Digital Humanities and Its Application in the Study of Literature and Culture

A Cultural Ambassador East and West: J. Hillis Miller’s <i>Lectures in China</i>

Area studies can suffer simultaneously from a “tautology of identity” and an “anxiety of specificity” (Móricz et al., “Colloquy: Jewish Studies and Music,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 65, no. 2 [2012]: 560, 581). On the one hand we find scholars who are invested in a particular sliver of the world's population, whether by ethnic affiliation or chosen affinity, who assume the uniqueness of that sliver, and whose focus on that sliver, according to the editors of the present volume, has led to a scholarship “filled with lacunae, because of [a] self-referential perspective as well as an implicit or explicit perspective of exclusion” (1). On the other hand, many outside this invested group may assume, explicitly or implicitly, that insiders are incapable of dispassionate scholarship, particularly in the humanities, that can speak to a broad audience. Such insiders and outsiders may find themselves talking at cross-purposes and dismissing one another's work before actually seeing it.Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek and Louise Vasvári's introduction and opening essay in their edited volume Comparative Hungarian Cultural Studies act as an answer both to the tautology of identity and the anxiety of specificity. They push for comparative cultural studies as “a global and inclusive discipline of global humanities [that] acts against the paradox of globalization versus localization” (17). The inclusiveness of the volume is apparent at a glance: it contains twenty-seven essays on a wide array of topics and from a broad range of disciplines, including anthropology, American studies, architecture, art history, communication and media studies, cultural studies, film studies, ethnology and folklore, gender studies, history, linguistics, various branches of literary criticism, Jewish studies, minority studies, political science, psychology, and sociology. Some contributors are of Hungarian background, others are not; most are members of university faculties, whether in Hungary, Germany, Israel, or the United States. The essays deal various with periods from the mid-nineteenth century to the present and are arranged under five headings: “History, Theory, and Methodology for Comparative Hungarian Cultural Studies”; “Comparative Hungarian Cultural Studies of Literature and Culture”; “Comparative Hungarian Cultural Studies and the Other Arts”; “Comparative Hungarian Cultural Studies and Gender Studies”; and “Comparative Hungarian Cultural Studies of Contemporary Hungary.” A sixth part consists of a selected bibliography of works in English on Hungarian culture, chiefly those published since 1989.The question provoked by the volume's title, given the contents, is where the “comparative” is in Comparative Hungarian Cultural Studies. In their very name, comparative literature departments and associations emphasize comparison; they study cultural expression “across linguistic and cultural boundaries” (http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Comparative_Literature/). The volume is the latest in a series of works written or edited by Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek on what he terms comparative cultural studies, “the theoretical as well as methodological postulate to move and dialogue between cultures, languages, literatures, and disciplines” (Comparative Literature and Comparative Cultural Studies [West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2003], 259). Sometimes “comparison” is interpreted strictly, as faculty members find themselves told they may not teach courses designed around one country, no matter how multicultural the country, in a department of comparative literature. What does it mean to write on the comparative cultural studies of a single country?Within the present volume, certain essays in fact position Hungarian topics explicitly in a comparative international context, drawing as they do on issues of translation, migration, postcolonial theory, and comparative political, artistic, media, and gender discourses, among others. For example, Peter Sherwood's comparison of versions of Sándor Márai's A gyertyák csonkig égnek, a German translation from the Hungarian original (Die Glut) and an English translation from the German translation (Embers), not only illustrates ways that certain “key mannerisms” of the author are diminished in its successive translations, but argues persuasively how those changes allowed “the conventional but undoubtedly well-crafted architecture of the original to emerge uncluttered for its new readers” (113). David Mandler provides a brief biography of Arminius Vámbéry, a Hungarian-born scholar of central Asia who became well known in Victorian England as a public intellectual, points out references to Vámbéry in Bram Stoker's Dracula, and makes a persuasive case for the parallels between this now-forgotten figure and the title character of Stoker's novel. Louise Vasvári places Asszony a fronton (Woman on the front), the memoir of a Hungarian woman survivor of an abusive marriage and wartime sexual violence, in the context of genres of women's life writing and memoirs of trauma, concluding that the author's “fragmented self-representation of her private versus public body … speak[s] only the inherited language of female victimhood and not of agency,” and thus that the work fits better “in the tradition of spiritual autobiography … rather than as an example of feminist life writing” (82). Tötösy de Zepetnek himself compares and contrasts the uses of ethnic essentialisms in neighboring countries in his essay “The Anti-Other in Post-1989 Austria and Hungary,” as well as reporting on the xenophobia and violent acts that emerge from such ideologies.Two of the essays examine dialogues between cultures by placing the Hungarian capital city in the context of “transcultural flows of popular culture” that “inspire new forms of global consciousness and cultural competency” (Henry Jenkins, Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers: Exploring Participatory Culture [New York: NYU Press, 2006], 156). Lajos Császi and Mary Gluck's “The Budapest Cow Parade and the Construction of Cultural Citizenship” investigates how a playful public-art exhibit known as the “cow parade” based on a model that had started in Switzerland “ultimately represented a challenge to the self-esteem” of both nationalists and intellectuals, by “us[ing] the vocabulary of [global] popular, rather than high, culture” (313), while Agata Anna Lisiak's “Urbanities of Budapest and Prague as Communicated in New Municipal Media” analyzes the way municipal governments in those cities use the World Wide Web to develop their “brands,” highlighting interesting parallels not only in the cities' aspirations for international prominence but also in their view of their own history—in particular their near-erasure of the state socialist period.A handful of essays explore the cultural role of Hungary's Others. Looking at the key artistic role of Hungarian Jews in the past are Ivan Sanders's “Jewish (Over)tones in Viennese and Budapest Operetta,” on the roles of Jewish composers, librettists, and sensibilities in this international theatrical genre; Debra Pfister's “Lost Dreams and Sacred Visions in the Art of [Imre] Ámos,” on the gifted expressionist/surrealist painter who perished in the Holocaust; and Catherine Portuges's “Curtiz, Hungarian Cinema, and Hollywood,” on the Hungarian-born director not only of Hollywood hits like Casablanca but also of what is considered the first Hungarian feature film in 1912. Kata Zsófia Vincze's takes present-day Hungarian–Jewish culture as her subject in “About the Jewish Renaissance in Post-1989 Hungary.” Some of these essays are more straightforward biography than “comparative,” but even in those cases, they illustrate the too-often-ignored ethnic diversity of Hungarian culture, “high” and “low.” These contributions on Hungarian–Jewish topics are particularly important, as the editors are correct in their assessment that “there has traditionally been an inadequate overlap between Jewish studies and studies on Hungarian culture and history, with the latter failing to take into consideration issues relating to Hungarian Jews and the Holocaust” (22). There has traditionally been even less overlap between Romani studies and Hungarian studies. The absence of more work on Hungarian Roma topics is unfortunate, but the number of scholars working in that area is exceedingly small; Kürti's critique of the problematics of racial stereotyping, both in fictional and “reality” television, in his “Images of Roma in Post-1989 Hungarian Media” is thus also particularly appreciated. Meanwhile, Éva Federmayer's “Nation, Gender, and Race in the Ragtime Culture of Millennial Budapest,” excavating the significance of “African American inflections … in various interrelated arenas of mass entertainment” at the turn of the twentieth century (139), reveals a fascinating and almost entirely unknown aspect of intercultural contact in Hungary.This reviewer is not entirely sure of the need for the justification for comparative cultural studies that Tötösy de Zepetnek and Vasvári put forward in this volume. The catholicity of its contents seems not entirely unlike what the journal Critical Inquiry set out as its mission in 1974; as Sheldon Sacks, one of its founding editors, wrote (in “A Chimera for a Breakfast,” Critical Inquiry 1, no. 1 [1974]), the journal “value[s] examination of the assumptions underlying particular discriminations” and is “interested in criticism that aspires to be a special kind of ‘learning’—not in any sense dispassionate or impersonal but something akin to that fusion of human commitment with objectivity that [Hungarian polymath] Michael Polanyi characterizes as ‘personal knowledge’” (iii). Sacks and his colleagues formulated “an editorial policy that insists on the widest diversity of subject made generally interesting to advocates of disciplined criticism by our authors' concern for theory, method, and the exploration of critical principles,” while specifically “eschew[ing] terms like ‘interdisciplinary’ or ‘comparative’” (idem.). Tötösy de Zepetnek and Vasvári are right to call for an expansion of the narrow boundaries that some (though certainly not all) have constructed around Hungarian studies topics, and are to be commended for assembling a wide diversity of contributions on interesting topics relating to Hungary and Hungarians, broadly construed. Beneath the elaborate rubric of comparative cultural studies that Tötösy de Zepetnek and Vasvári propose, the reader may find here (again quoting Sacks) “those who formulate fruitful and exciting questions” “and who attempt to find the best possible answers to those questions” (idem.). Despite their brevity, the individual essays found in Comparative Hungarian Cultural Studies do just that.

