Digital Humanities: An Overview

Dr. Sarah Ketchley Near Eastern Languages & Civilization (NELC) University of Washington ’A Memoir of Augustus de Morgan’

Published by his wife, Sophia Elizabeth Morgan, in 1882

Includes this letter to a friend, the Reverend W. Heald, from 1851 ’A Memoir of Augustus de Morgan’ Ada Lovelace: 1815-1852

• Early tutor: Scottish astronomer & mathematician, Mary Somerville • Studied advanced mathematics with Augustus de Morgan • Charles Babbage was a friend and mentor. Invented 'difference engine' and designed an 'analytical engine' - first computers? • Lovelace translated article by Menabrea and added her own notes, producing a paper 3 times as long as the original

- described use of codes to represent letters and symbols - theorized a method for repeating a sequence of instructions (a program!) Humanities Computing

Roberto Busa SJ : 1913-2011

Index Thomisticus : (using IBM mainframe)

- 1948-1980 : 56 print volumes - 1989 : CD-ROM - 2005 : web version History of Digital Humanities

1949: Father Roberto Busa

1960s: Humanities Computing, concordances, word frequency, first conferences, journal and humanities computing centers

1970s-1980s: ‘consolidation’, packaged software, expansion of centers for humanities computing, first courses

Mid 1980s- early1990s: personal computer, email

1990s: Text Encoding Initiative (TEI), World Wide Web

2001: Digital Humanities

20-teens: Digital Scholarship

Recommended reading: Susan Hockey, “The History of Humanities Computing” in A Companion to Digital Humanities, ed. Susan Schreibman, Ray Siemens, John Unsworth. Oxford: Blackwell, 2004. What is Digital Humanities? What is Digital Humanities? Digital Humanities is a Space

• A space for collaborative engagement - of equals, across disciplinary boundaries

• In which process is more important than product

• In which research questions go hand in hand with methods - and these determine tools & techniques

• In which key partners are domain specialists, digital humanities specialists, librarians, archivists, curators

• In which research practice is based on formal methods

• A space for experimentation and innovation

• An applied field in which theory may follow practice Digital Humanities as (an) (Inter-)Discipline

• distinctive (cross-disciplinary) research practices • characteristic research questions : models, methods & ‘what happens at the intersection(s)?’ • academic journals : LLC; DHQ; DS-lcn; etc • other outputs (print and online publications) : Humanist; Companion; book series: Routledge, Illinois, Michigan, etc • scholarly associations and international conferences • teaching programs • postgraduate provision (Masters & PhD) • career development Collaborative Projects in DH

• Likely to be large-scale: in intellectual scope & in size of collaborative team(s) - ‘the work of many hands’

• Multi-disciplinary

• Multiple technologies, data types & formats

• Variety of digital (and print) outputs

• Multiple purposes and audiences

• New or changed questions & methods ‘3rd Generation’ Projects in DH

• Collaborations may be even larger & more complex

• More visualization - images, animations, virtual worlds, ...

• More emphasis on play, imagination, and interpretation(s)

• Crowd-sourcing

• Wide use of social media - e.g. blogs, twitter – for conduct of research and dissemination of results

• More direct social & cultural engagement & criticism The Humanities & Digital Scholarship

• Programming, building tools, using tools and techniques

• The ‘new’ collaborative model: doing research together that we cannot do separately

• New modes of interaction, communication, dissemination

• Open knowledge creation

• New paradigms for developing academic careers

• New types of career (‘alt-ac’) Typical Workflow

Slide courtesy of the COMHIS Collective: https://comhis.github.io/ http://j.mp/comhis-bsecs Debates & Challenges in DH

• Diversity: gender; ethnicity

• Diversity: language & culture

• Diversity: global reach & support

• Social justice / activism

• The role & impact of technology

• Being human in a digital world Where & when does DH happen? Where is its institutional base?

