Blog #2- Maps- Aránzazu Borrachero

A Puerto Rican friend once told me that one of her earliest memories of school in the island was of a teacher showing a map to the class and explaining that “Puerto Rico is a tiny island, the smallest island in the Greater Antilles.” Thus were reduced to nothingness the 1,500 years of Puerto Rican history in the mind of one of its young citizens.

“Not only is it easy to lie with maps, it’s essential,” writes Mark Monmonier (p.1).* As representations of three dimensional realities, maps need to distort them in order to be manageable and useful. These distortions are the result of certain decisions, and those decisions carry political weight. Maps are not neutral.

Digital cartography, Monmonier further explains, has democratized what once was a very specialized craft. But, mind you, it has also made dilettante cartographers more vulnerable to the backstage doings of “programmers, marketing experts, and other anonymous middlemen” (p. 2).

Map distortions, however, can be put to interesting uses. In “Visualizing Sovereignty,” Yarimar Bonilla and Max Hantel (2016) walk us through the “mangle” (Presner!**) of mapping Caribbean political history digitally. In order to represent how the concept of sovereignty played out in the region, they developed a series of maps that kept getting closer to a dynamic and open-ended understanding of independence and self-determination –an understanding hardly conveyed by canonical political science and geographical borders.

Bonilla and Hantel played with size, color and scale; they made all islands equal in size in order to disrupt “the equation of smallness with inferiority and the analytical irrelevance usually attributed to those residing in a ‘small place'” (oh would my Puerto Rican friend love this map!). In the end, their work seriously questions the political canon by demonstrating that sovereignty cannot be equated with territorial independence, and it is certainly not a linear process.

The intersection of cartography and the digital world has the potential to profoundly revise and enrich political concepts that have become static and lost explanatory power. Digital cartography may also radically change our understanding of historical processes. In Slave Revolt in Jamaica, 1760-1761, Vincent Brown and his team have created a dynamic spatial reconstruction of the 1760s Jamaican slave insurgency that reveals strategy, planning and coordination. The colonial record, by contrast, brushes off the revolt as a random series of skirmishes.

While imperialistic history distorts or buries “non-white” history, Google Earth diffuses and dissolves “non-white” places (“Dividing lines,” Mayukh 2017). Google Earth’s unmarked territories are akin to the treasure of unmarked histories that digital cartography may reconstruct.

As I look for a map to illustrate this post, I browse through the Benson Latin American Collection of maps drawn by native Mexicans under Spanish colonial occupation, and I wonder what would colonial maps look like had they been drawn by Spanish women-settlers of Perú, by Aztec female healers or by Ghanaian women forcibly working on the sugarcane plantations of the not so small island of Puerto Rico. Will digital cartography help us visualize that?

* Monmonier, Mark. (1996). “Introduction.” How to Lie with Maps. 2nd ed. The University of Chicago Press.

** Presner, Todd. (2015). “Critical Theory and the Mangle of Digital Humanities.” In P. Svensson and D. T. Goldberg, Between Humanities and the Digital (pp. 55–67). The MIT Press.

An old globe

The Map as an Imperial Instrument

Photo by cottonbro from Pexels

Maps have long been used to stake claims to territories and to define the boundaries of empires. In today’s increasingly digitalized world, the map is no longer a static, unchanging, two-dimensional sheet of paper, but rather a dynamic, three-dimensional tool that can be updated instantly and accessed anywhere with Internet connectivity. However, this quality does not make the modern map infallible. Indeed, in addition to their primary function as a navigational tool, mapping platforms also serve as a way of illuminating historical inequities and the growing divide between the Global North and the Global South.

In “Dividing Lines: Mapping platforms like Google Earth have the legacies of colonialism programmed into them,” Mayukh Sen makes the argument that “Google Earth reflects the scars of colonial legacies and has tended to reproduce colonial fractures and reinforce that era’s lasting wounds.” He details how certain nations and towns can be zoomed into in full, vibrant color, while zooming in on others results in unrecognizable shades of grey or beige. This perpetuates the harmful colonialist idea that “some people’s homes are more important than others.”

Maps can also serve as a form of control. As Yarimar and Hantel put it:

“Cartography plays a constitutive role in this process, as it has historically reproduced the idea of the sovereign nation-state as a bounded entity and naturalized it as the site of proper politics. Geographic histories reveal that the visualizing power of the map preceded the formation of sovereign states and created the conditions of possibility for colonial expansion. As Jordan Branch argues, maps reshaped our perceptions of legitimate political authority and organization, paving the way for the shift from medieval to modern political structures.”

