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Category: Debates in the Digital Humanities book series

An Overview of the Key Debates in the ‘Expanding Field’ of the Digital Humanities

Having limited knowledge on the Digital Humanities as a discipline, this week’s reading traced the key debates on the expanding field of the digital humanities, and the major forces it faces within this development. Gold and Klein’s writing in ‘moment to moment’ traced how the field must recalibrate to the ‘uncertainty brought by ruptures’ which exceed ‘any prior reference points’. In a rapidly changing field, which outpaces the rate of traditional academic literary development, which is largely collaborative in nature, the issues surrounding the digital humanities (the lack of specificity within the discipline ‘the big tent’, the lack of involvement from marginalised groups etc) have become more pronounced. The ‘public’ nature of these projects, and collaborative peer-to-peer publishing is particularly unique academically, but allows for this rapid, accountable development.

Moving DH from the academic field to the wider world, by ‘enabling communication across communities and networks’, by creating platforms that amplify the voices of those most in need of being heard’, realised in ‘mapping events  in the wake of Hurricanes Irma and Maria’, and aiding aid efforts in Puerto Rico, the humanitarian potential of the digital humanities can be realised. Special issues in the ‘American Quaterly, the Black Scholar’ etc, mark this expansion and innovation within the field. The ‘Moment to Moment’ introduction trace the ‘fusing go the personal and the historical’, detailing a ‘past characterised by unequal access and the pains of slavery’ which continue to affect academic institutions. Digital Humanities, seems to be a technological attempt to bring attention to these fissures, beyond the capabilities of traditional academia (without the restrictions of a singular field of study, encapsulating a broad variety of disciplines).

The changing attitudes towards DH from the first edition (2012) to the 2019 edition was equally interesting. In the 2019 introduction, the original over-arching optimism, while still there, was less prominent, and instead focused discussions on the major issues facing DH. Gold and Klein describe the field as remaining ‘very much Anglocentric’, expressing a desire to ‘ensure that the field can match the vitality and breadth of those who place themselves in it’. Looking at the digital in projects in class showed a snippet of this breadth, across disciplines, regions etc. Comparing the digitised Blake archive to the Geographical name-mapping website showed the ‘wide range of methods and practices’, as well as purposes, the field can capture. ‘Visualisations of large image sets, 3D modelling of historical artefacts’ encourage a re-interpretation of existing data sets, and the creation of new ones.

A (briefer than normal) Introduction to Digital Humanities

As with many critical fields in the humanities, Digital Humanities really wants to define itself yet also hates being pinned down. Infact, it is a debate within the DH about whether or not the field should even have a strict definition at all. The positives of keeping it ill-defined keep it largely accessible and open, free from being pidgeon-holed into one specific field, allowing colloboration from a variety of actors. However, proponents of the view that it should have a closed definition argue on the same metric. They believe that once you have a definition, that is actually the point at which you can branch off of the initial concept, while still retaining a level of specificity that necessitates critical discussion.The closest I have gotten to understanding an ethos in Digital Humanities is the idea of “construction” rather than just “critique”. What is “construction” itself was controversial, with some people arguing that in order to be a “real” Digital Humanist you needed to know how to code. However because humanities student don’t enjoy learning anything difficult, the definition became much broader, utilising any method of digital construction or “meaning making” to take part. Part of this ethos also has an emphasis on accessibility, bridging the gap between academic and reader, utilising digital tools and the digital space to “democratise” information and knowledge. Interestingly it does (in my view) end up creating a clash between the nature of scholarship and the project itself, which I suppose is one of the very things Digital Humanities attempts to uncover.

It is also not fair to say “critique” does not hold an important place in DH. DH’s love critiquing, they love externally critiquing, internally critiquing, constantly self critiquing. Like most humanist fields they stay committed to being quite intersectional and deconstructionist in their approach, attempting to challenge hegemonies of thoughts that pervase themselves socially, but quite often academically aswell within digital fields. The critique can be showcased through the projects themselves, or it can be a much wider critique of any digital projects or data collection. All this is to help us better understand our purpose and role (moral or otherwise) on digital spaces, what exactly is at stake, and what contributions need to be made. Perhaps I’ve missed something, but there’s a lot of accessible web blogs who attempt to define the same (with a lot more construction, ethos, and critique than I).

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