Digital Humanities

Digital humanities may be defined as encompassing research, teaching, and technology to present information related to English, Art, History, Language, Philosophy, Music and more in a digital environment.  Projects related to digital humanities, DH for short, range from digitizing existing collections like the Willa Cather archive at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln to using data mining in relation to textual and other types of analysis.

To be fair, the Cather archive is more than simply digitizing a print collection.  The website is linked to a technology knows as TokenX which allows readers to select a Cather text and then run powerful analysis of the word choices made by the author.  A TokenX word cloud for My Antonia (1918) for example, reveals that some of the most 100 frequent words used in the novel were: Ambrosch, Antonia, country, home, old, time, black, hawk, and more.  "One of the" and "out of the"are the two most common sequences of words in the book, comfortably ahead of number three, "there was a."

A new digital site for a historical document I have used "analog" portions of in a number of classes for the last 14 years was recently discussed in the New York Times.  Ernesto Miranda has helped bring to life the Codex Mendoza free on the internet AND as a digital app. The Codex, a 1542 report, explains the nature of the Spanish relationship with Mexicas (Aztecs).  The digital version allows readers to see the 16th century Spanish, modern translations in newer Spanish or English, and maps of the area under discussion.

A key resource I have used to learn more about certain aspects of digital humanities is hosted at George Mason University.  Named for the late historian, Roy Rosenzweig, the Center for History and New Media has celebrated twenty years of utilizing digital media and computer technology to "democratize" the study of history.  The Center has been responsible for the dissemination of useful tools like Omeka (web publishing) and Zotero (research gathering) as well as history specific sites like teaching history.org and archives on the Bracero program, Soviet era gulags, September 11, 2001, and Hurricane Katrina as well as other topics.

For people interested in learning more about how to apply digital humanities in their own work, you might consider attending the "unconferences" called THATCamp (the humanities and technology camp).  Held in conjunction with national and regional conferences in various disciplines, these are sometimes difficult to look up as their organizational website seems defunct, but they do crop up for free and open to the public.  In early January one such camp occured at the American Historical Association annual meeting and an upcoming version will take place on February 9 and 10 at the College Art Association's annual conference (New York City, Hilton New York).  In depth training is available in British Columbia at the Digital Humanities Summer institute hosted by the University of Victoria.

Faculty/staff who have experience with other DH materials are encouraged to to comment and suggest links.