It is impossible to separate map-making from imperial methods of exerting control and dominance over territorial holdings and colonies. The production and proliferation of maps has historically been used to extend the long hand of empire, with European powers dividing whole continents and swathes of land as a means of conquest, regardless of the lasting repercussions of such divisions. In one instance given, “hastily drawn borders” drawn arbitrarily “over the course of two days… would echo for decades.” (Sen) This would uproot in excess of fifteen million individuals, and result in over two million casualties.

This so-called Radcliffe Line, named after the British judge who drew it, separated a British-ruled India into the independent nations of India and Pakistan. According to the BBC, which is, perhaps, a biased source in this particular instance, Cyril Radcliffe was given “five weeks” to draw this line. The BBC also underestimates the displacement figures by three million, and gives the number of the dead as anywhere between “half a million and a million.”

For his efforts, Radcliffe was given a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire. Also of interest is the fact that he burnt all of his notes before departing India, raising the question of what, exactly, he had to hide.

Works Cited:

Bonilla, Yarimar, and Max Hantel. 2016. “Visualizing Sovereignty” Sx Archipelagos, no. 1 (May).

“Cyril Radcliffe: The Man Who Drew the Partition Line.” BBC News, 1 Aug. 2017, www.bbc.com/news/av/world-asia-40788079.

Sen, Mayukh. 2017. “Dividing Lines. Mapping platforms like Google Earth have the legacies of colonialism programmed into them” Platforms like Google Earth Have the Legacies of Colonialism Programmed into Them.” Real Life, March 27, 2017.

My Reaction and Response to this Week Readings: “Why Data Science Needs Feminism” and “Making a Case for the Black Digital Humanities”- by Lu

I found very interesting the ideas and concepts that Catherine D’Ignazio and Lauren Klein mention in the article “Introduction: Why Data Science Needs Feminism.” This article has helped me to analyze and rethink the concept of data feminism. In my opinion, data feminism is a way of thinking about data connected with a feminism thought. That concept makes me think about the idea of data science nowadays. For instance, after reading this piece, some questions came to my mind such as… is data science, in our days, for everybody? Or if data science is a form of power, has this been used equally? What are the reasons for that? 

Moreover, this piece analyzes the distribution of power explaining the idea that “in data science power is not distributed equally in the world.” However, the authors mention that “the work of data feminism is first to tune into how standard practices in data science serve to reinforce these existing inequalities and second to use data science to challenge and change the distribution of power.” Thus, I think that it is important to find strategies to increase the collaboration of women in the field of data science. 

At the same time, after reading this piece, I can see that this is connected with another article that was assigned this week which is “Making a Case for the Black Digital Humanities” by Kim Gallon. In this article, Gallon also tackles the relationship between the racialization of humanity and the digital as power. What I like the most is the fact that if we question ourselves about this relationship in order to find solutions, we will ultimately be able to have a better understanding about the human condition. 

In my opinion, it is hard and yet complex to analyze how data is used to control power structures. Thus, living in a society in which algorithms, and data collection are used to analyze problems and find possible solutions, one thing comes to my mind is the impact of data collection results on issues like the role of women and equality. My hope is that the work of scholars and  activists can contribute to creating a more equitable form of data science and society. 

References

D’Ignazio, Catherine, and Lauren Klein. 2020. “Why Data Science Needs Feminism” In Data Feminism. The MIT Press.

Gallon, Kim. 2016. “Making a Case for the Black Digital Humanities” In Debates in the Digital Humanities 2016, edited by Matthew K. Gold and Lauren F. Klein. University of Minnesota Press.

Blog post #1. Defining data and its distribution.

Data is not as unbiased as one would think it is. How we collect data is essential on how it will be processed, interpreted and used in a project that can affect millions. Raw data in its essence can be considered a nonpartisan entity but the method it was collected can be biased. Ranging from collecting data for commercial use and all the way to using it for policing members of the community, The “humanities” in collecting data is often overlooked and not criticized enough  

For example, in Introduction by Jacqueline Wernimont and Elizabeth Losh, we can view their strong opinion that Digital Humanities should not have a linear methodology in collecting and presenting data, the world is broad, and data must have a tie to multiple sections. Inserting a feminist lens can aid in introducing intersectionality into the field. Jacqueline and Elizabeth state that” our argument is that feminisms have been and must continue to be central to the identity and the methodologies of the digital humanities as a field.” intersectionality in this field can be a huge benefit as we are collecting data from real life scenarios.  