Introduction: The Interactive Relations Between Science and Technology and Literary Studies

Introduction: Cross-Cultural Reading

Digital Humanities as Appendix Robert K. Nelson (bio) “The Geographic Imagination of Civil War–Era American Fiction.”By Matthew Wilkens. American Literary History 25 ( Winter2013): 803– 40. “Space, Nation, and the Triumph of Region: A View of the World from Houston.”By Cameron Blevins. Journal of American History 101 (06 2014): 122– 47. Sometimes the digital humanities can seem like an inversion rather than a branch of the humanities. Self-described digital humanists often emphasize, even celebrate, how their practice differs from that of their disciplinary colleagues. Whereas most humanities scholars do their research more or less in isolation, digital humanists typically collaborate in teams that include technologists, librarians, and students. While the quintessential product of most humanities research is an interpretation presented in a monograph or an essay, digital humanists more often experiment with form, developing broad archives, interactive maps, and computer-generated models. Books and essays usually go through peer review before appearing with the imprimatur of a university press or scholarly journal; digital humanities projects are evaluated at a later point, undergoing, to borrow a couple of phrases from Kathleen Fitzpatrick, “crowdsourcing review” to receive (or not) “community imprimatur.” 1Finally, digital humanities projects often are not organized around substantiating an argument but instead prompt their audiences to independently investigate a subject through a more participatory, open-ended, and nonlinear process. While experimentation with alternative ways to practice and present the humanities can be exhilarating, there are of course trade-offs. Many humanities scholars continue to look askance at digital humanities work. Because such work often does not foreground specific arguments, many digital humanities projects can seem peripheral to the debates and questions that animate their own research. Take, as evidence, the differences between book and digital history reviews in the Journal of American History. The JAHhas shown a greater interest in encouraging digital scholarship than many journals, as the [End Page 131]presence of the digital history reviews section attests. But these reviews can make digital humanities scholarship seem preparatory to or distinct from the kinds of historical research assessed in book reviews. Whereas reviews of books almost always critically assess the contributions of an argument, that is very seldom the case in the digital history reviews. Much more often those review online archives, evaluating their utility in providing scholars with easy access to important materials or providing instructors a teaching resource for their students. Judging by these reviews, many humanists might understandably think that digital humanists produce valuable public humanities projects and useful tools for research but not necessarily, taking arguments and interpretation as the measure, scholarship. If the two articles under consideration here are any indication, that opinion is likely to change. Matthew Wilkens’s “Geographic Imagination of Civil War–Era American Fiction,” published in American Literary Historyin 2013, and Cameron Blevins’s “Space, Nation, and the Triumph of Region: A View of the World from Houston,” published in the JAHin 2014, signal that digital humanists and digital humanities methods are beginning to yield significant arguments. They are two examples of how digital humanities methods and digital humanities research are increasingly paying interpretative dividends, generating insights that will be of interest and value to humanities scholars who have little if any specific investment in DH qua DH. These two articles share a remarkable amount in common. Wilkens and Blevins both sketch and analyze the cultural construction of space in the United States in the second half of the nineteenth century. Wilkens seeks to survey the “geographic imagination” (804) of Civil War–era American fiction, Blevins the “imagined geography” (124) constructed by one Texas newspaper, the Houston Daily Post, around the turn of the twentieth century. The transposition of noun and modifier does suggest one important difference in their approaches and their preoccupations. Blevins is primarily interested in readers, not actual but imagined ones. He argues that the number of times people encountered particular place-names in the paper’s pages helped determine the ways they negotiated and navigated geographic space. In his account, the imagined geography of the Houston Daily Postwas first and foremost a commercial geography that both reflected and helped actively shape economic activity in the region...

