Conference announcement: Key ideas and concepts of Digital Humanities
26 – 28 October 2015
The conference “Key ideas and concepts of Digital Humanities” which is supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) is going to be hosted at Technische Universität Darmstadt from 26 to 28 October 2015. All colleagues and students interested in the Digital Humanities are invited; participation is of free of charge. The conference registration is open now at:
http://www.dh-concepts.tu-darmstadt.de
The hosts are Michael Sperberg-McQueen, who holds the KIVA International Visiting Professorship for Interculturality and Andrea Rapp, Professor for Computer Philology at Technische Universität Darmstadt as well as Sabine Bartsch and Michael Bender, all members of the working group DHDarmstadt.
Conference theme
The role of the Digital Humanities is currently discussed controversially with a view of both the present and the future. It seems a truism that we need to incorporate the past, if we are to conduct a fruitful discussion of the future. The basis for the present and future role of the field are the key ideas and concepts from which it has evolved. A reappraisal of the history of ideas not only shows the essence of the field, but also highlights the potential it has to offer for the humanities and other, related fields. The interaction of computational concepts with ideas from the breadth of humanities-disciplines has the potential to generate more than the sum of the parts. Since the inception of the field formerly known as humanities computing, new methods were developed and new insights gained. Frequently, interdisciplinary border crossings constitute key moments in which new ideas and concepts emerge. The compilation of a history of ideas of the Digital Humanities is possible, and it is necessary. With this conference, we aim to chart the history of the digital humanities by focusing on a discussion of the key ideas and concepts and the associated key-moments in the development of the field.
Whether early pioneering achievements such as the cooperation between Father Roberto Busa and IBM since the late 1940s; Vannevar Bush’s essay “As We May Think” describing the landmark idea and design for the Memex; younger milestones such as the establishment of the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI), or the conception of the eXtensible Markup Language (XML) – examples of key ideas of the DH abound.
The event is going to be centred around experts from different areas of the Digital Humanities, each presenting a paper on a key idea or a moment in their research area. The conference will help to identify the most important achievements of the field and discuss their origins and position, their impact and development or possibilities for development.
Conference dates: Monday, 26 October to Wednesday, 28 October 2015
Conference organisation: Sabine Bartsch, Michael Bender
Team DHDarmstadt
Institut für Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaft
Technische Universität Darmstadt
Contact: dh-concepts@linglit.tu-darmstadt.de
Conference website: http://www.dh-concepts.tu-darmstadt.de
