2,184,623 research outputs found
OAPEN-UK: an Open Access Business Model for Scholarly Monographs in the Humanities and Social Sciences
This paper presents the initial findings of OAPEN-UK, a UK research project gathering evidence on the social and technological impacts of an open access business model for scholarly monographs in the humanities and social sciences
Big? Smart? Clean? Messy? Data in the Humanities
This paper is about data in the humanities. Most of my colleagues in literary and cultural studies would not necessarily speak of their objects of study as “data.” If you ask them what it is they are studying, they would rather speak of books, paintings and movies; of drama and crime fiction, of still lives and action painting; of German expressionist movies and romantic comedy. They would mention Denis Diderot or Toni Morrison, Chardin or Jackson Pollock, Fritz Lang or Diane Keaton. Maybe they would talk about what they are studying as texts, images, and sounds. But rarely would they consider their objects of study to be “data.” However, in the humanities just as in other areas of research, we are increasingly dealing with “data.” With digitization efforts in the private and public sectors going on around the world, more and more data relevant to our fields of study exists, and, if the data has been licensed appropriately, it is available for research. The digital humanities aim to raise to the challenge and realize the potential of this data for humanistic inquiry. As Christine Borgman has shown in her book on Scholarship in the Digital Age, this is as much a theoretical, methodological and social issue as it is a technical issue.
Indeed, the existence of all this data raises a host of questions, some of which I would like to address here. For example:
What is the relation between the data we have and our objects of study? – Does data replace books, paintings and movies? In what way can data be said to be representations of them?
What difference does it make to analyze the digital representation or version of a novel or a painting instead of the printed book, the manuscript, or the original painting?
What types of data are there in the humanities, and what difference does it make? – I will argue that one can distinguish two types of data, “big” data and “smart” data. What, then, does it mean to deal with big data, or smart data, in the humanities?
What new ways of dealing with data do we need to adopt in the humanities? – How is big data and smart data being dealt with in the process of scholarly knowledge generation, that is when data is being created, enriched, analyzed and interpreted
Humanities for the Environment—A Manifesto for Research and Action
abstract: Human preferences, practices and actions are the main drivers of global environmental change in the 21st century. It is crucial, therefore, to promote pro-environmental behavior. In order to accomplish this, we need to move beyond rational choice and behavioral decision theories, which do not capture the full range of commitments, assumptions, imaginaries, and belief systems that drive those preferences and actions. Humanities disciplines, such as philosophy, history, religious studies, gender studies, language and literary studies, psychology, and pedagogics do offer deep insights into human motivations, values, and choices. We believe that the expertise of such fields for transforming human preferences, practices and actions is ignored at society’s peril. We propose an agenda that focuses global humanities research on stepping up to the challenges of planetary environmental change. We have established Environmental Humanities Observatories through which to observe, explore and enact the crucial ways humanistic disciplines may help us understand and engage with global ecological problems by providing insight into human action, perceptions, and motivation. We present this Manifesto as an invitation for others to join the “Humanities for the Environment” open global consortium of humanities observatories as we continue to develop a shared research agenda.The final version of this article, as published in Humanities, can be viewed online at: http://www.mdpi.com/2076-0787/4/4/97
Disciplined: Using educational studies to analyse 'Humanities Computing'
Humanities Computing is an emergent field. The activities described as 'Humanities Computing' continue to expand in number and sophistication, yet no concrete definition of the field exists, and there are few academic departments that specialize in this area. Most introspection regarding the role, meaning, and focus of "Humanities Computing" has come from a practical and pragmatic perspective from scholars and educators within the field itself. This article provides an alternative, externalized, viewpoint of the focus of Humanities Computing, by analysing the discipline through its community, research, curriculum, teaching programmes, and the message they deliver, either consciously or unconsciously, about the scope of the discipline. It engages with Educational Theory to provide a means to analyse, measure, and define the field, and focuses specifically on the ACH/ALLC 2005 Conference to identify and analyse those who are involved with the humanities computing community. © 2006 Oxford University Press
Manifesto for the Humanities: Transforming Doctoral Education in Good Enough Times
After a remarkable career in higher education, Sidonie Smith offers Manifesto for the Humanities as a reflective contribution to the current academic conversation over the place of the Humanities in the 21st century. Her focus is on doctoral education and opportunities she sees for its reform. Grounding this manifesto in background factors contributing to current “crises” in the humanities, Smith advocates for a 21st century doctoral education responsive to the changing ecology of humanistic scholarship and teaching. She elaborates a more expansive conceptualization of coursework and dissertation, a more robust, engaged public humanities, and a more diverse, collaborative, and networked sociality
Digital Humanities Pedagogy
Academic institutions are starting to recognize the growing public interest in digital humanities research, and there is an increasing demand from students for formal training in its methods. Despite the pressure on practitioners to develop innovative courses, scholarship in this area has tended to focus on research methods, theories and results rather than critical pedagogy and the actual practice of teaching. The essays in this collection offer a timely intervention in digital humanities scholarship, bringing together established and emerging scholars from a variety of humanities disciplines across the world. The first section offers views on the practical realities of teaching digital humanities at undergraduate and graduate levels, presenting case studies and snapshots of the authors’ experiences alongside models for future courses and reflections on pedagogical successes and failures. The next section proposes strategies for teaching foundational digital humanities methods across a variety of scholarly disciplines, and the book concludes with wider debates about the place of digital humanities in the academy, from the field’s cultural assumptions and social obligations to its political visions. Digital Humanities Pedagogy broadens the ways in which both scholars and practitioners can think about this emerging discipline, ensuring its ongoing development, vitality and long-term sustainability
Digital Methods in the Humanities
Digital Humanities is a transformational endeavor that not only changes the perception, storage, and interpretation of information but also of research processes and questions. It also prompts new ways of interdisciplinary communication between humanities scholars and computer scientists. This volume offers a unique perspective on digital methods for and in the humanities. It comprises case studies from various fields to illustrate the challenge of matching existing textual research practices and digital tools. Problems and solutions with and for training tools as well as the adjustment of research practices are presented and discussed with an interdisciplinary focus
Digital Methods in the Humanities
Digital Humanities is a transformational endeavor that not only changes the perception, storage, and interpretation of information but also of research processes and questions. It also prompts new ways of interdisciplinary communication between humanities scholars and computer scientists. This volume offers a unique perspective on digital methods for and in the humanities. It comprises case studies from various fields to illustrate the challenge of matching existing textual research practices and digital tools. Problems and solutions with and for training tools as well as the adjustment of research practices are presented and discussed with an interdisciplinary focus
Arkansas Humanities Council records
This collection contains the administrative and project files of the Arkansas Humanities Council
Humanities Computing as Digital Humanities
This article presents an examination of how digital humanities is currently conceived and described, and examines the discursive shift from humanities computing to digital humanities. It is argued that this renaming of humanities computing as digital humanities carries with it a set of epistemic commitments that are not necessarily compatible with a broad and inclusive notion of the digital humanities. In particular, the author suggests that tensions arise from the instrumental, textual and methodological focus of humanities computing as well as its relative lack of engagement with the "digital" as a study object. This article is the first in a series of four articles attempting to describe and analyze the field of digital humanities and digital humanities as a transformative practice.</p
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