The state of the digital humanities

Liu, Alan

doi:10.1177/1474022211427364

Cited by 54 publications

(35 citation statements)

References 45 publications

(32 reference statements)

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“…While the majority of primary and secondary material collections in digital form remain effectively siloed, immense strides have been made towards freeing these over the past few years, enabling us to begin investigating "the kinds of humanistic phenomena" that "appear only at scale" [28].…”

Section: Humanities Scholarship and The Semantic Webmentioning

confidence: 99%

The curious identity of Michael Field and its implications for humanities research with the semantic web

Brown

Simpson

2013

2013 IEEE International Conference on Big Data

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This paper uses the case of author Michael Field, the shared writing identity of two late Victorian women, to consider the implications of embracing the semantic web for humanities research. It is argued that the ontologies prevalent today reveal a lack of nuance when it comes to the complex relationships that are the focus of much humanities research, such as the connection of names to persons, particularly with respect to authorship. Further, the current state of ontology use aside, even the sophisticated use of OWL, SKOS, or ontology alignment techniques for linking big semantic web collections stands to hinder humanities research by hiding rather than exposing difference. We use the outlier Michael Field to highlight what much of the valuable work of the humanities is about and in doing so bring to the fore the challenge of formalizing complex social meanings that can otherwise be overlooked or dismissed as a trivial technicality. As a solution the humanities community is encouraged to begin engaging more directly in the construction of semantic web tools and infrastructure.

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Section: Humanities Scholarship and The Semantic Webmentioning

confidence: 99%

The curious identity of Michael Field and its implications for humanities research with the semantic web

Brown

Simpson

2013

2013 IEEE International Conference on Big Data

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“…Likewise, Lothian and Phillips () discuss humanities scholars who, as public scholars and as agents of social and cultural transformation, necessarily situate their new media work outside of DH, where these modes of activism appear to be absent. Finally, Liu () maintains that DH's obliviousness to corporate and neoliberal influences on the information technologies they use diminishes the critiques scholars in the field could form in the context of more traditional topics in cultural criticism such as identity construction and intersubjectivity.…”

Section: Information Work In the Humanitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Connecting theory and practice in digital humanities information work

Clement

Carter

2017

Asso for Info Science & Tech

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The omnipresence and escalating efficiency of digital, networked information systems alongside the resulting deluge of digital corpora, apps, software, and data has coincided with increased concerns in the humanities with new topics and methods of inquiry. In particular, digital humanities (DH), the subfield that has emerged as the site of most of this work, has received growing attention in higher education in recent years. This study seeks to facilitate a better understanding of digital humanities by studying the motivations and practices of digital humanists as information workers in the humanities. To this end, we observe information work through interviews with DH scholars about their work practices and through a survey of DH programs such as graduate degrees, certificates, minors, and training institutes. In this study we focus on how the goals behind methodology (a link between theories and method) surface in everyday DH work practices and in DH curricula in order to investigate if the critiques that have appeared in relation to DH information work are well founded and to suggest alternative narratives about information work in DH that will help advance the impact of the field in the humanities and beyond.

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“…Faced with an overwhelming onslaught of information and sensory input – just as the modernists were themselves – scholars of modernism today can use computational methods to sort through the welter and identify salient constellations of significance. While TEI‐encoded texts, linked data environments, text analysis tools, and machine learning methods take a significant amount of time to construct, modernist scholars interested in digital humanities are now starting to respond to Alan Liu's compelling question: “What kinds of humanistic phenomena appear only at scale?” (21).…”

Section: Modernism At Scalementioning

confidence: 99%

Modernism Meets Digital Humanities

Ross

Sayers

2014

Literature Compass

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This essay traces some of the ways modernism and digital humanities have converged of late. It covers some of the key modes in which that convergence has so far found expression: popular websites and mobile apps, issues of copyright, the production of digital scholarly editions, the practice of versioning, questions of scale, and geospatial techniques. We cite examples of productive convergences of modernist studies and digital humanities, and articulate the issues listed above with specific research and teaching projects. Our overview advances the basic argument that there are special affinities between modernism and digital humanities and that digital approaches afford some of the most promising lines of development for the ongoing expansion of the “new modernist studies.”

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The state of the digital humanities

Cited by 54 publications

References 45 publications

The curious identity of Michael Field and its implications for humanities research with the semantic web

The curious identity of Michael Field and its implications for humanities research with the semantic web

Connecting theory and practice in digital humanities information work

Modernism Meets Digital Humanities

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