In order to properly introduce intersectionality, first we should ask the question of “Should there be more training with data collection?” We can see that there are various forms of methodology in metadata collection, some come with biases and others try to correct them. We see again, in Introduction, the authors state, “In addition to adding new vocabulary to existing taxonomical systems, they assert that queerness also points toward a shift in the very methodologies of metadata collection. To queer metadata, queer thinking must be brought to bear on the conceptual models and tools of object description to challenge the norms that dictate how meaning is derived from data. They observe that the methods with which data are traditionally mapped rely on a model of the one-to-one relationship between concepts of the world that can account for nonbinary relationships.” While there are many data humanists who are allies to these taxonomical systems, we can assume that there are just as many that do not understand these terms and often find ways and, unwillingly, cause some misinterpretation in data collection. Often not due to malice but due to ignorance. A simple example can be found in the American census system in which many demographics are not properly counted, and this can lead to changes that can affect millions.  

There can be tension in trying to bring this information forward to the overall field.  I agree with the interpretation of Beth Coleman’s response to how data is used against members in the community when the 2020 protest started.  People’s livelihoods were at stake when authority figures started to collect large sets of data and then started narratives such as grouping a demographic into one pot and demonizing them in the media. I personally feel that the Digital humanities needs to have a standard on collecting data which I understand can be difficult.  

References and readings:

Jacqueline Wernimont and Elizabeth Losh. 2018. “Introduction” In Bodies of Information: Intersectional Feminism and Digital Humanities, edited by Jacqueline Wernimont and Elizabeth Losh. University of Minnesota Press.

Gold, Matthew K. 2012. The Digital Humanities Moment In Debates in the Digital Humanities, edited by Matthew K. Gold. University of Minnesota Press.

Digital Humanities – Emphasize Humanism

Before digital humanities (DH) the term was humanities computing. One benefit that Gold thinks of the new term is that “digital humanities implied a form of humanism”. When thinking about humanism it’s “any system or mode of thought or action in which human interests, values, and dignity predominate” (dictionary.com). Digital humanities among other things are composed of research, teaching, invention, and what can be redefined as the main focal point, humanism. 

Colored Conventions Project (CCP) covers the general terminology of digital humanities, but it can also focuses on humanism. As mentioned in their site “the Colored Conventions Project (CCP) is a scholarly and community research project dedicated to bringing the seven decades-long history of nineteenth-century Black organizing to digital life.” CCP is composed of their research: digital records, exhibits, teaching, news and events. With humanism in mind, CCP is operating on the digital humanities of today. DH of today is defined as a scholarship/pedagogy that is visible to the public 24-7 in an unaccustomed way for those to collaborate. An innovative way of CCP collaborating with others which is their use of twitter.  Twitter “harbors networks of people who have been working together, sharing research, arguing, competing, and collaborating for many years.” 

CCP was created with the human interest of sharing seven decades-long history of nineteenth-century Black. It continued the humanism aspect of DH with the information shared on their platform that lives 24-7 for those to collaborate from around the world. Additionally it also presents ways for others to network and connect with shared interest, via twitter. 

References

Gold, Matthew K. 2012. The Digital Humanities Moment In Debates in the Digital Humanities, edited by Matthew K. Gold. University of Minnesota Press.

“CCP.” The Colored Conventions Project, 12 Mar. 2020, coloredconventions.org/about/.

Blog #1 Approaching DH – Connie Cordon

Protagoras of Abdera, a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher and rhetorical theorist, is most famous for his claim that “Of all things the measure is Man, of the things that are, that they are, and of the things that are not, that they are not” (DK 80B1). It can be simplified to “Man is the Measure of All Things” and interpreted that the individual human being, rather than a god or an unchanging moral law, is the ultimate source of value. As society progresses and changes, digital humanists will have to adapt to the changing culture of the political and ethical realm.

