What is Digital Humanities?
Digital: of, relating to, or utilizing devices constructed or working by the methods or principals of electronics (Merriam Webster Dictionary).
Humanities: the branches of learning that investigate human constructs and concerns as opposed to natural processes and social relations (Merriam Webster Dictionary).
While both digital and humanities each have a set definition of what they mean, when you put the two together, it is hard to determine the true meaning. There are so many levels of complexity and discussions to be had about what digital humanities really is. When it comes down to wanting a true meaning, it can be brought to the ever-changing world of technology and new innovations. New digital resources allow for intellectuals to engage, analyze, and interpret humanities in a new way. It allows for open-ended conversations with one another all over the world to help each other's ideas and thoughts grow into further understood topics.
Before doing any reading for this course, I had no idea what digital humanities was even about, so my mind and opinions on the topic were open to many changes and persuasions on what this is all about. Johanna Drucker, the author of our textbook, has her own definition of digital humanities and it is as follows. "Digital humanities work is done at the intersection of computational methods and humanities materials". She then goes on to discuss the different components of the concept and what it's made of when you break it down. This includes having materials such as text, images, media, and anything that can be further researched and understood. The materials are then processed by using data mining or statistical analysis. Lastly, once the research and analysis are completed, all the information is worked into a presentation to be put out to whoever is receiving the message. An example of the whole digital humanities process can be seen in participating in these blogs. We started by receiving a textbook, a manifesto about digital humanities, and a website with unlimited amounts of definitions about the concept. From there we processed all of the information and gathered our thoughts to analyze our own opinions. Lastly, all of our thoughts were written down into an online blogging platform that is shared with not only our peers but as well as the public.
I still may not have a firm grasp as to what digital humanities truly is, but knowing that by completing this blog, I have already begun to understand the process of how to get there. Learning about a broad concept such as this is more interesting than having set definitions in front of you because it allows for endless conversations, debates, and personal opinions.
I feel like I also don't have a true meaning of digital humanities yet. It's a very large concept that covers an array of Ideas. The idea of datafication seems like a very important concept we can see that it's the phenomenon of artifacts which includes numbers and text. This data is essential for people who are studying humanities.
ReplyDeleteI think that's just what y'all are doing here, like you said, in the creation of the blogs: "open-ended conversations with one another all over the world to help each other's ideas and thoughts grow into further understood topics." This is how we find terms and definitions to agree on. Here's to more "endless conversations, debates, and personal opinions" this semester!
ReplyDeleteFrom Victoria: Though it's kinda hard to digest, a good idea is adding the
ReplyDeletedictionary definition of DH! It will be helpful for some people.
But for me on the other hand, I’d need it in more simple
terms. It’s also completely fine not to fully understand all that DH
incumpasses, it's a very complex and broad umbrella term. I also really love the addition of this quote: “Digital Humanities is the interaction, interrelation, and intersection
of technology, culture, language, and literature.” - Edmond
Chang