blog post .. "What is DH?"

 Truthfully, before this class I had never really thought about what digital humanities was. During the first week of classes when I began to look at different definitions of what digital humanities was, it felt very overwhelming.


The start of Chapter one of the textbook was the first time I felt like I was understanding what digital humanities was, “Digital humanities work is done at the intersection of computational methods and human materials” (Drucker 1). Though this definition is super simple, it was the first thing that truly clicked for me. 


Before reading any material from this class, I would have guessed that digital humanities was simply digital art and websites. I did not realize how broad it was and how many moving parts there were to it.


The book mentioned that though there are always things changing when it comes to digital humanities, there are central ideas to digital humanities. Those are, remediation, datafication, processing, presentation and sustainability. These themes remain constant in digital humanities, they are just always advancing and improving.


 Another thing that was surprising to me, was the author’s definition of ‘digital’. She described it as, “information stored in discrete binary form, as the inscription of positive and negative charges, encoded as ones and zeros, or bits in which one state is absolutely distinct from the other. … Also, information can be digital without being online” (Drucker 9). This was surprising for me to learn, previously I had assumed that ‘digital’ was only for things that were online and that Digital Humanities was just online media. Learning that digital just meant that organized information also helped clear up some additional confusion that I had. 


Overall these chapters helped clear up a lot of the confusion I previously had, and it made me excited to get an even better understanding of this topic.


For an example I am including one of my favorite podcasts.



Comments

  1. em gagneSeptember 2, 2025 at 9:47 AM

    I've never heard of this podcast before, but it seems really interesting! I liked how you were able to connect it to this class! I also found Drucker's definition of "digital" to be surprising, as one would only assume that "digital" means online. I think that your analysis of digital humanities is very accurate, especially considering you hadn't known the proper definition until taking this class. Great job!

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  2. Dr. MSeptember 2, 2025 at 10:47 AM

    Important reflections on "digital" and those central themes! I'm glad the readings helped things "click"! :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Jack BunnellSeptember 2, 2025 at 11:18 AM

    I was definitely in the same boat as you during the first week on feeling overwhelmed - digital humanities sounded really simple at first but more complex when I thought more about it! I think your post does a great job to help someone who also had no prior knowledge on this subject and is super easy to understand! And it's definitely important to know that digital doesn't mean something that's online - it's very easy to assume so when you hear terms like "the digital world" when people talk about the Internet.

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