This volume introduces the reader to the wide range of methods that digital humanities employ, and offers a practical guide to the study, interpretation, and presentation of cultural material and practices. In this instance, the editors consider digital humanities to include both the use of computing to understand cultural material in new ways, and the application of theories and methods from the humanities to interpret new technologies. Each chapter provides a step-by-step guide to cutting-edge methodologies so that students can make informed decisions about the methods they use, consider ethical practices, follow practical procedures, and present their work effectively. Readers will develop practical and reflexive understandings of the software and digital devices that they study and use for research, and the book will help new researchers collaborate and contribute to their scholarly communities, and to public discourse. As contemporary humanities work becomes increasingly interdisciplinary, and increasingly permeated by and with digital technologies, this volume helps new researchers navigate an evolving academic environment. Humanities and social sciences students will find this textbook an invaluable resource for assessing and creating digital projects.

This book draws on both traditional and emerging fields of study to consider consider what a grounded definition of quantitative and qualitative research in the Digital Humanities (DH) might mean; which areas DH can fruitfully draw on in order to foster and develop that understanding; where we can see those methods applied; and what the future directions of research methods in Digital Humanities might look like. Schuster and Dunn map a wide-ranging DH research methodology by drawing on both ‘traditional’ fields of DH study such as text, historical sources, museums and manuscripts, and innovative areas in research production, such as knowledge and technology, digital culture and society and history of network technologies. Featuring global contributions from scholars in the United Kingdom, the United States, Europe and Australia, this book draws together a range of disciplinary perspectives to explore the exciting developments offered by this fast-evolving field. Routledge International Handbook of Research Methods in Digital Humanities is essential reading for anyone who teaches, researches or studies Digital Humanities or related subjects.

The first volume to introduce the techniques and methods of reading digital material for researchDigital Humanities has become one of the new domains of academe at the interface of technological development, epistemological change, and methodological concerns. This volume explores how digital material might be read or utilized in research, whether that material is digitally born as fanfiction, for example, mostly is, or transposed from other sources. The volume asks questions such as what happens when text is transformed from printed into digital matter, and how that impacts on the methods we bring to bear on exploring that technologized matter, for example in the case of digital editions. Issues such as how to analyse visual material in digital archives or Twitter feeds, how to engage in data mining, what it means to undertake crowd-sourcing, big data, and what digital network analyses can tell us about online interactions are dealt with. This will give Humanities researchers ideas for doing digitally based research and also suggest ways of engaging with new digital research methods. Key featuresFirst volume centred on the navigation and interpretation of digital material as research methods in the HumanitiesUp-to-date analyses of issues and methods including big data, crowdsourcing, digital network analysis, working with digital additionsBased on actual research projects such as para-textual work with fanfiction, reading twitter, different kinds of distant and close readings

Pairing full-length scholarly essays with shorter pieces drawn from scholarly blogs and conference presentations, as well as commissioned interviews and position statements, Debates in the Digital Humanities 2016 reveals a dynamic view of a field in negotiation with its identity, methods, and reach. Pieces in the book explore how DH can and must change in response to social justice movements and events like #Ferguson; how DH alters and is altered by community college classrooms; and how scholars applying DH approaches to feminist studies, queer studies, and black studies might reframe the commitments of DH analysts. Numerous contributors examine the movement of interdisciplinary DH work into areas such as history, art history, and archaeology, and a special forum on large-scale text mining brings together position statements on a fast-growing area of DH research. In the multivalent aspects of its arguments, progressing across a range of platforms and environments, Debates in the Digital Humanities 2016 offers a vision of DH as an expanded field—new possibilities, differently structured. Published simultaneously in print, e-book, and interactive webtext formats, each DH annual will be a book-length publication highlighting the particular debates that have shaped the discipline in a given year. By identifying key issues as they unfold, and by providing a hybrid model of open-access publication, these volumes and the Debates in the Digital Humanities series will articulate the present contours of the field and help forge its future. Contributors: Moya Bailey, Northeastern U; Fiona Barnett; Matthew Battles, Harvard U; Jeffrey M. Binder; Zach Blas, U of London; Cameron Blevins, Rutgers U; Sheila A. Brennan, George Mason U; Timothy Burke, Swarthmore College; Rachel Sagner Buurma, Swarthmore College; Micha Cárdenas, U of Washington–Bothell; Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, Brown U; Tanya E. Clement, U of Texas–Austin; Anne Cong-Huyen, Whittier College; Ryan Cordell, Northeastern U; Tressie McMillan Cottom, Virginia Commonwealth U; Amy E. Earhart, Texas A&M U; Domenico Fiormonte, U of Roma Tre; Paul Fyfe, North Carolina State U; Jacob Gaboury, Stony Brook U; Kim Gallon, Purdue U; Alex Gil, Columbia U; Brian Greenspan, Carleton U; Richard Grusin, U of Wisconsin, Milwaukee; Michael Hancher, U of Minnesota; Molly O’Hagan Hardy; David L. Hoover, New York U; Wendy F. Hsu; Patrick Jagoda, U of Chicago; Jessica Marie Johnson, Michigan State U; Steven E. Jones, Loyola U; Margaret Linley, Simon Fraser U; Alan Liu, U of California, Santa Barbara; Elizabeth Losh, U of California, San Diego; Alexis Lothian, U of Maryland; Michael Maizels, Wellesley College; Mark C. Marino, U of Southern California; Anne B. McGrail, Lane Community College; Bethany Nowviskie, U of Virginia; Julianne Nyhan, U College London; Amanda Phillips, U of California, Davis; Miriam Posner, U of California, Los Angeles; Rita Raley, U of California, Santa Barbara; Stephen Ramsay, U of Nebraska–Lincoln; Margaret Rhee, U of Oregon; Lisa Marie Rhody, Graduate Center, CUNY; Roopika Risam, Salem State U; Stephen Robertson, George Mason U; Mark Sample, Davidson College; Jentery Sayers, U of Victoria; Benjamin M. Schmidt, Northeastern U; Scott Selisker, U of Arizona; Jonathan Senchyne, U of Wisconsin, Madison; Andrew Stauffer, U of Virginia; Joanna Swafford, SUNY New Paltz; Toniesha L. Taylor, Prairie View A&M U; Dennis Tenen; Melissa Terras, U College London; Anna Tione; Ted Underwood, U of Illinois, Urbana–Champaign; Ethan Watrall, Michigan State U; Jacqueline Wernimont, Arizona State U; Laura Wexler, Yale U; Hong-An Wu, U of Illinois, Urbana–Champaign.