Context in Literary and Cultural Studies is an interdisciplinary volume that deals with the challenges of studying works of art and literature in their historical context today. The relationship between artworks and context has long been a central concern for aesthetic and cultural disciplines, and the question of context has been asked anew in all eras. Developments in contemporary culture and technology, as well as new theoretical and methodological orientations in the humanities, once again prompt us to rethink context in literary and cultural studies. This volume takes up that challenge. Introducing readers to new developments in literary and cultural theory, Context in Literary and Cultural Studies connects all disciplines related to these areas to provide an interdisciplinary overview of the challenges different scholarly fields today meet in their studies of artworks in context. Spanning a number of countries, and covering subjects from nineteenth-century novels to rave culture, the chapters together constitute an informed, diverse and wide-ranging discussion. The volume is written for scholarly readers at all levels in the fields of Literary Studies, Comparative Literature, Cultural Studies, Art History, Film, Theatre Studies and Digital Humanities.

The richness of social and cultural theory in the humanities offers countless opportunities for using theory-informed concepts in data-based analysis workflows. The contributors to this volume thus encourage further research utilizing out-of-the-box models and approaches to space and place in the field of Digital Humanities. The collection follows the two complementary goals of providing promising conceptualisations of space and place for a broad audience from Digital Humanities, and of presenting current work in Digital Humanities using different conceptualisations of space and place or offering innovative methods for their analysis.

As scholars have begun the digitization of the world’s cultural materials, the understanding of what is to be digitized and how that digitization occurs remains narrowly imagined, with a distinct bias toward North American and European notions of culture, value and ownership. Humanists are well aware that cultural knowledge, aesthetic value and copyright/ownership are not monolithic, yet digital humanities work often expects the replication of narrow ideas of such. Drawing on the growing body of scholarship that situates the digital humanities in a broad global context, this paper points to areas of tension within the field and posits ways that digital humanities practitioners might resist such moves to homogenize the field. Working within the framework of border studies, the paper considers how working across national barriers might further digital humanities work. Finally, ideas of ownership and/or copyright are unique to country of origin and, as such, deserve careful attention. While open access is appealing in many digital humanities projects, it is not always appropriate, as work with indigenous cultural artifacts has revealed.

In his article "On World Literatures, Comparative Literature, and (Comparative) Cultural Studies" Ning Wang argues that cultural studies is characterized by being opposed to (elite) literary studies not only because it points to popular or non-elite literature, but also because it challenges the discipline of comparative literature. On the other hand, (comparative) cultural studies complements literary studies in that it contributes a great deal to the reconstruction of a sort of new comparative literature. Wang illustrates how some of the representative Anglo-American comparatists are now doing cultural criticism while still engaging in comparative literature and they paved the way for dialogue between literary and cultural studies. Therefore, deconstructing and subverting the Eurocentric discipline of comparative literature, (comparative) cultural studies has made a positive impact on the reconstruction of a new discipline of comparative literature and the field of world literatures. It has also enabled a remapping of world literatures by enlarging the canon with non-canonical Oriental literary works.