Gorgias, a Sicilian philosopher who is considered to be one of the founders of Sophism, concentrated on the status of truth about being and nature as a discursive construction, as opposed to Protagoras who asserted that man is the measure of all things. Gorgias account suggests that our grasp of reality is always mediated by discursive interpretations, which, in turn, implies that truth cannot be separated from human interests and power claims. The continuous disagreements between astronomers, politicians, and philosophers is taken to demonstrate that no logos is definitive. In relativism, since ‘truth’ is subjective the individual and culture, ‘truth’ can then be exploited by rhetoric persuasion, as long as people continue to desire the illusion of certainty, which we then continue to provide by spoken work.

Digital humanities, I personally view, is an attempt to solidify a ‘truth’ through a variety of projects, whether it be digital archives, quantitative analyses, visualizations of large image sets, or through argumentative essays. While there is still a continuous debate about the role of digital humanities, we must still be aware of how we define ‘truth’ without our own human interests and power claims interfering.

For example, in Introduction A DH That Matters, it is noted that the role of digital humanities has rapidly changed due to the rising rhetoric of racism, sexism, and xenophobia in our country. However, as noted in the Introduction in Bodies of Information, racism and sexism still exist in the Digital Humanities communities, where “forms of intellectual engagement that confront structural misogyny and racism relegated to the status of fringe concerns”. They were also aware that “as members of a panel of white women from Canada, the United States, and Australia, we were and are not subject to the full force of exclusion that our trans and women of color colleagues systematically experience.”

Since individuals are a source of value as opposed to an unchanging moral law (if we are to follow Protagoras philosophy of “Man is the Measure of All Things”), we must be aware of how we may not be the most reliable or objective source of ‘truth’. In Introduction in Bodies of Information, Jacqueline Wernimont and Elizabeth Losh note that they are aware that this collection “cannot be completely representative of the whole of the field”, as it “largely presents perspectives from within the privileged perspectives in academia…”. I view Digital Humanities as an ongoing pursuit of certainty by gathering and showcasing data through technological means in order to make it more accessible to people to view, as well as easy to understand. We attempt to document history so it is not forgotten or manipulated through a fragile thing like memory. However documentation of history must be presented knowing that truth can be subjective to each individual.

Digital Humanities: A New Tool of Visualizing and Analyzing Data–By Lu

Digital Humanities constitutes a broad academic field, which uses digital technologies, such as mapping, digitizing archives, and computational programs, in teaching and scholarship. In addition, Digital Humanities contributes to other disciplines by facilitating the visualization and analysis of data, and creating interdisciplinary tools of connection.

Personally, when I think about Digital Humanities, one definition that comes to my mind is the application of computing tools to study disciplines such as literature, sociology, and history among others. The incorporation of technology into these so-called “traditional” fields helps scholars to have a visual, more comprehensive understanding, analytical interpretation of information and data sets. Moreover, in my opinion, Digital Humanities opens a new concept about the integration of dynamic models, such as interactive digital maps and archives, to the research and learning process. Thus, I really like the idea of saying that Digital Humanities is “about building things…If you are not making anything, you are not …a digital humanist” (Ramsay cited by Gold). In fact, in my opinion, digital humanities means the use of dynamic technologies and practices in order to approach common humanities issues.

On the other hand, it is undoubtedly that Digital Humanities constitutes a field that is rapidly expanding and evolving in the academic world. For instance, Digital Humanities incorporates not only the application of digital tools, but also helps important data to become more accessible to larger audiences. Also, Digital Humanities helps us to create a digital academic world in which the visualization of information and data plays a key role in the learning process of students. As Lauren F. Klein and Matthew K. Gold explain in the reading Digital Humanities: The Expanded Field, “along with the digital archives, quantitative analyses, and tool-building projects that once characterized the field, DH now encompasses a wide range of methods and practices: visualizations of large image sets, 3D modeling of historical artifacts, ‘born digital’ dissertations, hashtag activism and the analysis thereof, alternate reality games, mobile makerspaces, and more.” In regarding to this, I can mention that thanks to the digitization of archives from 1930’ s and 1940’s of the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Roma–Biblioteca Digitale, I was able to access important material that helped me write my research about the image of italian women in magazines during the period of fascism. I find this completely fascinating because the digitalization of historical materials represents a platform that is accessible to all people around the world. At the same time, we can see how the application of Digital Humanities becomes an important connection between the past and the present, which allows us to analyze new ways to improve our future.

