Burns—Documents—ADE 150 2010 File: Kirschenbaum_ade150.indd Job #: 320-30 2/28/11–LG/DC/LG
ADE Bu l l E t i n
◆
nu m B E r 150, 2010
55
e author is associate
professor of English and
associate director of the
Maryland Institute for
Technology in the Hu-
manities at the University
of Maryland. A version of
this article was presented
at the 2010 ADE Sum-
mer Seminar East in
Adelphi, Maryland.
People who say that the last battles of the computer revolution in En glish departments have been
fought and won don’t know what they’re talking about. If our current use of computers in En glish
studies is marked by any common theme at all, it is experimentation at the most basic level. As a pro-
fession, we are just learning how to live with computers, just beginning to integrate these machines
effectively into writing- and reading- intensive courses, just starting to consider the implications of the
multilayered literacy associated with computers.
—Cynthia Selfe
WHAT is (or are) the “digital humanities,” aka “humanities computing”? It’s tempt-
ing to say that whoever asks the question has not gone looking very hard for an
answer. “What is digital humanities?” essays like this one are already genre pieces.
Willard McCarty has been contributing papers on the subject for years (a mono-
graph too). Under the earlier appellation, John Unsworth has advised us “what is
humanities computing and what is not.” Most recently Patrik Svensson has been
publishing a series of well- documented articles on multiple aspects of the topic,
including the lexical shift from humanities computing to digital humanities. More-
over, as Cynthia Selfe in an ADE Bulletin from 1988 reminds us, computers have
been part of our disciplinary lives for well over two decades now. During this time
digital humanities has accumulated a robust professional apparatus that is probably
more rooted in En glish than any other departmental home.
e contours of this professional apparatus are easily discoverable. An organiza-
tion called the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations hosts a well- attended
annual international conference called Digital Humanities (it grew out of an earlier
annual series of conferences, hosted jointly by the Association for Computers and the
Humanities and the Association for Literary and Linguistic Computing since 1989).
ere is Blackwell’s Companion to Digital Humanities. ere is a book series (yes, a
book series), Topics in the Digital Humanities, from the University of Illinois Press.
ere is a refereed journal called Digital Humanities Quarterly, one of several that
serve the field, including a newer publication, Digital Studies / Le champ numérique,
sponsored by the Canadian Society for Digital Humanities (Société pour l’Étude
des Médias Interactifs). e University of Victoria hosts the annual Digital Humani-
ties Summer Institute to train new scholars. Crucially, there are digital humanities
centers and institutes (probably at least one hundred worldwide, some of them estab-
lished for a decade or more with staffs numbering in the dozens): these are served by
an organization known as centerNet. ere have been digital humanities manifestos
(I know of at least two) and FAQs, colloquia and symposia, workshops and special
sessions. Not to mention, of course, that a gloss or explanation of digital humani-
ties is implicit in every mission statement, every call for papers and proposals, every
What Is Digital Humanities and What’s It Doing in
English Departments?
Matthew G. Kirschenbaum
ADE and the Association of Departments of En glish are trademarks owned by the Modern Language Association.
© by the Association of Departments of En glish, CrossRef DOI: 10.1632/ade.150.55, ISSN 0001-0898