials and vetting the tion—the “making strange”—is an important feature of
value of contemporary contributions is essential. In modern critical thought. The force of delight, surprise,
what ways does the project contribute to the cultural and even alienation in the face of innovative inventions
record (through preservation of materials, through are the enlightening elements of contemporary imagi-
interactions among contributors, through modes of native thought. What can be shown to wake us from our
public engagement, and so forth)? passive consumption? And how do new ways of know-
ing, engaging, and designing become the very means
Humanistic values/cultural significance and to provoke inquiry, generate thought, deepen values,
legitimacy and contribute to the cultural record of our species?
specifications
The Short Guide is an open pdf excerpt from Digital_Humanities, by Anne Burdick, Johanna
Drucker, Peter Lunenfeld, Todd Presner, Jeffrey Schnapp, MIT Press, 2012, pp. 121–136.