What is/are the Digital Humanities
- The study of texts--broadly defined--using digital methodologies
- The study of the digital--broadly defined--using textual methodologies
- A heavily debated definition!
At its core, then, digital humanities is more akin to a common methodological outlook than an investment in any one specific set of texts or even technologies.Matthew Kirschenbaum, "What is Digital Humanities and What's It Doing in English Departments?" (Debates in DH)
Digital Humanities @ SFU
The DHIL supports researchers
- Consultations
- Digital project support
- Continuing project support
- Exploratory work
- Research-integrated training
- Course-integrated training
Women's Print History Project
https://womensprinthistoryproject.com
PI: Michelle Levy
Reconstructing Early Circus
https://dhil.lib.sfu.ca/circus/
PI: Leith Davis
Textual Digital Humanities
One way to understand the digital humanities is through manipulation, adaptation, transformation, translation, conjecture, play
Words 
Data
Words Numbers
Words Words
Conjectural Criticism
But if the computer can count numbers like a mathematician, it can also play with letters in ways, as we shall see, that poets and textual scholars alike would recognize.
The Lyon in Mourning Project
Two interrelated goals: networks and textual scholarship
Describing the Text(s)
Who? What? Where?
Identifying authors, senders, receivers, etc
Classifying individual items, their genre(s), etc
Reconciling the manuscript with the Paton edition
Identifying people, places, objects, etc
Describing the Text(s)
What constitutes an item?
Find the item!
Digital Editing
The Lyon in Mourning project uses TEI-XML as a way to "mark-up," or identify, discrete segments of the text
Striking a balance between "linguistic" and "bibliographic" codes (Jerome McGann, The Textual Condition)--i.e. reading across form and content, negotiating interpretation and fidelity
What do italics mean in this context? What does a horizontal line signify? Do we care?
Digital Edition / Textual Editing
At its core, textual encoding is a way of identifying and differentiating bits of text from other bits of texts.
We do this all the time!
Italics for emphasis
Underlining for titles
Bold for extra-emphasis
Quotation marks for outside attribution
or skepticism
All capitals to YELL
+++
Forbes as Transcriber
Forbes goes to greath lengths to represent his source material as accurately as possible
Why TEI?
Since TEI can represent both the linguistic and bibliographic codes, we can have multiple renderings of the same transcription
Transcription
No transcription is neutral
Transcribing = Critical Editing
Involves making critical interpretive decisions
Thanks!
Contact: takeda@sfu.ca
DHIL: https://dhil.lib.sfu.ca