‘Dropping the Digital’ – Jentery Sayers

Jentery Sayers’ contribution to Debates in the Digital Humanities 2016 (DDH) performs a two-pronged critique of both the DH movement as a whole, as well as notable articles from DDH 2012, utilising an innovative and subject-specific method of analysis known as Ruination. Such an approach – reflective of the Digital Humanities’ core principles both in method and style – allows Sayers to examine the work of his peers within the broader context of the discipline, as well as recontextualising the terminology used therein as a means of exploring entirely new avenues of reasoning and reflecting on the proximity of the Digital Humanities to their traditional ‘analogue’ counterpart. Although the apparent simplicity of the technique (isolating the term ‘digital’ and removing it from a highlighted text) may appear trivial, it reflects on the data-driven nature of the Digital Humanities by adopting an immersive approach to their analysis, a notion highlighted by Sayers’ eschewal of subheadings in favour of code strings.

‘Ruinations point to possible trajectories without fully illuminating them, and they insinuate that the stuff of digital humanities has been insufficiently identified and described. They also underscore how digital humanities may differ from other strains of humanities and—most important—ask what else digital humanities could be, or should do, or might at least consider.’

Beyond the engaging reflexivity between style and method, Sayers’ ‘ruining’ of such excerpts proves to be fruitful from the get-go. In dropping the term ‘digital’, the reader is immediately confronted with a palpable anxiety stemming from having to confront the often undefined (or, at the very least, not coherently explored) tagline of the Digital Humanities as a whole. Despite the general agreement that the field benefits from a high level of interdisciplinarity, this may come at the cost of entirely dislocating its various branches, if they are not persistently re-examined in light of their origins and future trajectories. Does it stand up to scrutiny when fragmented, and is the movement progressing along a productive route? Or is it simply stagnating, exploring the same avenues as the ‘analogue’ humanities, but simply with a zany rebranding?

In answering this question, Sayers homes in on Alexis Lothian and Jayna Brown’s Social Text, specifically their discussion of speculation as a means of experimenting with new possibilities, running counter to the juxtaposition of ‘speculation’ as a phenomenon of failing markets and the waning economic conditions they produce. His reading is in this case quite apt as far as the interdisciplinarity of the Digital Humanities is concerned: an ever-evolving plane for the future of the movement is capable of avoiding certain pitfalls and producing quality debate within it. Maintaining a reference point of antecedent experiments within the humanities more broadly, as well as reflecting on the various institutions which gird progress, is critical for maintaining this speculative quality.

Such speculation as to the potential futures of the Digital Humanities – supported by a fragmentation of their disciplinary code – is oddly reminiscent of hyperstition, a neologism of ‘hyper’ and ‘superstition’, coined by Warwick University’s Cybernetic Culture Research Unit and used to describe the potential of specific information to shape the realities of its own reception when grounded in a reality, be that pop-cultural, religious, or economic.[1] Hyperstition is, as Nick Land describes, ‘…a positive feedback circuit including culture as a component. It can be defined as the experimental (techno-)science of self-fulfilling prophecies. Superstitions are merely false beliefs, but hyperstitions – by their very existence as ideas – function causally to bring about their own reality’. [2] Although criticised for its misappropriation of technical terminology in service of lending an appearance of complexity to the term (a-la Alan Sokal), the term nonetheless gels with Sayers’ analysis of instrumentalism as a term which describes the use of ‘instruments’ to shape prospective outcomes within the field of technology studies[3]:

‘…an instrument is treated naively or enthusiastically, as a mere vehicle for unambiguously converting input into output. By extension, the instrument determines cultural change. It is a positivist agent of progress that gains authority over time.’

Fundamentally, Sayers’ use of Ruination as a critical tool is symbolically apt as well as being effective where analysis is concerned. As we build on the foundations of the Digital Humanities, we persistently reflect on the trajectories our work takes. Instead of being focussed entirely on merely the potential for new possibilities, it is critical to ‘ruin’ that which we already know, thereby exposing inherent faults, assumptions, or contrastingly, new paths and avenues for further development and experimentation. Such a focus on ruination will allow us, as digital humanists, to further the potentials of the field, whilst simultaneously keeping in view the ruins of institutions, practices, and ideologies which may impede such progress.