Consequently, I think that Digital Humanities is the use of digital resources and technology to approach different practices in humanities. Its contribution to the academic world helps to understand a visual concept of information and data. Moreover, living in a world, in which technology is everywhere and digital media connects people in a way never seen before, the role of Digital Humanities creates new interpretations and ways of thinking, understanding and analyzing data. Thanks to the technology that Digital Humanities applies to the research work, data can be used to analyze real society problems and create solutions to improve the world.

References

Gold, Matthew K. 2012. The Digital Humanities Moment In Debates in the Digital Humanities, edited by Matthew K. Gold. University of Minnesota Press

Klein, Lauren F., and Matthew K. Gold. 2016. “Digital Humanities: The Expanded Field” In Debates in the Digital Humanities 2016, edited by Matthew K. Gold and Lauren F. Klein. University of Minnesota Press.

Connecting living issues in the humanities to tradition and the future

The three introductions to Debates in the Digital Humanities (2011, 2016, and 2019) revealed an ever- expanding and deepening quest for definition, assessment, comprehension, professional responsibility, and potential activism in a field that is exploding with content, connections and new possibilities.  Seemingly conventional shapes and structures are being explored in different ways, undergoing changes, and the area is exploding with activity even though the field is relatively new.  The contributing authors have made it clear that they address a phenomenon that is separate and distinct from the two distinct categories that meet in the field of digital humanities:  the digital age and humanities. The rapidity at which the field is expanding and the potential that is being revealed at every new turn is breathtaking.  Contributors to the area understand that their own approaches to concepts and applications must evolve with the expansion and fluidity of the matter on which they focus.

The Early Caribbean Digital Archive might find a home “under the tent” of the concept of Digital Humanities as in the 2011 introduction.  It gathered a remarkable amount of related information, presented it in traditional categories that complemented and enhanced each area, and was attached to traditional academic pursuits as well as to digital techniques.  In contrast, the elasticity  of the Torn Apart/Separados exhibit, its extraordinary dimensions, and the additional and dramatic information that is uncovered though manipulating various tabs is a  demonstration of digital humanities as an expanded field, as discussed in the 2016 essay. One particularly striking consideration  relating to, in this case, a “visualization” awareness, is the idea of exploring the relationship among key concepts. “By exploring these relations—their tensions as well as their alignments.” 

As I manipulated the mouse across the underlying map in the Torn Apart/Separados site I became physically afraid by what I saw. It was hard enough to endure news about the exploitation of that population over the past few years. This was a report on profiteering. How could Congressional Districts and their representatives not avail themselves of the opportunity to bring in that kind of money? And private prison systems?  What a heyday! I felt that the presentation was something I had not experienced before, that it was dramatic, invaluable, and if other people could be exposed to that information, they might think more carefully. This aspect of the site not only fits with the goals of the 2016 introduction, but it also indicates a way that the presentation of “real” facts can further an agenda (political, idealistic, or otherwise) that takes its potential way beyond its traditional role in academics and connects it to the activism explored in the 2019 essay.

Blog Posting #1: Digital Humanities and Historical Contexts

It is hard to say that the digital humanities has a well-established single definition because it is still an expanding field. However, roughly speaking, the digital humanities refers to various research activities in which information technology and humanities are assimilated. The early digital humanities was criticized for focusing more on peer reviews and being disinterested in political issues. However, the current digital humanities is expanding into political topics such as feminism and racism.

After reading and exploring the five materials and the four websites that cover the recent decade of the digital humanities, I thought that the digital humanities had an outstanding strength in presenting historical contexts. Of course, the digital humanities is excellent at presenting a social phenomenon itself through mapping, data visualization, and word clouds, but it also has the advantages of revealing the historical context behind a phenomenon by using digital archives.

To be specific, the Early Caribbean Digital Archive (ECDA) and the Colored Convention Projects (CCP) present records, documents, photos, and illustrations of the past to show, directly or indirectly, how differences resulted in discrimination, how discrimination aggravated, and how minorities fought for their rights. Of course, the ECDA and the CCP do not provide clear answers about why the discrimination issue has not been fully solved to this day, and how we should address the problem. However, these two websites offer an implication, whether implicit or explicit, that it is necessary to consider historical contexts in order to understand the problem accurately. In other words, we can understand the immediate and remote causes of a social phenomenon only by considering historical contexts.

