Reading Assignment - D_H Short Guide (Undergraduates & Graduates): Xiaofan Ye
The first chapter provides a brief introduction to digital humanities and clarifies what is and what is not digital humanities. Digital humanities contain new methods of scholarship and institutional units for collaborative, cross-disciplinary research, teaching, and publication. Some questions related to the topic include how digital technologies could reshape and redefine traditional skills and practices in research and storytelling. Digital humanities are not just about the mere use of digital tools for the purpose of humanistic research; it extends beyond that and contains a broad definition and contains huge fields of research areas, such as humanities, archaeology, multimedia, and computational design. The concept of the web and connected network also enriches and diversifies the application of digital humanities and brings more possibilities and challenges.
The second chapter introduces more details about digital humanities in practice: the project as a basic unit. Generally, digital humanities projects involve many diverse circles of researchers, from students to faculty members to community partners. It also involves partnerships with different stakeholders, such as museums, libraries, and archives. The diverse resource pool offers valuable expert knowledge from other fields and rich ideations from various parties. Digital humanities re-embeds the traditional models of research and teaching with multimedia platforms and new engagements with both individuals and groups. The funding process usually requires support structures from multiple stakeholders, such as school organizations, private foundations, public agencies, and industry partners.