New Book: Understanding Digital Humanities

The application of new computational techniques and visualisation technologies in the Arts & Humanities are resulting in fresh approaches and methodologies for the study of new and traditional corpora. This 'computational turn' takes the methods and techniques from computer science to create innovative means of close and distant reading. This edited book aims to discuss the implications and applications of what has been called Digital Humanities and the questions raised when using algorithmic techniques. Within this field there are important debates about the contrast between narrative versus database, pattern-matching versus hermeneutics, and the statistical paradigm versus the data mining paradigm. Additionally, new forms of collaboration within the Arts and Humanities are raised through modular Arts and Humanities research teams and new organisational structures (e.g. Big Humanities, critical digital humanities), together with techniques for collaborating in an interdisciplinary way with other disciplines (e.g. hard interdisciplinarity versus soft interdisciplinarity). This book draws from key researchers in the field to give a comprehensive introduction to some of the key debates and questions.