Defining Digital Humanities has been an issue for those involved with it and those eager to study it. The first group want\u00a0to label the field as logical and solid, while the second group want to understand it and search it, so it is very important for both groups to have a certain definition, one they can always refer to.\u00a0Although DH\u00a0might sound like something people realize, it really can be as vague as the unknown, for this reason it needs to be defined.\u00a0Digital humanists are desperately attempting to find a definition for this branch of humanities, so it can be accepted by those who are rejecting it, and it can be available for those who\u00a0are not familiar with it.\u00a0Moreover, agreeing on a relatively single definition of DH\u00a0is not an easy task since it involves a wide range of activities, also a wide range of perspectives of what’s DH and what is not. However, it is possible with determination and convergence of views, and seeking what is best for\u00a0the future of the field.<\/p>\n
Determining a particular definition of DH is hard, but it’s key for the\u00a0flourishing of the field because if it is not defined, people who wants to learn it would be too\u00a0intimidated by the\u00a0ambiguity surrounding it.\u00a0Therefore, it would push them away rather than attract them. Early in the semester, we talked about how\u00a0ivy league schools do not have digital humanities\u2019’ classes or\u00a0digital humanities’ scholars, I believe this is part of the problem of not having a specific definition of the discipline,\u00a0they know it exist, but they don’t know what exactly it is, and in the meanwhile, it doesn’t seem that anybody is answering this\u00a0question.<\/p>\n
Now going back to the initial questions, \u201chow might DH change people fundamentally, if it does at all? And what does the risk of such a fundamental change mean as we attempt\u00a0to define DH?” I honestly believe that DH changes people\u00a0basically because it gives them a\u00a0chance to experience\u00a0Humanities, the\u00a0field they always were passionate about\u00a0and cared about, in a whole new and exciting world.\u00a0Switching the\u00a0humanities\u00a0from traditional paper-based methods to modern digital-based methods is very\u00a0enlightening because it makes our discipline more\u00a0reachable and achievable. In a sense that you can do\u00a0digitally whatever you normally do on paper, in a much less time and in a more\u00a0convenient space. For\u00a0example, if you were writing a feedback comment on\u00a0one of your fellow\u00a0scholars’ literary review of a piece, you can search online the terms you don’t understand, or you can easily take a look at what others have said about the same literary work, or you can\u00a0highlight\u00a0the points you think are worth discussing, etc. You can do all of that while sitting on your\u00a0couch in your living room at 10 p.m. So I believe doing\u00a0such a change would\u00a0make our lives easier,\u00a0and it would not risk our knowledge of the humanities, the only thing I feel we could\u00a0be risking in switching to the digital is, not having instant and\u00a0concrete\u00a0interaction with others in the field.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Defining Digital Humanities has been an issue for those involved with it and those eager to study it. The first group want\u00a0to label the field as logical and solid, while the second group want to understand it and search it, so it is very important for both groups to have a certain definition, one they […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=593"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":612,"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593\/revisions\/612"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}