[1] A useful example here may be the introduction of the term ‘cyberspace’ into popular media through William Gibson’s 1982 short story Burning Chrome. The term’s usage as it enters the mainstream is permanently reflective of the genre’s precepts, thereby determining the reality and context of the field to which is applied.

[2]Carsens, Delphi. Interview with Nick Land. Orphandrift, 2009. https://www.orphandriftarchive.com/articles/hyperstition-an-introduction/

[3] See: Shalaginov, Denis, and Armen Aramyan. “From Anti-Oedipus to Anti-Hype: A Critique of Hyperstition.” Logos (Moscow, Russia) 30, no. 5 (2020): 23–36. Unfortunately the text is in Russian, but if you are interested I would be more than happy to summarise it in more detail and translate some of the key points!

Works Cited

Delphi Carsens. Interview with Nick Land. Orphandrift, 2009. https://www.orphandriftarchive.com/articles/hyperstition-an-introduction/

Denis Shalaginov, and Armen Aramyan. “From Anti-Oedipus to Anti-Hype: A Critique of Hyperstition.” Logos (Moscow, Russia) 30, no. 5 (2020): 23–36.

Jentery Sayers. “Dropping the Digital”. In Debates in the Digital Humanities, 2016. https://dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/read/untitled/section/f29056aa-c434-4322-a185-009e0f7e3a9d#ch

In this article,  Tara McPherson asks the very pertinent question, ‘Why are the digital humanities so white?’, considering the histories of race and computation; however, McPherson argues for a dialogic relationship between these histories, identifying parallels between them, and equally asking, ‘why American studies is not more digital’ and the potential benefits of this.

By analysing the designs of our technological systems that emerged in post-World War II, McPherson is able to consider how this computational culture has affected the shape of our discussions surrounding race. McPherson draws parallels between the digital world and the social world, focusing initially on the 1960s within the US, which saw the creation of operating systems such as MULTICS and subsequently UNIX, and which coincided with the civil rights movement. Despite the seeming lack of interrelatedness between the two histories, McPherson argues how they intertwine with and co-constitute one another.

This reading draws upon some of the questions raised in our discussions last week, regarding the appropriateness of certain digital artefacts in rendering quite sensitive topics, such as that of slavery. Similarly, McPherson argues how technologies from XML to databases are not ‘neutral tools’ and we need to be aware of how these origins in the digital can have huge ramifications in our social world, impacting the organisation of knowledge production that operating systems such as UNIX help to disseminate across the world.

Essentially, McPherson conveys how the racial organising principles that governed social relations in the United States at this time are reflected at the level of the technological organisation of knowledge; McPherson identifies an ‘epistemological shift’ that is relevant to both the digital and social world. Racial organising principles had material effects, as there was a tendency within the US to increasingly isolate urban black poor communities, for example in the cases of Detroit and New Orleans, and to subsequently neglect these cities. Furthermore, this material element is reflected rhetorically by the emergence of a ‘race-blind’ rhetoric, marking a shift from overt to more covert modes of racism, as indicated by the discourse of liberal ‘color blindness’. Thus, the organising principles of social relations essentially work to partition race off, to contain it; a similar logic is reflected in the structures of digital computation.

McPherson uses ‘lenticular logics’ as an analogy for the racial paradigms in the post-war era, delineating a lenticular way of organising the world; ‘A lenticular logic is a covert racial logic, a logic for the post-civil rights era’ . McPherson subsequently relates this to the design philosophies and cultures of computation noted in operating systems such as UNIX; the lenticular logic is paralleled with the ‘Rule of Modularity’ at UNIX. This structure for coding mimics the basic elements of the lenticular approach to the world, working to break a system into varying degrees of interdependence and to hide the complexity of each part behind an abstraction and interface (much like covert racism). This replicates the worldview that is evident in the separation and discarding of certain cities with high black populations in a way that doesn’t effect the ‘whole’.

