Understanding digital humanities

 

My understanding of Digital Humanities as stated in class is an ever changing discipline open to much interpretation. It is a combination of digital effects to create pictures and images etc.. with the classic elements of humanities. The goal is to allow for opportunities to examine and explore research. As demonstrated by the readings digital humanities explores, much more than basic conversions of texts to digital format. Rather its goal is to provoke new questions and carry out more in-depth examinations through many different modalities. An excellent example of this is the digital humanities manifesto. This demonstrates the importance of diverse cooperation where art and technology intertwine with humanities to expand upon the limits of conventional study. The cooperation between the subjects further is the emergence of new ideas all through providing this information through new perspectives.

Digital humanities is far more complicated than just simply converging text into a digital format. The idea behind digits humanities is to further or change the understanding of the research being done without this a project does not completely qualify as DH.

The discipline needs many different methodologies to explore the novel pathways of investigation. Before taking the time to expand my comprehension of DH it was restricted to the idea that simply translating text to images was it in its entirety. However, as my knowledge increases, my understanding of the topic has altered my viewpoint. I now understand that the primary goal of DH is to facilitate ways to investigate new information that previous approaches may have overlooked.

An excellent example of digital humanities put into practice, is the mapping the republic of letters initiative http://republicofletters.stanford.edu/ 

     This uses digital images it is able to educate the average individual making knowledge, easily acceptable and easily understandable. It’s able to show linkages and concepts, in a clear but interesting format. This project is a wonderful example of how digital humanities not only helps to preserve historical information but is able to redefine our understandings of these networks

As noted previously a project that just converts historical information into digital format, without including an interactive element, no matter how important might not meet the criteria for being considered digital humanities. Some could argue that this element in the project is non-negotiable. It is a fundamental part of digital humanities.