Digital Humanities: Current Perspective, Practices, and Research: Volume 7

This Chapter provides an overview of the field of digital humanities and examines the arguments that are helping to shape it in a variety of ways. This chapter explores the unique difference in perspective between the “code” as the basis of understanding the humanities in general and digital humanities more specifically and the focus of pedagogues, who believe that it is indeed the examination and expression of the humanities that help shape the code, thus giving the code meaning. There are also those who focus more on research within the field and are not conversant on how various tools work but instead why they are chosen in the first place. This chapter also explores how the work of students, as user of that which we in the field code, teach and research, impacts the discipline.

This chapter takes a look at the Social Web. Humanities scholars are, by and large, a fairly social group. Attend any of the Modern Language Association conferences and you will be inundated with invitations to attend events hosted by publishers, groups within MLA, universities, and alumni organizations. The way we now include apps as an inherent part of our socialization, however, is changing and evolving as a result of some of the tools that are to be associated with the digital humanities, albeit not necessarily as apparently so as some others. This chapter explores the familiar players like Facebook™, Google+™, Twitter™, and others and discusses how they are being used by those in the field, contextualizing them within a variety of disciplines in the humanities through case studies while situating the category alongside theories that make sense of their use. Not as commonly used in academic social networks are vlogging applications along with student blog sites, which are also examined in this chapter. It is in this and subsequent chapters where augmented reality enhancements will be used. Please follow the directions at the beginning of Chapter 2 to access these additions.

This Chapter is all about communication and the ways we are now able to reach out to others around the world from our personal computers or mobile devices, which were never available before. One might initially consider this section more in line with productivity tools instead of those impacting the digital humanities. I will, however, demonstrate that it is through these tools that the field is expanding, offering interesting ways in which scholars can communicate ideas with one another, share thoughts, research, and collaborate. Additionally, it is through the use of these tools that our ideas are being shared with students and interestingly how students are, in turn, reciprocating our efforts. The chapter focuses on video broadcasting tools, audio conferencing, audiocasting, and collaboration applications, offering examples of how they can be used in a classroom setting.

This chapter focuses on visualization. Seeing the humanities differently is one of the amazing benefits of working with tools mentioned within this category. Whether it be more traditional visualizations like images or video or that which is considered a bit more advanced like augmented or virtual reality, the enhanced perspective gained through the use of these tools offers digital humanities scholars unprecedented disciplinary perspectives while helping to shape new research areas, questions, and understanding of humanity and culture. In addition to visualization and issues related to it, this chapter also examines gaming and how games and play are impacting the digital humanities in exciting ways.

This chapter explores the different ways we share our research. The ways in which we are productive, again, help shape the tools in which productivity occurs. Archiving, storing, and sharing are crucial within the field of digital humanities and offer interesting perspectives on how we as humans share information with one another. The focus in this chapter is also on specific tools like timelines, e-portfolios, and the new generation of presentation applications.