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Literature and the Digital Humanities

What is Digital Humaities?

 

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What is Digital Humanities?

Digital Humanities is an evolving field that uses digital technology and resources in the study of humanities disciplines such as literature, philosophy, history, and the arts. Print is no longer the principal and preferred medium of study in the humanities. Computers have changed the way knowledge is acquired and disseminated including fields such as the humanities which have traditionally relied on print culture.

Wikipedia's definition of Digital Humanities:

"Digital humanities (DH) is an area of scholarly activity at the intersection of computing or digital technologies and the disciplines of the humanities. It includes the systematic use of digital resources in the humanities, as well as the reflection on their application.[1][2]DH can be defined as new ways of doing scholarship that involve collaborative, transdisciplinary, and computationally engaged research, teaching, and publishing. It brings digital tools and methods to the study of the humanities with the recognition that the printed word is no longer the main medium for knowledge production and distribution."

Here's a more complex definition from the book Digital Humanities authored by Lunenfeld, Burdick, Drucker, and Presner published by the MIT Press in November 2012:

"Digital Humanities represents a major expansion of the purview of the humanities, precisely because it brings the values, representational and interpretive practices, meaning-making strategies, complexities, and ambiguities of being human into every realm of experience and knowledge of the world. It is a global, trans-historical, and transmedia approach to knowledge and meaning-making."