Ten Challenges for Digital Humanities and the Way Forward

Author(s):  
Stella Markantonatou ◽  
Simon Donig ◽  
George Pavlidis ◽  
Thomas Gees ◽  
Adamantios Koumpis

In a previous article, the authors came up with a list of what they considered 10 challenges that would define the area of digital humanities at large and their evolution in the next years. However, in the almost two years that have passed since the publication of that paper, they are now able to see the need for relating the challenges for digital humanities with what one may characterize as socially relevant topics by means of outlining 10 challenges where the digital humanities can make a social impact. This chapter does that.

Artnodes ◽  
2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana Rodriguez Granell

It gives us great pleasure to present the 23rd issue of the magazine as a heterogeneous collection that brings together selected articles submitted in response to three different calls for contributions. On the one hand, we bring the volume focusing on media archaeology to a close with this second series of texts. The section on Digital Humanities also comprises an interesting series of contributions related to the 3rd Congress of the International Society of Hispanic Digital Humanities. The last section of this issue brings together another set of articles submitted in response to the magazine’s regular call for contributions, including different perspectives on issues that fall within the magazine’s scope of interest. All the sections and research contained here are unavoidably disparate from each other, yet, when taken as a whole, the reader will realise that there is a common thread throughout this issue, focusing on the impact of certain technologies have had on the way we view the past. The historical scope of technologies does not only operate in a single direction, but rather throughout time in its entirety.


PMLA ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 135 (1) ◽  
pp. 152-158
Author(s):  
Howard Rambsy II

Let's Cut to the Chase: African American Scholars Occupy the Margins of this Expansive Realm Known as Digital Humanities. Do well-intentioned people want more diversity in DH? Sure, they do. Do black folks participate in DH? Of course, we do. But we've witnessed far too many DH panels with no African American participants or with only one. We've paid close attention to where the major funding for DH goes. Or, we've carefully taken note of who the authors of DH-related articles, books, and bibliographies are. We've studied these things closely enough to realize who resides in prime DH real estate and who doesn't. We could speak defiantly about our marginal status the way Toni Morrison once did when she quipped, “I'm gonna stay out here on the margin, and let the center look for me” (87). Yaasss!At the same time, though, it's worth thinking about some of the reasons why African American scholars dwell on the margins of the DH field. The processes by which we pursue graduate study and become participants in the field of African American literary studies account for why we are slow or reluctant to embrace DH. There's also the matter of segregation—our persistent exclusion from projects and opportunities that are ostensibly open to all but invariably involve primarily white scholars. Immersion in the field of African American literary studies and conversations with senior and emergent scholars reveal some of the reasons why we stand so far from the center of the DH community.


PMLA ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 125 (4) ◽  
pp. 1043-1060 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Bryant

The study of textual evolution, or revision as a textual phenomenon, requires a form of fluid-text editing that not only gives readers access to the textual identities that constitute the versions of a work but also makes the revision process witnessable by generating revision sequences and revision narratives for every revision event. Traditional editorial approaches that mix versions in the editing of a work compromise the integrity of textual identities, and the problem of mixing versions is demonstrated in three examples of the way editors and critics (in the context of orientalist and colonialist discourses) have changed the text of, or rewritten, Herman Melville's Moby-Dick: Edward Said's mistaking John Huston and Ray Bradbury's film ending for Melville's, the British expurgations that modulate Queequeg's homosexuality to preclude the idea of homosexual domesticity and marriage, and the British editors' conversion of Queequeg's Christianity (and modern editors' perpetuation of the unwanted conversion). These historical and modern cases show that readers, sometimes despite themselves, revise texts materially in ways that mirror their desire and the ways of power. Editing the rewriting of a text like Moby-Dick in a digital critical archive would preserve all versions and generate revision narratives that textualize the otherwise invisible dynamics of revision in a culture. With its capacity to edit fluid texts, digital humanities scholarship is well situated to expand the discourse on the dynamics of textual evolution into the literary and cultural criticism of the twenty-first century.


2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. 944-971
Author(s):  
Claire Warwick

Abstract This article reports on a study of interfaces to long-lived digital humanities (DH) resources using an innovative combination of research methods from book history, interface design, and digital preservation and curation to investigate how interfaces to DH resources have changed over time. To do this, we used the Internet Archive’s Wayback machine to investigate the original presentation and all subsequent changes to the interfaces of a small sample of projects. The study addresses the following questions: What can we learn from a study of interfaces to DH material? How have interfaces to DH materials changed over the course of their existence? Do these changes affect the way the resource is used, and the way it conveys meaning? Should we preserve interfaces for future scholarship? We show that a valuable information may be derived from the interfaces of long-lived projects. Visual design can communicate subtle messages about the way the resource was originally conceived by its creators and subsequent changes show how knowledge of user behaviour developed in the DH community. Interfaces provide information about the intellectual context of early digital projects. They can also provide information about the changing place of DH projects in local and national infrastructures, and the way that projects have sought to survive in challenging funding environments.


