Debates in the Digital Humanities

Debates in the Digital Humanities

Digital Humanities

The study of digital humanities is in transition as it adapts its origins in computation and textual analysis to the media-specific analysis and cultural conventions of emerging digital technologies. In this text, Matthew Gold gathers the varying perspectives and critical issues debated by notable digital humanities scholars, who present the reader with fundamental differences and potential areas of research. Debatable issues include defining the digital humanities and theorizing its discipline as method or as evidence of a larger, socio-cultural phenomenon. Whether digital humanists are defined by their “building” and “hacking” skills as opposed to merely adapting digital technologies to traditional humanistic study, and to what degree cultural attitudes toward race and politics become embedded in software codes and interfaces are questions that challenge these digital humanities scholars and practitioners as they also grapple with tenure-driven constraints to practice traditional scholarship.

Another distinguishing characteristic of Debates in the Digital Humanities is the inclusion of blogs and tweets. These contemporary forums of intellectual exchange demonstrate a medium most apt for identifying and discovering the social as well as technical milieu in which digital humanists operate. Gold appropriately includes the blogs to reiterate the intertwinement of digital media (i.e. social networking) and disciplinary theory and practice.

Gold, Matthew, Ed.

The University of Minnesota Press

2012

Polk, Victoria

University of Minnesota Press

Book

978-0816677955

Gold, Matthew K., ed. Debates in the Digital Humanities. Minneapolis: Univeriversity of Minnesota Press, 2012.