Digital Research in the Humanities
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Digital Humanities

Interdisciplinary field at the intersection:

• computational approaches to the humanities
• humanistic approaches to digital media and digital cultural products
• new forms of scholarly outputs and publication

Computational approaches to the humanities

• Data mining
• Text and natural language analysis
• Data visualization
• Network analysis
• Topic Modeling
• Mapping
• etc.

Archives, literary corpora, historical data...

Humanistic approaches to digital media and digital cultural products

• Media archaeology
• Electronic literature
• Video games
• Digital pedagogy
• etc.

New forms of scholarly outputs and publication

• Digital editions
• Collaborative annotation
• Visualization
• Online exhibits
• etc.

Electronic Literature

(e-lit)

What is Electronic Literature?

“works with important literary aspects that take advantage of the capabilities and contexts provided by the stand-alone or networked computer.”

(Electronic Literature Organization http://eliterature.org/what-is-e-lit/)

“computational and procedural, dependent upon the operations of the machine for its aesthetic effects… it emerges through a series of translations across machine codes, platforms, and networks: its resulting onscreen content depends upon algorithmic procedures, software, hardware, and (often) Internet compatibility”

(Jessica Pressman, Digital Modernisms)

What is Electronic Literature?

Different from text on a screen meant to look like a page or digitized text

Different from print literature:

• Storage media
• Meaning making systems (sound, image, movement, etc.)
• Reading platform
• Preservation issues

Picture: Dr. Alexandra Saum-Pascual, UC Berkeley

"...electronic literature can be understood as both partaking of literary tradition and introducing crucial transformations that redefine what literature is."
 

(N. Katherine Hayles, Electronic Literature: New Horizons for the Literary)

• Digital poetry or e-poetry

• Hypertext Fiction

• Interactive Fiction

• Codework

• Twitter Bots

• Generative (algorithmic) texts

Genres of Electronic Literature

bpNichol, First Screening

http://vispo.com/bp/index.htm

Paul Zelevansky, The Case for The Burial of Ancestors

Artist's book in three volumes and one floppy disk (Apple iie compatible)

http://greatblankness.com/

Deena Larsen, Marble Springs

Larsen Collection at MITH

(http://mith.umd.edu/visiting-the-deena-larsen-collection/)

Nick Montfort, Taroko Gorge

http://nickm.com/poems/taroko_gorge_original.html

Stephanie Strikland, Versus Vega

http://www.secrettechnology.com/resident/strickland.htm

Rui Torres, Poemas no meio do caminho

http://collection.eliterature.org/2/works/torres_poemas_caminho.html

Young Hae Chang Heavy Industries, Nippon

http://yhchang.com/NIPPON.html

Mark Sample, House of Leaves of Grass

http://fugitivetexts.net/houseleavesgrass/

Benjamín Moreno, Concretoons

http://concretoons.net84.net/indice.html

J.R. Carpenter, Etheric Ocean

http://luckysoap.com/ethericocean/

Belén Gache, Dedicatoria Espiral

http://belengache.net/gongorawordtoys/gongorawordtoys.html

Jason Nelson, Sydney's Siberia

http://www.secrettechnology.com/sydney/

Literary

Research Issues

• What do we consider to be literary?

• Mechanisms of signification beyond the verbal and non-restricted by language

• Specific literary or aesthetic effects

• Tension between literary traditions and new languages

Media

• Cycles of obsolescence and innovation in digital media

• Preservation and archiving (media archaeology, emulation)

• Specific media affordances

• Digital reading practices

Research Issues

Teaching

• What kind of vocabularies do we teach?

• What kind of assignments?

• What teaching materials do we use?

Research Issues

Media

Research Issues

Literary

Teaching

Not independent from each other

Specific Settings and Contexts

Questions?

elikaortega@ku.edu

elikaortega.net