1944 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 516-528
Author(s):  
Georgette Vignaux

In a previous article we studied the religious and political position of the French Catholics—both of the clergy and of the laity—from the armistice to the end of the summer of 1942. Here we propose to continue this study following the same plan, considering first the questions cm which the clergy and the laity have taken a stand and indicating the nuances which differentiate their positions, and secondly the present problems in which the faithful take part on their own responsibility. French Catholic life, like all life, is in motion. Yet discovering its inspirations and currents can help us to understand the way it will manifest itself in the period of reconstruction.


Philosophy ◽  
1948 ◽  
Vol 23 (87) ◽  
pp. 291-301
Author(s):  
T. M. Forsyth

In a previous article I considered Aristotle's view of God as final cause and its relation to the philosophy of Plato; and at the end of the article I remarked on the affinity of both doctrines with that of Spinoza. The present paper is concerned with Spinoza's doctrine of God as it is related to his conception of causality and seeks, inter alia, to show that his explicit rejection of final causes does not prevent his philosophy from having in it something like the true principle of final causation. In each section I first quote the chief relevant definitions or propositions in Spinoza's Ethics, and then state what seems needful in the way of interpretation or comment.


1912 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 386-408
Author(s):  
Alfred L. P. Dennis

A previous article attempted a summary of the contents of the Parliament Act of 1911 and a mention of its immediate ancestry. There followed notice of some historical alleviatory suggestions regarding the composition of the House of Lords and an analysis both of the actual provisions of the Act and of proposals alternative to them with respect to the powers of the Upper House in the matter of “money bills.”This second article, continuing the method of the first, includes at the outset the question of the powers of the House of Lords as to “general legislation,” i. e. public bills other than money bills. There follows reference to historical ancestry in these matters. Thus the consideration of the means by which the Act became law, that potential resort to the use of the royal prerogative by the temporary executive, may clear the way for speculation as to the significance of the Parliament Act as a whole.Briefly the Act provides for a final reduction of the powers of the House of Lords as to general legislation to a suspensive veto operative against House of Commons measures only in two successive sessions; after a lapse of two years after the first introduction of the measure in the Lower House and on its third passage there the bill can become law on the royal assent being given, the Lords notwithstanding.


2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 1190-1209 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniela Staicu ◽  
Oana Pop

Abstract The goal of this research is to acknowledge the elements which hinder or facilitate the transition from linear to the circular economy in the textile and apparel sector in Romania by identifying current and desired interactions among the ecosystem’s stakeholders. Two strands of literature, one on circular economy and one on the textile and apparel sector, provide the theoretical background for this research. Currently, the way we design, produce, and use clothing has drawbacks that are becoming increasingly clear. The circular economy principles have the potential to transform the way textiles are produced, consumed and disposed of. More and more social entrepreneurs are pioneering the future of the apparel industry by offering sustainable solutions to tackling systemic problems. However, their efforts have to be elevated and amplified, as such to pave the way for creating business models that allow for both economic performance and social impact. A comprehensive mapping of ongoing activities and stakeholders in the textile and apparel sector in Romania is required to understand the roadblocks to industry transformation in the context of moving toward circular economy and to implement envisioned sustainable solutions. In the paper we used a database of 27 stakeholders, developed by applying the snowball method, to investigate current and future interactions between the main actors who operate in the textile and apparel sector. To meet its research objectives, the paper employed a phenomenological research design and built upon a workshop activity. First, we designed an online survey to understand the profile and knowledge of the circular economy of the stakeholders included in our database. Second, we employed the world café method to understand in depth the level of knowledge of the actors who attended the workshop on the circular economy in the textile and apparel sector. Third, we used the structural systemic constellations method in assessing the stakeholders’ current and future desired interactions. Last, we formulated conclusions and recommendations about future research needed to deepen the understanding of the circular economy in the textile and apparel sector. Findings showed that there is a vicious circle of different actions feeding isolation and preventing collaboration among stakeholders. Also, we found that there is a lack of collaborative spaces where stakeholders can meet, connect and explore the various opportunities to collaborate, and a lack of general awareness on “circular economy and textile and apparel” and its mechanisms. The intended audiences of the research are decision-makers and practitioners in the textile and apparel sector, as well as researchers focused on the circular economy.


2018 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 129-134
Author(s):  
Maxim Romanov

Defining digital humanities is tricky. Our scholarship has been intrinsically digital for quite a few decades already, as we rely more and more on electronic storage to save, word processors to write, bibliography managers to organize, databases to consult, digital libraries to search and read. Living in the digital world, however, does not make us all digital humanists—if these digital entities are taken away, we will have their analog prototypes to fall back on, and beyond a certain level of inconvenience, this will not affect the way most of us do our scholarship. The transition to digital humanities must begin somewhere at the point where our humanistic inquiry starts to rely on the machine as the matter of methodological exigency.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document