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Digital humanities: Mission accomplished? An analysis of scholarly literature

“…Burnard (1999) agreed with McCarty that an academic discipline is ‘an organizational, bureaucratic concept’, determined by sociopolitical considerations (see also Turbanti, 2023). Even though many scholars believe that an underlying theoretical framework is necessary, there are many examples of successful and established theory-free disciplines, as well as research fields endowed with strong theoretical bases, that have never been recognized as disciplines.…”

“…The first and second subsections are largely based on early materials. The reader can also find useful information and details regarding the years before 2000 in other works (see Brink, 1990; McCarty, 1998, 1999; Burnard, 1999; Kirschenbaum, 2002; Sula and Hill, 2019). The most recent contributions are instead used to pursue the main goal of this paper; that is, in the third and fourth subsections, to analyse the debate on disciplinarity and revolution that has occurred since the early 2000s and to try to find an adequate synthesis thereof.…”

“…According to Burnard (1999), HC began as an ‘empirical reply’ to the debate on the two cultures. More recent positions, with the new label of DH definitely in use, include Rommel (2004), who says that literary computing has brought the two cultures into contact, and Porsdam (2013), according to whom DH is a ‘hybrid meeting point between the two cultures’, but the assumption that ‘quantitative research can handle everything which the humanist must take into account’ must be rejected, thus agreeing to her interpretation of Schlesinger (1962) and the criticism to Snow made by Leavis (1962).…”

“…Their opinions emerge in what they write in journals, either in opinion/position papers or between the lines of more technical contributions. Interviews, as in the work of Nyhan and Flinn (2016), and seminar talks, such as those of McCarty (1999) and Burnard (1999), when available, can help with completing the picture.…”

“…The terminological switch from HC to DH occurred as an effect of this evolution, 1 emphasizing the fact that this research is no longer viewed as a branch of computing but as the subject of a new academic discipline (Sula and Hill, 2019). In fact, scholars have long debated whether DH is a true academic discipline (Brink, 1990; McCarty, 1998; Burnard, 1999; Papadopoulos and Reilly, 2020; Drucker, 2021; Orlandi, 2021; Pacheco, 2022). A related long-standing debate is on interdisciplinarity, multidisciplinarity, transdisciplinarity (McCarty, 1999; Schreibman et al, 2004, 2016; Berry, 2012; Darbellay, 2019; Jacobs, 2021), or even postdisciplinarity (Schnapp and Presner, 2009).…”