A Plethora of Definitions
From Wikipedia (August 3, 2021):
“Digital humanities (DH) is an area of scholarly activity at the intersection of computing or digital technologies and the disciplines of the humanities. It includes the systematic use of digital resources in the humanities, as well as the analysis of their application. DH can be defined as new ways of doing scholarship that involve collaborative, transdisciplinary, and computationally engaged research, teaching, and publishing. It brings digital tools and methods to the study of the humanities with the recognition that the printed word is no longer the main medium for knowledge production and distribution.”
A definition from an older Wikipedia article on the subject, written with contributions from digital humanists and endorsed by University of Maryland digital humanities scholar Matthew Kirschenbaum, is as follows (M. G. Kirschenbaum, 2016):
“The digital humanities, also known as humanities computing, is a field of study, research, teaching, and invention concerned with the intersection of computing and the disciplines of the humanities. It is methodological by nature and interdisciplinary in scope. It involves investigation, analysis, synthesis and presentation of information in electronic form. It studies how these media affect the disciplines in which they are used, and what these disciplines have to contribute to our knowledge of computing.”
By producing and using new applications and techniques, DH makes new kinds of teaching and research possible, while at the same time studying and critiquing how these impact cultural heritage and digital culture. Thus, a distinctive feature of DH is its cultivation of a two-way relationship between the humanities and the digital: the field both employs technology in the pursuit of humanities research and subjects technology to humanistic questioning and interrogation, often simultaneously.”
Kirschenbaum provides some further definitions.
“At its core digital humanities is more akin to a common methodological outlook than an investment in any one specific set of texts or even technologies…. Yet digital humanities is also a social undertaking. It harbors networks of people who have been working together, sharing research, arguing, competing, and collaborating for many years…. a culture that values collaboration, openness, nonhierarchical relations, and agility” (M. G. Kirschenbaum, 2016).
“The phrase Digital Humanities… describes not just a collective singular but also the humanities in the plural, able to address and engage disparate subject matters across media, language, location, and history. But, however heterogeneous, the Digital Humanities is unified by its emphasis on making, connecting, interpreting, and collaborating” (Burdick et al., 2012).
From THATCamp LAC 2012 [thatcamp.org]: “DH values collaboration, plurality, investigation of human culture, and the disruption of and reflection on traditional practices and is concerned with not just the use of digital technology for humanities projects but how the use of digital technology for humanities projects changes the user’s experience.” (This definition was put together collaboratively during the conference in a “Glossary of the Digital Humanities” Google document).
An interesting way to address the question is found on the website “What Is Digital Humanities?”, which offers a different definition each time the page is refreshed. Below are a few responses obtained on the afternoon of August 3, 2021.
“The stuff humanities people do when they get a computer.” Daniel Hooper
“To me, digital humanities is about exploring the ways in which the affordances of technology can help us explore the deeper concerns of the humanities, from expanding archival access to thinking about what it means to read something. DH embodies a spirit of collaboration, experimentation, and play, in which failure is acceptable and part of the normal process, and in which the action of ‘making’ is as valued as the action of thinking.” Katie Kaczmarek
“Taking people to bits.” Graeme Earl
“The essentially collaborative application of engineering-type solutions to human-type problems.” Jennifer Edmond
“Why define it? Just do it!” Simon Mahony
“DH is a way to interrogate data, computing, and computation using humanities methods and DH is a way to interrogate the humanities with digital and computational methods.” Crystal Hall