(Un)writing the histories of Humanities Computing(s)

Edward Vanhoutte

Director of Research & Publications, Royal Academy of Dutch Language & LiteratureHead, Centre for Scholarly Editing and Document StudiesResearch Associate, UCL Centre for Digital Humanities

edward.vanhoutte@kantl.be@evanhoutte

http://historyproef.org/blog/teaching/digital-humanities-definitions-by-type/

HC ≠ DH

http://transducer.ontoligent.com/?p=717

http://tapor.ualberta.ca/taporwiki/

At a moment when the academy in general and the humanities in particular are the object of massive and wrenching changes, digital humanities emerges as a rare vector for jujitsu, simultaneously serving to position the humanities at the very forefront of certain valueladen agendas—entrepreneurship, openness and public engagement, futureoriented thinking, collaboration, interdisciplinarity, big data, industry tieins, and distance or distributed education—while at the same time allowing for various forms of intrainstitutional mobility as new courses are mooted, new colleagues are hired, new resources are allotted, and old resources are reallocated.

Matthew Kirschenbaum

●Discover, confirm and exemplify how computing affects analysis, so that the basic case for humanities computing is clear and persuasive across the disciplines.

●Identify and cultivate kinships with the disciplines, so that humanities computing is informed by the collective ways of knowing they have cultivated.

●Cultivate and exercise the ability to explain the essentials of humanities computing to non-specialist colleagues and to the general public.

●Develop as a prevalent habit and as a serious, essential aspect of work the strongly conversational mode of scholarly publication exemplified by Humanist and other Internet forums.

●Write the ethnography of collaborative engagements to document how successful collaborations happen and how perceptions change in the encounter of the humanities with computing.

●Develop a genuine historiography of humanities computing from existing chronologies; begin writing histories of the field.

●History & computing (Adman, 1987)●Computing in musicology, 1966-1991 (Hewlett & Selfridge-Field, 1991)●Statistical analysis of literature in Chum, 1966-1990 (Potter, 1991)

●A Companion to Digital Humanities (2004)● Archaeology● Art history● Classics● History● Lexicography● Linguistics● Literary studies● Music● Multimedia● Performing arts● Philosophy and religion

Humanities Computing = Semantic Primitive

Historical Knowledge ≈ Definition

Humanities Computing = Semantic Primitive

Historical Knowledge ≈ Definition

2 problems1. Chronology of the definition2. Defining power of the chronology

Unwriting the histories of Humanities Computings

(Un)writing the histories of Humanities Computing(s)

Edward Vanhoutte

Director of Research & Publications, Royal Academy of Dutch Language & LiteratureHead, Centre for Scholarly Editing and Document StudiesResearch Associate, UCL Centre for Digital Humanities

edward.vanhoutte@kantl.be@evanhoutte