• Increasingly DH is happening across all arts and humanities (& social sciences) research, teaching and learning

• Its institutional base may be in one or more of: ‣ Library

‣ Academic IT services

‣ ‘Old’ departments - e.g. English

‣ DH Centres - collaboration across faculties - Structural - Virtual - Multiple Institutional Structures

• Building foundations

• Support structures & partnerships

• Pedagogy

• Collaboration: teams in and across depts and Institutions

• Pragmatics: Project funding & management, credit, careers

• Dynamics: Top-down / bottom-up…? Turf wars…? Wider Structures

• Scholarly associations: regional, national, international

• Conferences, workshops, training events

• Physical / academic infrastructure

• Publications

• Standards organizations Scholarly Associations - 1

• Alliance of Digital Humanities Organisations (ADHO)

- AADH: Australasian Association for Digital Humanities - ACH: Assoc for Computers & the Humanities - CSDH/SCHN : Canadian Society for Digital Humanities / Société Canadienne des Humanités Numériques - DHASA: Digital Humanities Association of Southern African - EADH: European Association for Digital Humanities - Humanistica / Association francophone des humanités numériques - JADH: Japanese Association for Digital Humanities - RedHD: Red de Humanidades Digitales (Mexico) - TADH: Taiwan Association for Digital Humanities - Centernet (association of centres, depts, projects) Scholarly Associations - 2

• EADH: Associate Organisations - Italian: Associazione per l'Informatica Umanistica e la Cultura Digitale - German language based: Digital Humanities im deutschsprachigen Raum - DHN: DH in Nordic Countries / Digital Humaniora i Norden

• EADH: Partner Organisations - DH Benelux - Russian DH Network - Czech DH Initiative

• ADHO: Affiliate Organisation - TEI: Text Encoding Initiative Scholarly Associations - 3

• Newer ADHO-leaning associations - Korean Association for Digital Humanities - Digital Humanities Alliance of India

• ADHO Special Interest Groups - AVinDH: Audiovisual Data in Digital Humanities - GeoHumanities - GO::DH - Global Outlook :: DH - Libraries and Digital Humanities - LOD: Linked Open Data - Training and pedagogy Scholarly Associations - 4

• Other DH associations - AHDig: Associação das Humanidades Digitais (Portuguese) - HDH: Humanidades Digitales Hispánicas (Spanish/Hispanic) - etc…

• Other DH-related associations - HASTAC - Society for Textual Scholarship - MLA (professional advocacy & support); etc… Conferences, Workshops, Training Events

• Conferences - Digital Humanities (annual international conference) ‣ 1989: Toronto 1990: Siegen … ‣ 2006: Paris 2007: Illinois, Urbana-Champaign ‣ 2008: Oulu, Finland 2009: Maryland ‣ 2010: King’s College London 2011: Stanford ‣ 2012: Hamburg 2013: Nebraska, Lincoln ‣ 2014: Lausanne 2015: Sydney ‣ 2016: Kraków 2017: Montréal 2018: Mexico City ‣ 2019: Utrecht 2020: Ottawa 2021: Tokyo

- Single or joint association conferences (e.g. Canadian, JADH, aaDH, DHASA, ACH, EADH, …) Conferences, Workshops, Training Events

• Training - Victoria: Digital Humanities Summer Institute, DHSI (June) - Leipzig: Culture and Technology Summer School, DH@Leipzig (July) - Oxford: Digital Humanities at Oxford Summer School, DHOxSS (July) - Sydney: Digital Methods Training, DHDownunder (December) - Guelph: DH@Guelph (May) - Ottawa: DHSITE@Ottawa - [rotating locations]: Humanities Intensive Teaching and Learning, HILT - Others: DHI Beirut , ILiADS @Hamilton College DHi, EDIROM DH, and beyond - With other organizations: ‣ DHSI@MLA ‣ DHSI@Congress

- ADHO Training Initiative/SIG: supports events around the world Publications

• Sponsored by ADHO - DSH: Digital Scholarship in the Humanities (Oxford) - DHQ: Digital Humanities Quarterly (online) - Digital Studies / Le champ numérique (Canadian) - DHCommons (centerNet) - Humanist

• In print and on-line - Blackwell Companion - Digital Research in the Arts & Humanities (Routledge) : 30+ volumes published; 20% discount for ADHO society members - Debates in the Digital Humanities (Minnesota) - Topics in the Digital Humanities (Illinois) - Digital Humanities (Michigan) - etc…

Presentation credits: slides adapted from John Unsworth June 2019