McPherson’s analysis raises important questions that we must consider for the future, for we are already complicit in these modes of computation and forms of knowledge production, ways of envisioning and structuring the world around us. These principles of modularity are equally evident in the overspecialisation of universities over time. Thus, an increasingly interdisciplinary approach is paramount, as we need to develop shared languages and practices to bring together these two seemingly disparate fields, for computers and cultures are deeply intertwined whether we are consciously aware of it or not.

Bibliography:

McPherson, Tara. ‘“Chapter 9: Why Are the Digital Humanities So White? Or Thinking the Histories of Race and Computation”’. Debates in the Digital Humanities, https://dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/read/untitled-88c11800-9446-469b-a3be-3fdb36bfbd1e/section/20df8acd-9ab9-4f35-8a5d-e91aa5f4a0ea#ch09. Accessed 25 Jan. 2022.

Why We Must Read the Code: The Science Wars, Episode IV
Mark C. Marino

Gosh, what an interesting chapter! Marino brings to light a whole practice, Code Critical Studies, that I had never heard about. Before reading this chapter, I do not think I had given code much thought (only a little due to media). To explain his argument Marino uses real-life examples in which code has diverged from social standards/discourse.

I just want to go into further detail about code diverging from social standards because think that is an unexpected line that encapsulates a lot of the Science Wars and what Marino is trying to break down. Do you expect code to fit into a social standard? Should it? Initially, when I started reading the chapter and making notes, I asked myself those questions and held no opinion. However, as Marino went further into detail, elaborating on the problem of “yellowgirl” code, Annakournikova Worm and adding more instances of code’s social influence I started to think about code in my life. Then obviously It clicked into place, the role social media algorithms have on me is Code Critical Studies. The action of googling a sweater then 20 ads popping up on Instagram is something I am very familiar with. Someone out there has designed a code with the intent of reading people’s search actions and using that data to structure media ads. This breakdown of where code comes from, what is its intention, what’s its social influence and how it operated is what CCS aims to do. All code is designed, and Marino uses an example of a piece of code they initially assumed completely random until further investigation proved that it was not.

I’m just going to quote Marino, here to support my above explanation:
“By treating code as something that is not an inevitable, natural, or purely objective structure, it moves beyond the progress narrative of pragmatics, asking what forces, social and material, shaped the development of the code.”

I suppose that completely illustrates the importance of CCS – because if someone is behind the root of any code, then it can never be apolitical, right?

I want to bring in the whole Cambridge Analytica scandal. Now, this is obviously a huge example of how code is created by people and used to influence others, it is the exact opposite of apolitical. This chapter was written before the Cambridge Analytica scandal, but it is a good example of why code ethics is important and where humanities and code meet. Code does not just live in the programming world, it has to be studied in the humanities because it affects people and people’s daily lives.

I also just wanted to mention how amazed I was at this transborder immigrant tool Code can be seen as a poetic work – transborder immigrant tool. I thought this was great – I definitely still do not understand how it works, but I am impressed. It is a mobile tool that guides individuals crossing the U.S/Mexico border to any water points nearby. It also provides poetry for emotional support. “The project was never distributed to its intended users,” but “it still succeeded in confounding systems of political control, creating a call to action that resonated internationally, and using poetry to “dissolve” the US-Mexico border.” This was a good example to illustrate how code is political and the positive role it can have on people’s lives.

Works Citied 

Marino, Mark C. “13. Why We Must Read the Code: The Science Wars, Episode IV.” Debates in the Digital Humanities 2016. https://dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/read/untitled/section/879bc64b-93ba-4d9a-9678-9a7239fc41e4#ch13. Accessed 21 Jan. 2022.

Transborder Immigrant Tool | Net Art Anthology. https://anthology.rhizome.org/transborder-immigrant-tool. Accessed 25 Jan. 2022.

