There is now sufficient interest, teaching and research in “digital humanities” for there to be a “stocktake”, particularly to clarify the scope and nature of this field. This book tackles definitions, in the process raising questions of self-identification with the digital humanities scholarly community, internationalisation of that community, inclusion and exclusion, and the relationship between the traditional and digital humanities. There are also glimpses of pragmatism about presenting this new discipline to established institutions, university managements and funding agencies. The Introduction also notes a tension between aiming for an accepted definition and allowing practitioners freedom to continue the process of “self-definition”, to avoid “fossilising an emerging field and constraining new, boundary-pushing work”.
The editors, based in British and Belgian institutions, set out
[…] to bring together, in one teaching-focused text, core historical and contemporary reading on the act of defining “digital humanities” to demonstrate aspects of the history of the field, to indicate the range of opinions that exist and to encourage others to articulate what it is we think we do when we do digital humanities.
They chose the readings after analysing syllabi of courses around the world.
Other terms used to refer to what is now predominantly known as “digital humanities” are “humanities computing, humanist informatics, literary and linguistic computing and digital resources in the humanities” and, in some cases, “eHumanities”. Relevant journals have existed since the 1960s (Computing and the Humanities), but 2005 is identified as a defining moment, with Blackwell's publication of the Companion to Digital Humanities. In recent years efforts to define and describe digital humanities have increased, and this collection includes selected blog posts among the readings.
The readings are in four sections: Humanities Computing (six readings dating from 1999 to 2006, plus a new chapter by Vanhoutte on the historical shift from humanities computing to digital humanities), Digital Humanities (five readings from 2009 to 2012), From the Blogosphere (eight blog postings from 2010-2011 written by those working in this field, all university-based), Voices from the Community (selected definitions from the “Day of Digital Humanities: 2009-2012”) and a web posting running to more than eight pages of “Digital Humanities Definitions by Type”. A final section includes four pages of selected further reading and 20 questions for class discussion. There are bibliographies with many of the articles; there are frequent references to websites and Twitter postings; and the editors have undertaken to “expand, maintain, and explore our reading list and point to other media which tackle the definition of digital humanities, including posters, images manifestos and book cover art, at the companion website to the volume”.
The editors have not attempted to impose an agreed definition of “digital humanities”, and the considerable number of definitions collected here confirms the fluidity of the field. The book offers a useful historical perspective on the emergence of a new discipline and confirms how far “digital humanities” has come in gaining institutional recognition in many countries (contributors have institutional affiliations in the UK, US, Canada, Sweden, Belgium, Australia). This is not only a valuable resource for digital humanities scholars and students; it also offers valuable insights on discipline formation, on vexed questions about the role of computing and on the relationships between established and emerging fields for those working in the traditional humanities.