Jennifer Travis and Jessica DeSpain present a long-overdue collection of theoretical perspectives and case studies aimed at teaching nineteenth-century American literature using digital humanities tools and methods. Scholars foundational to the development of digital humanities join educators who have made digital methods central to their practices. Together they discuss and illustrate how digital pedagogies deepen student learning. The collection's innovative approach allows the works to be read in any order. Travis and DeSpain curate conversations on the value of project-based, collaborative learning; examples of real-world assignments where students combine close, collaborative, and computational reading; how digital humanities aids in the consideration of marginal texts; the ways in which an ethics of care can help students organize artifacts; and how an activist approach affects debates central to the study of difference in the nineteenth century. A supplemental companion website with substantial appendixes of syllabi and assignments is now available for readers of Teaching with Digital Humanities.

A guide to understanding digital research from both a conceptual and practical perspective, helping the reader to make sense of the issues, challenges and opportunities of social science research in the digital age. The book will help the reader to understand how the digital context impacts on social science research and is divided into three main sections: A Justification & Reconceptualization of Digital Research: The authors explore how far the digital environment is transforming social science research. Accessing Digital Data: An outline of the characteristics of digital data, temporality issues in digital research and different data sources. Moving Forward with Digital Research: Examining the practicalities of how to conduct digital research, with examples and suggestions to strengthen the implementation of digital research. Suitable for Masters and Doctoral students undertaking digital or online research methods courses, as well as anyone doing a research project or dissertation with an online component.

As all scholars increasingly use digital tools to support their research, and every internet user becomes used to data being available, elucidating, and engaging, the creative aspects of Digital Humanities work are coming under increasing scrutiny. This volume explores the practice of making new tools, new images, new collections, and new artworks in an academic environment, detailing who needs to be involved and what their roles might be, and how they come together to produce knowledge as a collective. The chapters presented here demonstrate that creation is never neutral with political and theoretical concerns intentionally or unavoidably always being written into the fabric of what is being made, even if that's the seeming neatness of computer code. In presenting their own creative research, the writers in this volume offer examples of practice that will be of use to anyone interested in learning more about contemporary Digital Humanities scholarship and its implications.

Besides familiar and now-commonplace tasks that computers do all the time, what else are they capable of? Stephen Ramsay's intriguing study of computational text analysis examines how computers can be used as "reading machines" to open up entirely new possibilities for literary critics. Computer-based text analysis has been employed for the past several decades as a way of searching, collating, and indexing texts. Despite this, the digital revolution has not penetrated the core activity of literary studies: interpretive analysis of written texts. Computers can handle vast amounts of data, allowing for the comparison of texts in ways that were previously too overwhelming for individuals, but they may also assist in enhancing the entirely necessary role of subjectivity in critical interpretation. Reading Machines discusses the importance of this new form of text analysis conducted with the assistance of computers. Ramsay suggests that the rigidity of computation can be enlisted in the project of intuition, subjectivity, and play.

Can established humanities methods coexist with computational thinking? It is one of the major questions in humanities research today, as scholars increasingly adopt sophisticated data science for their work. James E. Dobson explores the opportunities and complications faced by humanists in this new era. Though the study and interpretation of texts alongside sophisticated computational tools can serve scholarship, these methods cannot replace existing frameworks. As Dobson shows, ideas of scientific validity cannot easily nor should be adapted for humanities research because digital humanities, unlike science, lack a leading-edge horizon charting the frontiers of inquiry. Instead, the methods of digital humanities require a constant rereading. At the same time, suspicious and critical readings of digital methodologies make it unwise for scholars to defer to computational methods. Humanists must examine the tools--including the assumptions that went into the codes and algorithms--and questions surrounding their own use of digital technology in research. Insightful and forward thinking, Critical Digital Humanities lays out a new path of humanistic inquiry that merges critical theory and computational science.

A visionary report on the revitalization of the liberal arts tradition in the electronically inflected, design-driven, multimedia language of the twenty-first century. Digital_Humanities is a compact, game-changing report on the state of contemporary knowledge production. Answering the question “What is digital humanities?,” it provides an in-depth examination of an emerging field. This collaboratively authored and visually compelling volume explores methodologies and techniques unfamiliar to traditional modes of humanistic inquiry—including geospatial analysis, data mining, corpus linguistics, visualization, and simulation—to show their relevance for contemporary culture. Written by five leading practitioner-theorists whose varied backgrounds embody the intellectual and creative diversity of the field, Digital_Humanities is a vision statement for the future, an invitation to engage, and a critical tool for understanding the shape of new scholarship.