Computational Humanities

2024

Lauren Tilton, David Mimno, and Jessica Marie Johnson, Editors

The first book to intervene in debates on computation in the digital humanities

Computational Humanities brings together leading experts to consider what counts as digital humanities scholarship, offering nuanced discourse centered around theories of knowledge and power. Providing case studies of collaborations between humanities-centered and computation-centered researchers, this volume shows that data and computation are as much about power, prestige, and precarity as they are about p-values.

Bringing together leading experts from across North America and Europe, Computational Humanities redirects debates around computation and humanities digital scholarship from dualistic arguments to nuanced discourse centered around theories of knowledge and power. This volume is organized around four questions: Why or why not pursue computational humanities? How do we engage in computational humanities? What can we study using these methods? Who are the stakeholders?

Recent advances in technologies for image and sound processing have expanded computational approaches to cultural forms beyond text, and new forms of data, from listservs and code repositories to tweets and other social media content, have enlivened debates about what counts as digital humanities scholarship. Providing case studies of collaborations between humanities-centered and computation-centered researchers, this volume highlights both opportunities and frictions, showing that data and computation are as much about power, prestige, and precarity as they are about p-values.

Contributors: Mark Algee-Hewitt, Stanford U; David Bamman, U of California, Berkeley; Kaspar Beelen, U of London; Peter Bell, Philipps U of Marburg; Tobias Blanke, U of Amsterdam; Julia Damerow, Arizona State U; Quinn Dombrowski, Stanford U; Crystal Nicole Eddins, U of Pittsburgh; Abraham Gibson, U of Texas at San Antonio; Tassie Gniady; Crystal Hall, Bowdoin College; Vanessa M. Holden, U of Kentucky; David Kloster, Indiana U; Manfred D. Laubichler, Arizona State U; Katherine McDonough, Lancaster U; Barbara McGillivray, King’s College London; Megan Meredith-Lobay, Simon Fraser U; Federico Nanni, Alan Turing Institute; Fabian Offert, U of California, Santa Barbara; Hannah Ringler, Illinois Institute of Technology; Roopika Risam, Dartmouth College; Joshua D. Rothman, U of Alabama; Benjamin M. Schmidt; Lisa Tagliaferri, Rutgers U; Jeffrey Tharsen, U of Chicago; Marieke van Erp, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences; Lee Zickel, Case Western Reserve U.

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Lauren Tilton is E. Claiborne Robins Professor of Liberal Arts and Digital Humanities at the University of Richmond. She is coauthor of Distant Viewing: Computational Exploration of Digital Images.

David Mimno is associate professor of information science at Cornell University.

Jessica Marie Johnson is associate professor of history at Johns Hopkins University and director of LifexCode: Digital Humanities Against Enclosure. She is author of Wicked Flesh: Black Women, Intimacy, and Freedom in the Atlantic World.

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