Understanding Digital Humanities

The application of new computational techniques and visualisation technologies in the Arts and Humanities are resulting in fresh approaches and methodologies for the study of new and traditional corpora. This 'computational turn' takes the methods and techniques from computer science to create innovative means of close and distant reading.

This book discusses the implications and applications of 'Digital Humanities' and the questions raised when using algorithmic techniques. Key researchers in the field provide a comprehensive introduction to important debates surrounding issues such as the contrast between narrative versus database, pattern-matching versus hermeneutics, and the statistical paradigm versus the data mining paradigm.

Also discussed are the new forms of collaboration within the Arts and Humanities that are raised through modular research teams and new organisational structures, as well as techniques for collaborating in an interdisciplinary way. Review: 'Berry and colleagues present us with several current and future trajectories of the digital humanities, both building and questioning its trends.

Through the last 40 years of computational research, the humanities have appropriated and developed many techniques for doing their work computationally, but only in the last ten years has the excess of computational capacity begun to bring central questions about the nature of the humanities to light.

David Berry and his colleagues sit on the cutting edges of these questions, and their work will inform those debates for years to come.' - Jeremy Hunsinger, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, USA 'This book introduces and debates important questions regarding the use of digital technologies in numerous academic approaches in humanities and social sciences.

These new media technologies are impacting across the disciplinary spectrum and pose challenges to traditional scholarship. Dr Berry's book gives us a timely insight into these various challenges and into the kinds of new 'digital humanities' that are emerging. Clearly written and providing a wide range of examples and case studies it is an important contribution to the growing literature on digital humanities.' -- Christian De Cock, University of Essex, UK