Search results

No longer distributed to depository libraries in a physical form after FY 2000 ; Latest issue consulted: Vol. 25, no. 4 (July/Aug. 2004) ; Index to U.S. Government periodicals ; Issue for Jan./Feb. 1996 not published ; Mode of access: Internet. ; UPD

AbstractFuture Humanities highlights the rise and convergence of new and critical humanities by publishing trans‐ and interdisciplinary research focused on diverse subjects and methodologies. These include, but are not limited to, philosophy, cultural and historical studies, religious studies, linguistics and semiotics, literature, and the arts as they intersect with various fields of study such as digital transformation and artificial intelligence, health ethics and biomedical technologies, climate change and biodiversity, and new media and communication. Special attention is given to the public dimension of these intersections and to the role that today's intellectuals play in their creation and development.

In contemporary societies, the humanities are under constant pressure and have to justify their existence. In the ongoing debates, Humboldt's ideals of 'Bildung' and 'pure science' are often used to justify the unique function of the humanities of ensuring free research and contributing to a vital and self-reflective democracy. Contemporary humanities have adopted a new orientation towards practices, and it is not clear how this fits with the ideals of 'Bildung' and 'pure science'. A possible theoretical framework for this orientation towards practices could be found in John Dewey's pragmatic philosophy. Contrary to Humboldt's idea that the non-practical is the most practical in the long run, philosophical pragmatism recommends to the humanities to situate knowledge in practices and apply knowledge to practices. ; In contemporary societies, the humanities are under constant pressure and have to justify their existence. In the ongoing debates, Humboldt's ideals of 'Bildung' and 'pure science' are often used to justify the unique function of the humanities of ensuring free research and contributing to a vital and self-reflective democracy. Contemporary humanities have adopted a new orientation towards practices, and it is not clear how this fits with the ideals of 'Bildung' and 'pure science'. A possible theoretical framework for this orientation towards practices could be found in John Dewey's pragmatic philosophy. Contrary to Humboldt's idea that the non-practical is the most practical in the long run, philosophical pragmatism recommends to the humanities to situate knowledge in practices and apply knowledge to practices.

The distinction between scientific judgment & the judgment of scientists has been increasingly blurred. Generalizations from social sciences lead to the popularization of unproved or unprovable social theory. Social scientists' acceptance of antiscientific frames of mind threatens the theoretical gains of a previous generation. An interest in human psychology has turned to a poetic, human mythology. Science & moral judgment are valuable in intellectual activity but not in social science. Scientists influenced by supportive values must free themselves from extrascientific influences. Applied social humanities attempts analysis to support or change the preferences of individuals for different kinds of behavior patterns. The meaning of life, quality of life, academic questions, & policy issues would be the concern in social humanities. An intellectual basis for new institutions to replace the depleted spiritual & judgmental resources would develop a core of research to form a learning tradition. Applied social humanists would be consultants with professional ethics similar to priests & psychiatrists. They would lecture, give seminars, & groups of social humanists, audiences & clients would form schools to provide cultural ferment centers. Religions cannot be manufactured, but a basis can be formed for the functional equivalent of religion. Modified HA.

Wang Hui's article, which is part of the author's larger project on the multiple origins of the Chinese humanities, examines the impact of the modern Western education system on disciplinary divisions in China. The article looks specifically at the development of humanities in China after the 1970s, and in particular since the 1990s.

This open access book challenges the contemporary relevance of the current model of knowledge production. It argues that the full digitisation of society sharply accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic has added extreme complexity to the world, conclusively exposing the inadequacy of our current model of knowledge creation. Addressing many of the different ways in which reality has been transformed by technology – the pervasive adoption of big data, the fetishisation of algorithms and automation, and the digitalisation of education and research – Viola examines how the rigid conceptualisation in disciplines' division and competition is complicit of promoting a narrative which has paired computational methods with exactness and neutrality whilst stigmatising consciousness and criticality as carriers of biases and inequality. Taking the humanities as a focal point, the author retraces schisms in the field between the humanities, the digital humanities and critical digital humanities; these are embedded, she argues, within old dichotomies: sciences vs humanities, digital vs non-digital and authentic vs non-authentic. Through the analysis of personal use cases and exploring a variety of applied contexts such as digital heritage practices, digital linguistic injustice, critical digital literacy and critical digital visualisation, the book shows a third way: knowledge creation in the digital.

Abstract
This chapter examines material published in the field of digital humanities in 2020. It begins with an article in Digital Humanities Quarterly by a group of early-career scholars taking a novel approach to understanding the field, using topic modelling to query a dataset of definitions of digital humanities. The article brings into focus the proliferation of texts in this area, and the extent to which this ongoing discourse impinges on those, particularly early-career, scholars seeking to enter the field. It also observes the upsurge in writing about the lack of diversity and inclusion in the digital humanities, making the arrival of Catherine D'Ignazio and Lauren F. Klein's Data Feminism all the more welcome. This hugely important text offers an intersectional approach to the study of historical and contemporary social and cultural data, urging scholars to take up their seven principles for uncovering the ways in which power can be uncovered, examined, analysed, and challenged. They offer a vision of what data justice could look like in theory and in practice. Richard Jean So's Redlining Culture: A Data History of Racial Inequality and Postwar Fiction takes just such an approach to the analysis of literary culture in post-war America. Using an incisive combination of data science and traditional literary scholarly methods, So paints a compelling picture of the persistence of whiteness in literary culture, analysing the whole cycle of literary production to uncover the ways in which power moves through the system.

Abstract
The absence of an entry on digital humanities in the last volume of The Year's Work in Critical and Cultural Theory due to the Covid-19 pandemic as well as the exacerbation of academic precarity (that was acknowledged in the editorial preface of the last volume) predicates that this chapter develop a narrative bibliography of notable scholarship in the digital humanities from both 2021 and 2022. Therefore the unprecedented circumstances that have extended the scope of scholarly review for this chapter beyond a single chronological year also provide the unique opportunity to not only 'trace and expand upon currents in critical and cultural theory, and to engage in [the] areas' key debates' (Quinn and Ghosh, 'Preface' to YWCCT 2022) but also (and more importantly, one might argue) understand some of the radical thematic transformations brought about and anticipated by the legacies, presents, and futures of digital humanities within the supposedly 'new normal' of a post-Covid world.
Through consolidating diverse conversations from varied contexts that are shaping contemporary digital humanities and in anticipating the futures of the discipline, this chapter locates scholarship in the digital humanities and related fields from the years 2021 and 2022 within the interconnected themes of resistive ontologies, organizations, and new directions in the digital humanities. While the focus remains on the scholarship produced within the aforesaid chronological period, our methodological attempt in this intervention has been to acknowledge and put into dialogue relevant contributions related to the three primary themes of analysis that may fall beyond the ambit of a specific period.