Digital_Humanities adopts a different view: It envisages the present era as one of exceptional promise for the renewal of humanistic scholarship and sets out to demonstrate the contributions of contemporary humanities scholarship to new modes of knowledge formation enabled by networked, digital environments.
Burdick et al. “One: From Humanities to Digital Humanities,” in Digital_Humanities (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012), 7.
This quotation jumped out to me, because it emphasizes the importance of past studies in the humanities. Digital humanities is often seen as its own entity, but it is rooted in a rich tradition of humanistic studies, and I think that can be lost sometimes when focusing only on the digital aspects of it. I think this quote shows that digital humanities are a natural evolution of humanities, and highlights the history of non-digital humanities while focusing on the promising future of digital humanities.
This quote makes me specifically think of my musical background. Before coming to Carleton and during my first year and a half here, all of my interaction with music study wasn’t digital, outside of using my computer to complete readings and submit papers. Then, I took a few classes that required me to use my computer to create and analyze music in ways that I had never done before, such as using software to create an 8-bit song or creating a program to randomly compose music. I wouldn’t have the skills to complete digital music projects if I didn’t have my years of standard music education, and I think captures the essence of this quote.
I have a lot of experience exploring the field of music in relation to digital arts and humanities, and a decent amount of experience with history. This term, I am excited to pursue fields that I am not as experienced in, such as art or literature. I am also looking forward to working with mapping software. Last term, I took an ENTS course where I learned GIS, and I’m very interested to see how mapping can be used in the humanities. Finally, I am eager to continue working with 3D modeling software, as it is very new and exciting to me, and it seems to have a ton of useful applications.
2 thoughts on “Reflections on Digital Humanities”
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This quotation also jumps out at me! I also agree that it emphasizes the importance of past studies in the humanities. It definitely shows the natural evolution of humanities. This was fascinating to think about. Music sounds like it would be cool to explore in combination with digital arts and humanities.
I really appreciate your interpretation of DH being rooted in the rich tradition of humanistic studies, grounded in the past as it evolves into the present… I missed that while reading this part! To me, this quote emphasized a hopeful future, where DH can carry the torch for the humanities, fighting more powerfully the uphill battle humanities has been in to mark its relevance in a STEM-dominant world. I enjoyed reading about how your time at Carleton has allowed you to explore music more digitally and how you linked that so wonderfully to the quote, I would love to hear your work sometime!! You could make a mapping project where you link the meaning of some musical tracks you make to the place that they seem to be most relevant to… for example, your favorite song that you learned from home could be digitized and linked to your home on a map, or something like that!