Big Digital Humanities has its origins in a series of seminal articles Patrik Svensson published in the Digital Humanities Quarterly between 2009 and 2012. As these articles were coming out, enthusiasm around Digital Humanities was acquiring a great deal of momentum and significant disagreement about what did or didn’t “count” as Digital Humanities work. Svensson’s articles provided a widely sought after omnibus of Digital Humanities history, practice, and theory. They were informative and knowledgeable and tended to foreground reportage and explanation rather than utopianism or territorial contentiousness. In revising his original work for book publication, Svensson has responded to both subsequent feedback and new developments. Svensson’s own unique perspective and special stake in the Digital Humanities conversation comes from his role as director of the HUMlab at Umeå University. HUMlab is a unique collaborative space and Digital Humanities center, which officially opened its doors in 2000. According to its own official description, the HUMlab is an open, creative studio environment where “students, researchers, artists, entrepreneurs and international guests come together to engage in dialogue, experiment with technology, take on challenges and move scholarship forward.” It is this last element “moving scholarship forward” that Svensson argues is the real opportunity in what he terms the “big digital humanities,” or digital humanities as practiced in collaborative spaces like the HUMlab, and he is uniquely positioned to take an account of this evolving dimension of Digital Humanities practice.

Forum:Canon versus "The Great Unread" Birgit Tautz and Patricia Anne Simpson When we embarked on editing the Goethe Yearbook, we brainstormed ideas about formats for disseminating research that would usefully complement the stellar articles that appear annually. Our interest turned to the forum, a robust format that has fostered lively debate elsewhere (e.g., Eighteenth Century Theory and Interpretation) and has recently been popularized by our colleagues at the German Quarterly. Naturally, we zeroed in on a topic that is still underrepresented in the Yearbook but that has begun to alter the ways in which we approach the study of Goethe and, more broadly, the eighteenth century—within our comparatively small field in North America, as well as in Germany and in adjacent disciplines invested in the period (e.g., comparative literature and comparative cultural studies, genre studies, English, Atlantic studies, and history). We are, of course, speaking of Digital Humanities (DH). In the process of identifying experts in the field, we discovered that a few years ago graduate programs in German (at Yale, the University of Chicago, and Konstanz) had devoted a short course to the topic that inspired the title of our inaugural forum. As we approached potential contributors, we posed a series of questions, intended to spark not direct answers, but to serve as an impulse for reflection: What is the canon? How do we define it and how has it been reenvisioned beyond DH? What is the relationship between "mining" thousands of texts through algorithms and scholarship "merely" based on the interpretation of select literary works? What are the consequences of digitizing primary materials? How do DH methodologies and analytical practices enhance and/or endanger the study of the canon? How does "close reading" versus "distant reading" affect the legacy of canonical authors and their impact on the construction of national literary historiography in the nineteenth century? What is at stake for the discipline of literary study—for the act of (close) reading—when we ask the question about the canon versus the "great unread"? Nine colleagues who are engaged in the theory and practice of DH scholarship responded to our call. The scope of their work is impressive, providing detailed yet suggestive overviews of DH methodologies, insights into the importance of DH and its ability to recuperate historically marginalized writers, case studies of temporary canonicity, and challenges to canonical approaches to the Goethezeit. In framing the debate, we kept in mind the larger context of German studies, while assuming an uncontested relevance of literature and textual studies, certainly among the readers of the Goethe Yearbook. And while we [End Page 187] recognized the pitfalls of posing canonical literature as "read" in opposition to a virtually boundless spectrum of texts that can be analyzed only as data, we hoped to prompt a less polarized discussion about the imagined impact of DH and "computational criticism" on our field. We wanted to create a section that allows scholars—whether they are newcomers or well-versed in DH, interested in or deeply skeptical about data—to glimpse the innovative field's rich opportunities, its first instances of obsolescence, even its evident shortfalls; our goal is to allow our readers to decide for themselves whether to read broadly, which directions to pursue further, or whether to disregard the field completely. We invite continuous engagement with the contributions, not to succumb to a trend, but to continue the dialogue. The following essays impressively show that our aim for open discussions was spot-on. The contributors not only address ways in which DH can broaden an understanding of our field, but they also identify new challenges that arise; quite a few returned to the original meaning of "the great unread" in Margaret Cohen's formulation, namely the fact that canon formation has always implied a curtailing of tradition (as opposed to the texts produced in any given period). Each contribution reveals, in unique ways, not only that possible definitions of and approaches to DH are about as manifold as its projects and practitioners, but that the field has begun what we may call its own historicization; it now encompasses digital preservation, humanistic inquiry about digital objects (text, image, space, networks...

