At its core, digital humanities is the use of computational methods in traditional humanities scholarship. Yet the fact that http://whatisdigitalhumanities.com/ exists shows that it’s not a one-size-fits-all definition, and because of its novelty and prodigiousness it might be some time before we really work out the kinks and narrow the definition down to something more concrete and universal. Certain key terms get thrown around like “digital tools”, “digital scholarship”, “humanities”, “computers”, but everyone’s definition is a little different depending on what their project is or where their interests lie. I would say its principal distinction is its interdisciplinary nature. It can act as the ligament connecting so many different disciplines, breaking down traditional barriers between, say, Computer Science and Religious Studies. In my own work I was able to utilize digital humanities in museum studies, archival studies, sociopolitical studies, indigenous studies, and critical race studies. Digital Humanities stresses the importance not just of digital or computational analysis but more importantly of using that analysis as a pillar for the more qualitative, humanitarian discoveries and opening up vistas for new methods of critical inquiry.
One of my favorite recent digital humanities projects is the Letters of 1916 project[1], which is a digital collection of letters written during the Easter Rebellion in Ireland. This crowd-sourced collection also contains an interactive map of networks showing how Irish people interacted during this time period, as well as a network diagram of letters and their correspondents. The letters are also transcribed using digital tools. These transcription tools are even being implemented in academic libraries by companies like Quartex, making it easier for anyone to engage in digital humanities projects and expanding their applications into the world of lay-people. This project is an excellent example of the adage that the humanities need no longer be linear.
The use of digital humanities as a way of empowering traditionally marginalized groups and individuals is one that is seeing much activity recently, as if the ability to merge technology with the study of humans has engendered new and exciting possibilities to provide a more equitable, equal, and inclusive world. One major project that had been undertaken recently was spearheaded by Ramesh Srinivasan, in which he worked with Native American Tribes in San Diego County to create digital technologies and network infrastructures that supported their community-oriented ontologies. He also collaborated with the Zuni to create a digital archive in which the objects acted as the nexus of their community and were described with their own understanding of and connectivity to them[2]. The success of projects such as these depend on “a profound understanding of the actual needs of the people involved in the project,”[3] which is a cornerstone of good digital humanities work. It’s also significant to note that many digital tools are created with biased systems and algorithms that assume who the user is, and assumes “the idea that there are certain mechanisms of thought that are, in fact, universal.”[4] These assumptions tend to ignore the various epistemologies and ontologies of the world. There is a challenge then in trying to merge the “objective logic” of the computers with the “subjectivity” of the humanities, especially when that cold and unprejudiced computer system is, in reality, anything but. As Sofia Noble explains in her book, Algorithms of Oppression, “racism and sexism are part of the architecture and language of technology.”[5]
One more recent trend of note in digital humanities that is seeing a lot of activity recently is the application of intersectionality theory and practice. Intersectionality is the concept that categories of sexuality, gender, race, class, race, etc. intersect in their social relations and interdependent forms of oppression. As I said earlier, the digital humanities thrives on interdisciplinary work, and so too is “the fluidity of intersectionality… a natural fit for the flexibility that digital humanities connotes.”
[1] http://letters1916.maynoothuniversity.ie/
[2] Ramesh Srinivasan, Whose Global Village?: Rethinking How Technology Shapes Our World (New York: New York University Press, 2019).
[3] Roberto Therón and Eveline Wandl-Vogt, “New Trends in Digital Humanities,” Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Technological Ecosystems for Enhancing Multiculturality, February 2016, https://doi.org/10.1145/3012430.3012630.
[4] Roopika Risam, New Digital Worlds Postcolonial Digital Humanities in Theory, Praxis and Pedagogy (Evanston, Ill: Northwestern University Press, 2019). p. 138
[5] Safiya Umoja Noble, Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism (New York: New York University Press, 2018, n.d.). p. 9
