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Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 33, No. 370. Department of Digital Humanities, King's College London Hosted by King's Digital Lab www.dhhumanist.org Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org Date: 2019-11-01 13:43:29+00:00 From: savoye@eapoe.org Subject: Re: [Humanist] 33.366: what we're not only ready for but doing When I first subscribed to this listserve, I thought I would eventually get something approaching an answer to my question "what is Digital Humanities?" I did not necessarily expect an easy answer, a clear answer, or even just one answer. What I thought I would get is a lot of ideas and aspirations, most of which might be fragmentary or embryonic, but at least some of which seemed to lead to some tangible actions or directions. Instead, I find that even the most ardent advocates, and often especially the most ardent advocates, appear to be struggling with the same question. That seems to me to be a fundamental problem, and perhaps a sign that rather than being a whole new thing, Digital Humanities is mostly just a slight variation of what we have already been doing, but desperately does not want to admit that. I say this as someone who has spent more than 20 years preparing electronic texts, and often been told that what I was doing "isn't really Digital Humanities," even as people saying so could not really say why. (I don't do this as a professional, which sometimes casts a shadow of illegitimacy over my efforts and views, but also grants me a degree of independence and perspective that may not be available from inside.) At the moment, Digital Humanities feels like a vague aspiration seeking not only for a tangible expression, but for a definition or clarification of what the aspiration is. Too much talk about Digital Humanities feels as if it is an effort to hide the possible outcome that there is no such clarification, at least not on the near horizon. Jeffrey A. Savoye The Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore https://www.eapoe.org _______________________________________________ Unsubscribe at: http://dhhumanist.org/Restricted List posts to: humanist@dhhumanist.org List info and archives at at: http://dhhumanist.org Listmember interface at: http://dhhumanist.org/Restricted/ Subscribe at: http://dhhumanist.org/membership_form.php
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