What is digital humanities?

 

Kaitlin Carroll

    When I think of the digital humanities the first thing that pops into my head is a computer. Whether thats accurate or not it's what pops into my brain. Digital obviously makes me think about electronics, and then following it with humanities make me think of how people interact/express themselves within those electronics. After playing around with the blog and reading some of the Digital Humanities course book, the definition of digital humanities can be interpreted to be combining humanities properties with computational methods. (Drucker, pg 1). The components that Johnna Drucker discussed in her book of digital humanities were most helpful at breaking that subject down for me. In the manifesto, it is explained that it is hard to limit what can be classified as digital humanities because the subject is wide with various allowances of what counts as the category. I like this because then digital humanities is a perfect way to be expressive in a persons own original way with lots of different platforms and formats to choose from. Websites are considered to be a digital humanity using this definition because people can advertise original ideas/spread information through them. A specific example of this that I think of is the website Redbubble. Redbubble is a site that allows content creators to sell their own designs or logos on different items like stickers, posters, phone cases, etc. I consider this to be a digital humanities people people can express their own interest/cultures in the items they are selling and also see what their buyers are most interested in by what they search/purchase. People research what others are interested in and what is currently trending to then create different designs and then profit off of others purchasing their designs.


Comments

  1. CamSeptember 4, 2022 at 10:16 PM

    Hi Kait! I absolutely agree that Johanna Drucker had the easiest description to digest the material. I found some of the other sources to be extremely dense and non-specific. Redbubble being digitial humanities is absolutely a great example! Digital art merchandise manufacturers are a perfect representation of taking art in one form and making it its own digital being.

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  2. Dr. MSeptember 5, 2022 at 10:30 AM

    Redbubble is a cool website example, since it's making art available to a broader audience and sharing creative ideas, as well as computing/tracking the trends, etc. to influence the art that is being made.

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  3. NataliaSeptember 5, 2022 at 1:28 PM

    Hello Kaitlin, before I took this class, I envisioned digital humanities the same way as you did. My personal definition of digital humanities was similar to yours discussing how people expressed themselves through electronics. After reading some of Johanna Drucker’s book I was able to develop a better understanding as well. Redbubble is a great example of digital humanities! It is a website I tend to use often, but never thought about the impact it gives creators.

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