Hail the rise of digital humanities

Source: The post is based on an article “Hail the rise of digital humanities” published in the Business Standard on 1^st August 2022.

Syllabus: GS 1 Indian Art and Culture

News: Recently, the Jadavpur University has launched the Bichitra project, a digital humanities project. In this project, digital versions of manuscripts and printed books and journals related to Rabindranath Tagore in Bengali with English transcription have been gathered for study.

About the Digital Humanities

In this, the “digital world” and “humanities” are combined together to produce anything meaningful.

Nowadays, the digital humanists have developed new methods, such as computer-based statistical analysis, search and retrieval, topic modelling, and data visualisation for use in their researches.

Some Applications 

A key element in spurring growth in digital humanities is the collection and digitisation of large datasets that will enable researchers to experiment.

(1) At the University of California, Berkeley, researchers are using mathematical techniques and machine learning-based tools to unravel which author contributed what to the Hebrew Bible, a composite text compiled over hundreds of years.

(2) in the University College London, researchers are using similar mathematical techniques, text- and sentiment-mining techniques on digitized newspapers and available periodicals. It is to unravel the history of mentalities, long-term developments, and turning points in public debates.

(3) Further, mathematical methods are being used in news headlines, social media posts, and smart stock market traders on Wall Street and other financial markets to extract emotions.

Importance of the digital humanities

The Digital humanities techniques are applied to archives and collections that are so large that any human researcher or research group cannot comfortably handle them.

These methods enable ambitious projects with large interdisciplinary teams to work on difficult or complex projects.

Digital humanists are transforming the idea of what a humanities research project can be. These techniques are giving humanists, new ways of seeing past and present cultures.

Some Developments in the field of digital humanities

In the Western Countries

Major Western universities have started setting up digital humanities departments and research centers. For Example, the Digital Humanities Centre at Berkeley; Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Digital Humanities and Literature Research Initiative; the University of Cambridge’s new M Phil in digital humanities, and Oxford University’s M.Sc. in digital scholarship.

In India

Ashoka University has initiated foundation courses in digital humanities and seminars for exploring critical thinking and opportunities for interdisciplinary majors.

IIT Jodhpur, Mumbai University, and Jadavpur University are offering post-graduate diplomas in digital humanities.

The Centre for Internet and Governance in India, Bangalore, is also playing a pioneering role in spreading the word.

What are the challenges in the adoption of the digital humanities in India?

In India, even relatively minor updates of curricula are greeted with temper tantrums by the teachers concerned, even at the IIM level. In part, this arises because such changes require professors and lecturers in their late 50s and early 60s to unlearn and relearn new concepts. For example, it happened when the Internet and the World Wide Web started to make their presence in the 2000-2010 period.

The Indian tech companies may convert the still nascent concepts in digital humanities into learn-by-rote formulae. It will further block any Indian participation in this new intellectual revolution that is underway.