Defining digital humanities Terras, Melissa M; Nyhan, Julianne; Vanhoutte, Edward
2013, 2013, 20160513, 2016-05-13, 2016-05-18, 2013-11-28
eBook
Digital Humanities is becoming an increasingly popular focus of academic endeavour. There are now hundreds of Digital Humanities centres worldwide and the subject is taught at both postgraduate and ...undergraduate level. Yet the term 'Digital Humanities' is much debated. This reader brings together, for the first time, in one core volume the essential readings that have emerged in Digital Humanities. We provide a historical overview of how the term 'Humanities Computing' developed into the term 'Digital Humanities', and highlight core readings which explore the meaning, scope, and implementation of the field. To contextualize and frame each included reading, the editors and authors provide a commentary on the original piece. There is also an annotated bibliography of other material not included in the text to provide an essential list of reading in the discipline. This text will be required reading for scholars and students who want to discover the history of Digital Humanities through its core writings, and for those who wish to understand the many possibilities that exist when trying to define Digital Humanities.
Hermeneutica Rockwell, Geoffrey; Sinclair, Stefan
2016, 20160401, 2016-04-01
eBook
The image of the scholar as a solitary thinker dates back at least to Descartes' Discourse on Method . But scholarly practices in the humanities are changing as older forms of communal inquiry are ...combined with modern research methods enabled by the Internet, accessible computing, data availability, and new media. Hermeneutica introduces text analysis using computer-assisted interpretive practices. It offers theoretical chapters about text analysis, presents a set of analytical tools (called Voyant) that instantiate the theory, and provides example essays that illustrate the use of these tools. Voyant allows users to integrate interpretation into texts by creating hermeneutica -- small embeddable "toys" that can be woven into essays published online or into such online writing environments as blogs or wikis. The book's companion website, Hermeneutic.ca, offers the example essays with both text and embedded interactive panels. The panels show results and allow readers to experiment with the toys themselves. The use of these analytical tools results in a hybrid essay: an interpretive work embedded with hermeneutical toys that can be explored for technique. The hermeneutica draw on and develop such common interactive analytics as word clouds and complex data journalism interactives. Embedded in scholarly texts, they create a more engaging argument. Moving between tool and text becomes another thread in a dynamic dialogue.
This book provides a richly rewarding vision of the burgeoning interdisciplinary field of somaesthetics. Composed of fourteen wide-ranging but finely integrated essays by Richard Shusterman, the ...originator of the field, Thinking through the Body explains the philosophical foundations of somaesthetics and applies its insights to central issues in ethics, education, cultural politics, consciousness studies, sexuality and the arts. Integrating Western philosophy, cognitive science and somatic methodologies with classical Asian theories of body, mind and action, these essays probe the nature of somatic existence and the role of body consciousness in knowledge, memory and behavior. Deploying somaesthetic perspectives to analyze key aesthetic concepts (such as style and the sublime), he offers detailed studies of embodiment in drama, dance, architecture and photography. The volume also includes somaesthetic exercises for the classroom and explores the ars erotica as an art of living.
We present the first version of the Visual Argument Structure Tool (VAST), which may be used for jointly visualizing the semantic, conceptual, empirical and reasoning relationships that constitute ...arguments. Its primary purpose is to promote exactness and comprehensiveness in systematic thinking. The system distinguishes between concepts and the words (“names”) that may be used to refer to them. It also distinguishes various ways in which concepts may be related to one another (causation, conceptual implication, prediction, transformation, reasoning), and all of these from beliefs as to whether something IS the case and/or OUGHT to be the case. Using these elements, the system allows for formalizations of narrative argument components at any level of vagueness vs. precision that is deemed possible and/or necessary. This latter feature may make the system particularly useful for attaining greater theoretical specificity in the humanities, and for bridging the gap between the humanities and the “harder” sciences. However, VAST may also be used outside of science, to capture argument structures in e.g., legal analyses, media reports, belief systems, and debates.
PDF
