Digital Humanities
This blog is written in response to the thinking activity on Digital Humanities assigned by Dr. Dilip Barad sir, Department of English. So in this blog I am going to explore my understanding of Digital Humanities and what is done under Digital Humanities.
Let's understand what is Digital Humanities:
Digital Humanities, commonly known as DH, seems to juxtapose two seemingly contradictory concepts:
"Digital" and "Humanities."
While "Digital" is directly connected to machines and technology, "Humanities" is concerned with the study of human culture, history, and society. This combination of both elements creates an intriguing blend of technology and human-centered perspectives. Thus, Digital Humanities appears to be an oxymoron, representing a self-contradiction within the term itself.
“The digital humanities, also known as humanities computing, is a field of study, research, teaching, and invention concerned with the intersection of computing and the disciplines of the humanities. It is methodological by nature and interdisciplinary in scope. It involves investigation, analysis, synthesis and presentation of information in electronic form. It studies how these media affect the disciplines in which they are used, and what these disciplines have to contribute to our knowledge of computing.”
I have asked ChatGPT about the same and got the satisfactory answer:
Prompt: What is Digital Humanities?
Ans:- Digital Humanities is an interdisciplinary field that combines the use of digital tools and methods with humanistic inquiry to study and explore various aspects of human culture, history, literature, art, language, and more. It involves applying computational techniques, data analysis, and information visualization to traditional humanities research and scholarship.
The field of Digital Humanities encompasses a wide range of activities, including digitizing and preserving cultural artifacts and texts, creating digital archives and libraries, developing tools for textual analysis and data mining, designing interactive visualizations, conducting computational analysis of large datasets, and using digital platforms for collaborative research and scholarly communication.
Digital Humanities projects often involve collaborations between scholars, librarians, archivists, computer scientists, and other experts from diverse disciplines. These projects aim to enhance traditional humanistic research methods, explore new research questions, and enable innovative approaches to studying and understanding human culture and history.
Some examples of Digital Humanities projects include digitizing ancient manuscripts and making them available online, using computational analysis to study patterns in literary texts, creating interactive maps and timelines to visualize historical events, and developing digital platforms for crowdsourced transcription and annotation of archival materials.
Overall, Digital Humanities seeks to harness the power of digital technologies to advance humanistic research, promote interdisciplinary collaboration, and engage with broader audiences in new and meaningful ways
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Here are some common activities and projects undertaken in the field of Digital Humanities which I have generated from ChatGPT.
(Prompt: Can you suggest what is done under Digital Humanities?)
Digital Humanities is an interdisciplinary field that leverages digital tools, technologies, and computational methods to enhance research, analysis, and communication within the humanities disciplines. Here are some of the key activities and areas of focus within Digital Humanities:
1. Text Analysis: Digital Humanities scholars use computational methods to analyze large volumes of texts, enabling them to identify patterns, trends, and insights that may not be easily apparent through traditional close reading.
2. Data Visualization: Visualizing data through interactive graphs, charts, and maps helps researchers and audiences better understand complex information and relationships within humanities research.
3. Digital archives and libraries: Digital Humanities projects involve digitizing and preserving cultural artifacts, manuscripts, and historical documents, making them accessible to a wider audience through online platforms.
4. Text Encoding and Markup: Applying markup languages like XML or TEI (Text Encoding Initiative) to texts to add structure, annotations, and metadata for easier analysis and navigation.
5. Digital Publishing: Publishing scholarly works and research in digital formats, often incorporating multimedia elements and interactive features to engage readers.
6. Cultural Heritage and Digital Curation: Working on projects that involve the preservation and presentation of cultural heritage materials using digital technologies, such as virtual museums and online exhibits.
7. Natural Language Processing (NLP): Utilizing NLP techniques to process and understand human language, which is especially valuable for analyzing large corpora of texts.
8. Network Analysis: Studying connections and relationships among individuals, institutions, or concepts within historical or cultural contexts through network analysis tools.
9. Digital Mapping and GIS: Integrating geographical information and mapping techniques to analyze spatial relationships in historical or literary contexts.