The Crunk Feminist Collective are a community of women of colour, who believe that collectivity is the answer to the limitations of the individual’s ability to live and thrive. Working together as a group of women to tackle the hardships of daily life, these women have created a strong online and offline community that ensures the emotional, spiritual and financial support of the members of the community. They believe that self-care should be used as a preface to their activism because only once a community is made up of strong individuals, can it have an impact on society at large. They make an important point that the online community can only really thrive if it is supported by an offline one, a physical community that can offer emotional support, childcare and food. Therefore, the women of the CFC congregate regularly to share support and advice with each other, be it about business or relationship advice, the CFC provide a support network of women who hold space for one another.

The CFC recognise the importance of technology as a means to reach people en masse, giving a widespread group of women the opportunity to become a part of the network. They hold google hangouts and strategy sessions to design game plans for figuring out work situations. They also blog and publicise their love for each other using their online site. They show their care for each other online by moderating the comment sections of especially contentious blog posts, ensuring that there is constant communication between members of the group. Sometimes they start a thread that simple poses the statement ‘self-care is’, to which the members of the feminist group respond and add suggestions if they feel the self-care plan offered is insufficient. Occasionally, the group disengage from the digital space altogether when it is required for their self-care.

Recognising the need to engage in an expanded cultural conversation, the Digital Humanities allows the group to use technology to ream and create carefully designed networks where they can live and thrive. The collaborative approach this group has to self-care and feminism correlates with the collectivism required in DH. The importance of working collaboratively to create something more significant than that would be created by a singular person is something that the CFC and DH have in common.

Digital Humanists Matthew Battles and Michael Maizels conjecture that ‘the beginnings of modern art history, as a field, are inseparable from the technology—photography—that made such interobject comparisons possible’. Comparison is the key concept here; the ability to view two or more pieces of artwork in direct conjunction to one another can bring to light hugely interesting details which may not have been observed if the pieces had been seen in isolation. Interestingly, the period in which modern art history emerged is the same period in which the modern museum began to take shape: the nineteenth century. The early museum allowed for objects of historical or aesthetic significance to be seen in direct conjunction to one another by the public, whereas objects of such value had previously been designated only for the wealthy to purchase and display in their homes. Today, the museum’s purpose has developed, but still rests on the concept that it is beneficial for the public to be able to access and explore their own cultural heritage. With the advance of technology, the digitisation of museum collections is now a relative commonplace. National organisations and institutions such as The British Museum, The V&A, The British Library, and Royal Collection Trust all have significant portions of their collections available to view and explore online, often with accompanying data about the object’s location, condition, and accession or catalogue number, which could not be derived from looking at the physical object itself in a museum setting. At what point, then, is the physical artefact not enough? Is the digitisation of museum collections the future of how we interact with our cultural heritage? 

There are undoubtedly huge benefits to the digitisation of museum collections, of which the most important is accessibility. Making objects available to view online in high quality is not only an excellent way to facilitate research and interest in these objects for anyone with an internet connection, but it also opens up heritage to a much wider audience, particularly those of a younger demographic. Digitisation also makes the logistics of cataloguing and archiving much easier, photographs can be used as ‘surrogate objects’, as Battles and Maizels point out, which allows collections to be compared, organised, and sorted without undue risk to the objects themselves. Digital cataloging can also allow the object to be viewed in much greater detail than it could ever be with the naked eye, furthermore, photography allows for an object to be frozen at a point in its lifetime, after which damage or degeneration may occur. Thus, the digital version preserves the object in its present state, allowing it to be viewed in its superior condition, even after it may have deteriorated.

