Introduction to the comprehension and learning of Digital Humanities

For fifty years, the actual meaning of digital humanities has been constantly debated and a precise definition has yet to be identified. However, Elijah Meeks, a digital humanities specialist from the Digital Scholarship Center stated in the Stanford University Library that “digital humanities are bringing computational methods to bear on traditional humanities scholarships. In addition it is taking tools built by warmongers, oil, companies, spy agencies and investment bankers and using them to study literature, philosophy, history, culture and the classics.” With this brief meaning, the term digital humanities is an approach; specifically a computational method approach; to take tools and objects constructed by warmongers, oil companies spy agencies and investment bankers and use them to study the arts of literature, philosophy, history and culture. It bears on the traditional humanities scholarships and resembles science which is not science. This means that there is a background of skepticism behind science whereas digital humanity has a basis of criticism.

In William G. Thomas journal of. What We Think We Build and What We Build in Digital Humanities, he points out that many of us go on in life constantly creating large digital archives, databases, visualization models and scholarly research publications. However, as Jerome McGann reminds “to make anything is also to make a speculative foray into a concealed but wished for unknown”, and tells “the work that we make is not the achievement of one’s desire, it is the shadow of that desire”, humanists must remember these two phrases for there is only a glancing bird’s eye view of what was built. This means that though large archives are created, it is merely a far portrayal of what was wished to be created. Thomas gets at the fact that though objects and tools may be built, humanists need to consider the different types of documents that may wished to archive. Can some of them be digitized? In the case of his “workin’ on the railroad”, this becomes incorrect as mostly text and writings become digitized and the railway cannot be digitized. This will not be a digital humanities work as the digital project was not what was specified. From this, it is safe to say that data in humanities should be archives, databases, visualization models and scholarly research publications that can be digitized or considered fully on whether they can be successfully archived.

Trevor Owens in his journal, Please Write it Down: Design and Research in Digital Humanities states that everyone who works on a digital humanities project should be writing. A purposeful design needs the creation of documentation. Though one may code, they should translate the thought process and initiative behind that code to a text for the proper documentation. Even after, a reflective piece on what was learnt from the digital project should be written. All in all, in digital humanities research, the surface has barely been scratched as digital humanists should start considering how the process of design could become an integral part of humanities scholarship and how that implementation can help with the future success of digital humanities.

I believe that digital humanities is an integral and important aspect of research and as a student myself studying digital humanities, I wish to go more in depth and have a full comprehension of the world of digital humanities.