10. Digital Storytelling: Using digital platforms to create interactive narratives that combine text, images, audio, and video to convey complex ideas and engage audiences.
11. Social Media and Digital Communication: Examining how digital technologies and social media platforms impact communication, culture, and society.
12. Computational Art and Literature: Exploring creative expressions using programming, generative algorithms, and interactive installations.
Overall, Digital Humanities seeks to bridge the gap between traditional humanities research and the capabilities offered by digital technologies, opening up new possibilities for exploration, analysis, and interpretation of human culture and history.
Apart from these 12 fields, I would like to add another one called 'Generative Literature' and E-Literature which has gained a rise.
As part of Studying Digital Humanities, two research scholars from the department of English, MKBU Ms. Prakruti Bhatt and Ms. Kavisha Alagiya make acquainted us with what is Generative Literature as their research topics revolves around the same. Here we came across numerous E-Lit sources like,
PoemPORTRAITELECTRONIC LITERATURE COLLECTION
Here I am attaching the recording of both the sessions:
Now let's understand some of these areas of Digital Humanities through examples:
Digital Archives and Libraries:
A digital archive is similar in purpose to a physical archive, but the historical documents and objects that provide evidence of the past have been digitized (often by scanning or photography, unless a document was created digitally in the first place) and made available online. Similar way books are also digitalised.
Internet Archive:
The Internet Archive is a renowned digital library founded on May 10, 1996, and led by Brewster Kahle, a proponent of free information. It offers free access to an extensive collection of digitized materials, including websites, software applications, music, audiovisual content, and printed materials. Serving as both a library and an activist organization, the Internet Archive champions the cause of a free and open Internet. The Internet Archive's mission is to provide universal access to knowledge.
The Internet Archive enables the public to upload and download digital content to its data cluster, although the majority of its data is gathered automatically through web crawlers. These crawlers diligently preserve as much of the public web as possible. The Archive's Wayback Machine, which contains billions of web captures, serves as an extensive web archive. Additionally, the Archive oversees various book digitization projects, making it one of the largest efforts in the world.
The Rossetti Archive focuses on facilitating scholarly research on Dante Gabriel Rossetti, a prominent figure in 19th-century Britain who excelled as a painter, designer, writer, and translator. Regarded by influential individuals like John Ruskin and Walter Pater as a highly significant and innovative artistic force, Rossetti's work is the subject of study within the archive.
Cultural Heritage Preservation:-
The Rajasthan State Archives holds a unique position among archives in India due to the indigenous nature of its collections. It traces its roots back to the former General Record Offices and similar record agencies of the former states of Rajasthan. Established in 1955, the State Archives possesses branch offices throughout Rajasthan, including the former Chief Commissioner's province of Ajmer-Merwara. The State Archives primarily fulfills two duties: preserving records in its possession and providing information from those records to government departments, the judiciary, and the public as needed, while also ensuring accessibility to scholars for historical research in accordance with the rules set by the Government of Rajasthan.
Google art and Culture Archive
Digital Storytelling:
Twine: Twine is an open-source tool that lets you create interactive, nonlinear stories. It's often used for choose-your-own-adventure style narratives and text-based games.
Knight Lab's TimelineJS: TimelineJS enables you to create interactive timelines that can incorporate various media like images, videos, and social media posts to present your story chronologically.
Canva: Canva is primarily a graphic design tool, but it provides templates and features that can be used to create visually appealing and informative digital stories.
Digital Publishing
In the digital age, various platforms like blogs, personal websites, and apps (e.g., Pratilipi, YourQuote, WordPress) offer writers opportunities to publish their content, connecting them with diverse audiences and creating a more democratized space for sharing written work.
Natural Language Processing (NLP): NLP refers to the branch of artificial intelligence or AI—concerned with giving computers the ability to understand text and spoken words in much the same way human beings can. Nowadays there is an outburst of AI tools like ChatGPT, Google Bard, Language AI which has brought drastic changes in language learning.
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