The benefits of digitisation are clear, but that does not mean there are no downsides. A digitised artwork has no sense of scale or physical impression. In many instances, seeing  a particular painting hung on a wall, displayed as it was likely intended to be seen by the artists, has the emotional or aesthetic effect that art is often intended to bring about. Furthermore, there are some art works – performance art or site specific art for example – which cannot be digitised. Additionally, the online archive, though vast and easy to navigate, must ultimately be maintained at its source, and the rapid speed of technological development may mean that without attendance, digital archives will cease to function at all. Finally, recent developments in conservation technology have allowed new insights into artworks and the artistic processes used to create them. The x-raying of paintings for example, can reveal the layers of paint used, details of the object’s construction, lines which were erased from the final piece, and artists marks invisible under normal conditions. Similar processes have been undertaken for historic clothing as well as paintings, as conducted at the V&A. The digitisation of collections has its benefits then, but it cannot detract from the essential place of the physical object in the museum collection.

There are instances, however, of the digital and the physical being brought together to work to the benefit of the museum in unison, without one detracting from the other. The metaLAB object map instillation in the Lightbox Gallery at Harvard Museum aimed to tackle this problem in which the digitised item, while fascinating and valuable, is no substitute for the original. Through a remote controlled interface, viewers could scroll through nearly all the objects in the museums collection, by clicking on a single object they could view all the associated raw code that comes with that object’s digital self, including information such as the number of page views for that object, the number of times it has been exhibited, and its physical location in the museum itself. Ming Tu, the museum’s technology fellow at the time, said: “We want to make this precious data accessible, meaningful, and playful to our visitors.” The idea of play is a huge draw for museums today. In a world where technology can bring us media in seconds and social app algorithms analyse our likes and dislikes to show us exactly what we want to see, holding a visitor’s attention in a museum setting is proving increasingly difficult. The metaLAB project allows visitors to explore the collection in digital and physical form, facilitating engagement in the physical collection as well as acting as an art instillation in and of itself: the digital archive has many uses.

So, is the digital museum the future? Probably not. While digitisation has revolutionised the way museums view, store, and navigate their collections, the physical object should, and likely shall, remain king. That being said, not all museum have the budget for such digital undertakings and many are at risk of disappearing altogether due to lack of visitors and funding. While digital cataloguing in the small scale is possible, the vast public databases linked at the start of this post are impossible for all museums to achieve, and as such, many collections remain hidden. Just as artworks in the pre-museum environment remained accessible only to the wealthy, digitisation of artworks is not something which is available to all.

Works Cited:

Springing to Light, Harvard Museum.,15 May 2015, [Accessed: 24th January 2022]

Matthew Battles and Michael Maizels, ‘Collections and/of Data: Art History and the Art Museum in DH Mode’ in Debates in the Digital Humanities 2016.

What are the Digital Humanities?

Digital Humanities (DH) appear as a unifying discipline which draws together rapidly developing elements of traditional academia, modernisation of formal media, and their various interdisciplinary interactions as these manifest in terms of data and technology. Evolving from earlier iterations of computer technology – embodied in Father Roberto Busa’s use of punchcards in the 1950’s to catalogue the works of Thomas Aquinas – the field of DH has expanded to incorporate a multitude of disciplines and approaches, all linked through a shared pursuit of improving the quality and breadth of research and data.

The William Blake Archive

One such example of DH’s success is the William Blake Archive (WBA), which claims to comprise the most exhaustive and high quality collection of the poet’s graphic and written work. It purports to maintain a a level of photorealism and accuracy which cannot be found in even the most exhaustive print books. The archive uses an intricate approach to data, takes advantage of a wide network of museums and universities, and is supported by a long list of contributors working in various capacities.

Each image in the WBA contains metadata, which comprises its Image Information record. The II record combines technical data recorded in the Image Production record (a form detailing information on the digitisation of each separate image, kept as a hard copy) with bibliographic documentation of the image, with additional information relating specifically to provenance, current location, an the institution where it resides. The WBA uses metadata in a unique way, by inserting the above information into the portion of each image file reserved for metadata, thereby ensuring that relevant information travels with it, even when it is downloaded and shared. This also means that contributors to the archive must be especially attentive when registering such data, as this unique use of metadata means that errors in its cataloguing are difficult to remedy.