As digital infrastructures and methods increasingly shape how cultural memory is preserved, accessed, and interpreted, questions of collaboration and participation have become central to both research and pedagogical practices in digital humanities and cultural heritage contexts. This panel explores the promises and challenges of participatory approaches to digital humanities and cultural heritage work. Bringing together five speakers in various domains of digital humanities, community archives, and digital curation, this panel offers multiple perspectives on how to engage different communities of interest, such as students, interdisciplinary scholars, librarians and practitioners, as well as local communities, in participatory digital humanities and cultural heritage work. Following the individual presentations, panelists will facilitate open discussions with attendees, seeking to collectively explore questions including how to design participatory work in digital humanities and cultural heritage practices, how to engage communities and collaborators in participatory work, and how to address the challenges that emerge in participatory processes. Through this collaborative and interactive approach, this panel seeks to advance knowledge production practices of digital humanities and cultural heritage, advocating for a “participatory future” of digital humanities and cultural heritage work. This panel will be sponsored by ASIS&amp;T SIG‐AVC if accepted.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to dissect key issues and debates in digital humanities, an emerging field of theory and practice. Digital humanities stands greatly to impact the Information and Library Science (ILS) professions (and vice versa) as well as the traditional humanities disciplines.Design/methodology/approachThis paper explores the contours of digital humanities as a field, touching upon fundamental issues related to the field’s coalescence and thus to its structure and epistemology. It looks at the ways in which digital humanities brings new approaches and sheds new light on manifold humanities foci.FindingsDigital humanities work represents a vital new current of interdisciplinary, collaborative intellectual activity both in- and outside the academy; it merits particular attention from ILS.Research limitations/implicationsThis paper helps potential stakeholders understand the intellectual and practical framework of the digital humanities and “its relationship” to their own intellectual and professional work.Originality/valueThis paper critically synthesizes previous scholarly work in digital humanities. It has particular value for those in ILS, a community that has proven especially receptive to the field, as well as to scholars working in many humanities disciplines. Digital humanities has already made an important impact on both LIS and the humanities; its impact is sure to grow.

The digital humanities is a rapidly growing field that is transforming humanities research through digital tools and resources. Researchers can now quickly trace every one of Issac Newton's annotations, use social media to engage academic and public audiences in the interpretation of cultural texts, and visualize travel via ox cart in third-century Rome or camel caravan in ancient Egypt. Rhetorical scholars are leading the revolution by fully utilizing the digital toolbox, finding themselves at the nexus of digital innovation. Rhetoric and the Digital Humanities is a timely, multidisciplinary collection that is the first to bridge scholarship in rhetorical studies and the digital humanities. It offers much-needed guidance on how the theories and methodologies of rhetorical studies can enhance all work in digital humanities, and vice versa. Twenty-three essays over three sections delve into connections, research methodology, and future directions in this field. Jim Ridolfo and William Hart-Davidson have assembled a broad group of more than thirty accomplished scholars. Read together, these essays represent the cutting edge of research, offering guidance that will energize and inspire future collaborations.

This volume presents an exploration of Digital Humanities (DH), a field focused on the reciprocal transformation of digital technologies and humanities scholarship. Central to DH research is the practice of modelling, which involves translating intricate knowledge systems into computational models. This book addresses a fundamental query: How can an effective language be developed to conceptualize and guide modelling in DH? Modelling, with its historical roots, carries multifaceted meanings influenced by various disciplinary contexts. Modelling Between Digital and Humanities innovatively connects DH with the historical tradition of model-based thinking in the humanities, cultural studies, and the sciences. It endeavors to reshape interpretative frameworks by contextualizing DH's modelling practices within a broader conceptual landscape. Through an exploration of digital, visual and data models, the book asserts that DH holds the potential to be a cornerstone of a novel cultural literacy paradigm. By probing the interplay between technology and thought, the book ultimately positions DH as a catalyst for transformative cultural insights.