Academic Technology and Digital Media - Digital Humanities

Computers and technology more generally have transformed research in the sciences. Digital humanities, sometimes called "humanities computing," starts from the assumption that technology can do the same for research and publication in the humanities and social sciences. Digital humanities encompasses a broad range of research projects, including text analysis on electronic versions of single works or a body of works, stylometric or other quantifiable analysis on non-text-based media, such as film or images, the creation and use of electronic concordances or other automated search methods for both text- and image-based media, the use of computational methods for collating pre-modern prose or poetic texts from an assortment of variant sources, the use of GIS and other computer-based methods for associating data with locations. Digital humanities also includes new methods for publishing scholarly work, including those that take advantage of the options for non-linearity of presentation inherent in hypertext or allow the close association between text and other types of media.

The Office of Academic Technology and Digital Media is committed to supporting digital humanities at Chapman. Our approach is two-fold. Our first priority is to create an intellectual atmosphere in which faculty can think about and discuss the implications of new technologies both to humanities scholarship in general and to their discipline in particular. Secondly, we provide consultation, information on funding opportunities and some logistical support to faculty interested in working on a project that incorporates newer (computer-based) technology.

While digital humanities is often understood as limited to scholarship, at Chapman, we would like to see digital humanities methods find a place in the classroom. Our students will be going on to graduate school or into a work force in which fluency in the use and manipulation of electronic resources and multimedia is increasingly assumed. We are here to support faculty who want to bring new tools to the teaching of the humanities and social sciences.

URL: http://www1.chapman.edu/academic_technology/home/DigitalHumanities.html
Certifying Authority: Mary Litch
Last Modified: December 18, 2008