This is indeed an incredible feat, considering the sheer volume of images alone, and by extension the volume of data that must be parsed, organised, and amended for each image. Furthermore, the extensive list of contributors to the archive may pose a problem when it comes to processing this data and ensuring its veracity. However, the approach of the archive is deliberately geared towards ensuring that such problems are avoided, whilst maintaining the core principles of DH. As noted by Lauren Klein in Digital Humanities: The Expanded Field (2016), one of the core objectives of DH is an interdisciplinary approach, which as a matter of necessity implies a decentralisation of the discipline. Such an atittude is clearly embodied in the WBA, through their extensive staff and contributors, each bringing unique and discipline-specific approaches to the cataloguing of Blake’s work. These roles include multiple editors editors, project managers, bibliographers, technical and special project consultants, and assistants to each individual project, as well as an advisory board encompassing expertise from a wide range of professionals, from museum directors to university professors. In circumventing the potential limitations of such a decentralised approach when carried out at so large a scale (such as issues with accountability, lack of organisation, and poor oversight), the WBA provides an exhaustive list of all those who are currently or have at one point worked on it. Each role is explained in detail, and essential contacts are provided.

As Klein states, ‘This [interdisciplinarity] reflects a crucial decentering of the digital humanities, one that acknowledges how its methods and practices both influence and are influenced by other fields. Rather than diminish the impact of DH, however, these examples enrich its discourse and extend its reach.’ (Klein, 2016). In this sense, the WBA delivers an incredibly broad perspective on Blake, through collaborative expertise, cataloguing, data analysis, and engineering an effective user experience. Nonetheless, one may still pose criticisms of the archive, such as those raised by Matthew Gold and Laurein Klein, surrounding aspects of Blake’s work such as its eurocentrism, as well as the implications of academic approaches to his legacy, which will necessarily reflect Western atittudes to scholarship. Such an interrogation and criticism of the archive is still developing, and if done productively can serve to expand both the scope of the project itself, as well as the horizons of DH as a whole.

Works Cited

Klein, Lauren F. and Matthew K. Gold, Debates in the Digital Humanities 2016, Minneapolis, MN: Minneapolis University Press, 2016.

The William Blake Archive. www.blakearchive.org. Accessed 21 Jan. 2022.

The three introductions to Debates in the Digital Humanities (2012, 2016, 2019) each outline the evolution of DH and its emergence into the literary and academic fields of study. As a digital practice, DH seeks to digitise subjects such as literature, art, history and philosophy, both qualitatively and quantitatively, essentially bridging a gap between the world of the “online” and history. DH is an interdisciplinary, humanist study that flourishes in its ability to collect a large scale of data together regarding a variety of topics and discover something revolutionary about our human history. With its roots in academia and University funded research projects, DH has run into criticism about its exclusivity and its predominantly western focused efforts, however, as the field has developed, new studies around subjects of race and gender discrimination over human history have come fruition.

The Shakespeare and Company Project is built upon three sources from the Sylvia Beach Papers at Princeton University; lending library cards, address books and logbooks. The project has pieced together a large collection of artefacts that reveals the novels that the greatest readers of our time were reading during the prime years of their literary careers.  With records of individuals such as Gertrude Stein and Ernest Hemingway, the project gives invaluable insight into the practices of borrowship that occurred in the 1920s-1940s. Whilst the project is self proclaimed to be incomplete due to a few gaps in its logbook entries, the logbooks still provide a great amount of information on the lending library and its evolution from 1919 to 1941. The project also takes care to highlight the gender of the borrowers of the books and amalgamated lists for the top 10 books borrowed by men and women, which provides insight into the gender boundaries of the period and how they fed into literary choice. Overall, the project is very interesting in its content and offers a history of a library functioning away from the institutionalised practices that dominate the literary sphere. 