In In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio, an ethnography about Puerto Rican drug dealers in New York’s East Harlem area, Bourgois (2003) emphasized the historical context, especially the oppressive colonial history. After the American colonization of Puerto Rico, the lands were expropriated and handed over to large corporations. The Puerto Ricans, once landowners, turned into wage laborers and resisted the colonization. According to Bourgois, even after their mass migration to the United States, this culture of resistance remained and formed a street culture (or a criminal subculture) as resistance to exploitation and marginalization in American society.

As a criminal justice major, I am studying crime, criminal, and punishment. If crime is not caused solely by individual factors (psychological and biological deficits), then it is more likely to be a social phenomenon. In addition, if a large amount of crime is committed by members of a particular social class or group, it would be important to understand the historical paths they have passed to know why some become criminals and others not. I believe that the digital humanities may give clues by providing historical contexts in a digital archive format.

Reference

Bourgois, P. (2003) [1996]. In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio (2nd edition). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

Blog #1: Exploring the Themes of DH – Social Transformation & Collaboration

Defining the digital humanities is not easy. However, any attempt at defining something always begins with conceptualization, and the conceptualization process is all about making sense of related observations, feelings, or ideas around a concept. However, when a concept is something abstract, unfamiliar, or relatively new, there is no coherent set of such information. Therefore, the conceptual difficulty around the term digital humanities is understandable. In order for us to specify what we mean by the term, it may be helpful to dissect the concept and distinguish its sub-concepts or dimensions. It is not my intention to provide an exhaustive list of several different dimensions of the digital humanities and define the digital humanities in precise language, however, identifying important themes that are reflected in various site/projects that employ digital humanities methodologies can help us maximize our understanding of what digital humanities means.

One such theme that I was able to observe is social transformation. It seems very clear that the digital humanities values deconstruction and reconstruction of traditional practices and knowledge (that has wrongly been written), which are necessary to address concerns about distortions of certain people’s life experiences, negative labeling, undervaluing, and marginalization. A good example is the Early Caribbean Digital Archive (ECDA), which is a digitation or cataloging initiative created in order to revise, reassemble, and remix existing materials as well as to archive new materials. The purpose of this initiative is to “decolonize” the documentary materials about the colonial Caribbean, by retelling the stories of the past and promoting empowerment, inclusivity, and respect for the colonized. The use of the new form of knowledge now has the potential to transform the experience of the users, which can lead to changes in social forces that start to affect the whole society. More importantly, it can affect those who are studied- the former colonized or the historically oppressed. By recovering their own history, language, culture, and identity, their sense of self-determination grows. This, I think, is a key aspect of the digital humanities.

The fact that the existing archives of the early Caribbean are rooted in the dominant Euro-Western paradigm is alarming, since it has implications for the way we have been addressing the questions on reality, knowledge, and values of our society in general. Michael Foucault (1977) observed that:

What we know and how we know are grounded in shifting and diverse historical human practices, politics, and power. There are in the production of knowledge multiple centers of power in constant struggle; through conflict, compromise, and negotiation… whichever group is strongest establishes its own rules on what can be known and how it can be known. A non-power related truth game is not possible, thus humanity installs each of its violences in a system of rules and thus proceeds from domination to domination. (p. 151)

Thus, it is important for us to constantly challenge the system of knowledge and values that we have. The digital humanities, with the aid of the digital tools, makes this possible.

Another theme observed throughout the projects is collaboration of scholars in a large-scale “project” that helps to advance humanities advocacy. For example, the Colored Conventions Project (CCP) introduces itself as a scholarly and community project that uses “innovative, inclusive models and partnerships” in order to fulfill its purpose of archiving the documentary record related to the nineteenth-centry Black organizing. In addition, it further emphasizes the role of collaboration in their project: “The CCP brings together interdisciplinary scholars and students, librarians and independent researchers, national teaching partners, and media specialists, academic institutions, and members of the public.” Similarly, the ECDA also envisions an interdisiplinary project that “brings together scholars of literature, history, library science, network science, digital humanities, and public humanities.”

Reflecting on these two themes of digital humanities, it seems that the critiques of the digital humanities outlined by Gold (2012) – “a lack of attention to issues of race, class, gender, and sexuality”- seems to be something of a past. As the readings equivocally suggest, the digital humanities is definitely a field of study with a broad scale, which is methodological by nature and interdisciplinary in scope. However, the two themes discussed above should be emphasized and praised more, so we can come to define in our on terms what really is the digital humanities.

Reference: Foucault, M. (1975). Discipline and punish. A. Sheridan, Tr., Paris, FR, Gallimard.