Digital humanities is a relatively new and still progressing approach to exploring cultures, histories, and other humanised fields with the help of digital devices. It mainly deals with “complex problems” through an accurate data model, which can be both quantitative and qualitative. To be specific, the line graph illustrates that the rise of google books slightly inspires the increase of digital use for humanities in the 1800s and a roar in the 1900s, reaching its peak in 2000. However, what the graph shows is not completely true since nowadays digital devices neither overweight nor replace humanities, from which we learn that accurate data may also tell a lie. The article “The Digital Humanities Moment” written by MATTHEW K. GOLD (2012) delineates how digital humanities initiates to become a field and the article in 2016 confirms that digital humanities have reached its goal to be a field. In 2019’s article, digital humanities tend to be more mature and comprehensive to “model our research” in academia.

Women Writers Project (WWP) is a project at Northeastern University based on long-term research which involves early women’s writings in English (1526-1850). It mainly collects electronic raw materials and less-known works, coping with complex issues in a corpus-based digital form. This digital project bridges academic research and teaching, theories and archive, and modes of digital representations. It also offers free and available published materials and resources for teaching to the public. More importantly, instead of subjectively interpreting literary works, the project provides digital research tools to objectively conduct close text analysis, which not only raises new research methods but also provides an “unparalleled view of women’s literate culture in the early modern period”. I find this project quite comprehensive as it involves both literary texts and abundant essays, sample syllabi, suggested assignments and experimental tools, confirming its relationship between academic research and teaching.

Digital humanities is an expanding field which is, by its nature, continually active, developing, and growing. The live nature of data available online through the internet and digitised texts means that information available on Google Books, for example, is being continually updated to include new publications. That being said, there are certain cautions that should be taken with exploring data in this way, and examining data models in a critical way is an essential skill in the study of digital humanities. There are also ethical and moral considerations to take into account in digital humanities and the Debates in Digital Humanities publications show the development of these moral considerations from 2012 to 2019. In the 2012 Introduction, Matthew Gold asks ‘Does (digital humanities) have a politics?’ and notes that the volume he introduces takes a critical look at digital humanities and is not afraid to highlight its shortcomings at the time, including its lack of attention to issues such as race, gender, class, and sexuality. The tone of the introduction for the 2019 edition is notably expanded in its view, and speaks of a field that is proactively trying to ally with and aid activists and those seeking to empower others. One example of this is the establishment of the group Data for Black Lives Matter in 2017, which is employing the field of data science for matters of racial justice.

Another example of this in action is the Slave Voyages project which collates records relating to the Trans-Atlantic and Intra-American slave trades from 1501-1875, including the names of ships, number of slaves transported, sizes of crews, places disembarked, and names of captains. The public nature of the database is emphasised and the ability for contributions to be proposed and included (pending peer-review) affirms this. The public spirit of digital humanities seems strong here and the ability for anyone to access and explore this data in relation to research, either for personal or scholarly reasons, is a hugely positive aspect. In addition to this, the website includes lesson plans aimed at children aged 11-17 which feature activities that utilise the database and encourage students to conduct their own research. There are a variety of data mapping methods used in the database which present the data in engaging and easily readable ways, such as a time-lapse which represents the movement of slaves across the Atlantic through coloured dots. However, this contrasts somewhat to the sensitive subject matter the data represents, but nonetheless makes it more accessible to view. This is where the historical contextualisation included by the site is such a valuable addition: it provides social-historical context for the lives of the slaves who are essentially condensed into data points in the graphs and tables the website allows the user to view. Perhaps then, in the case of a data set relating to such a sensitive topic, an arms-length approach is best? Providing the essential historical contextualisation alongside the data allows the user to gain the information from the site that best suits their needs and draw their own interpretations from what they find. Regardless, making the data around the slave trade available and public and continually updating this information with new data (the site’s last update was August 2021) is a way of making the lives of those enslaved visible and available for anybody to research.

Image credit: Stablenode, Edinburgh, Meadows park in winter, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Edinburgh_meadows_in_winter3.jpg. Published under a CC0 1.0 Universal licence.

Welcome to the website for Digital Humanities. This is where your blog posts will appear, and eventually where you will put your digital project.

We look forward to seeing what you come up with!

Anouk & Bea