Review: Digital_Humanities, by Anne Burdick, Johanna Drucker, Peter Lunenfeld, Todd Presner, and Jeffrey Schnapp

Abstract

Anne Burdick, Johanna Drucker, Peter Lunenfeld, Todd Presner, and Jeffrey Schnapp. Digital_Humanities . Boston: MIT Press, 2016. 152 pp. ISBN: 9780262528863. $22.95. Humans are comforted by the organization of information. After all, the sturdy Tupperware provided by clear definitions, typologies, rubrics, and classifications are intended to allay that most human of emotions: doubt. Our love of knowledge organization explains the enduring popularity of texts like Pliny the Elder's Natural History or perhaps Isidore of Seville's Etymologies , but it also goes a long way toward explaining the enduring obsession with defining what, exactly, the field of digital humanities is or is not. In 2012, when Digital_Humanities was first published by MIT Press, the authors sought to provide a definition and exploration of the digital humanities (henceforth DH) that could, in their opinion, serve as a guidebook, a field report, a harangue, a vision statement, and a tool with which to position new scholarship. To their minds, such a book was an imperative as we continue to experience “one of those rare moments of opportunity in the humanities” (vii). The unrevised paperback edition of the book—published in February of 2016—is the volume currently under review. While we may still be experiencing the aforementioned “rare moment” in humanities research four years later, it must be said that the landscape and arguments surrounding DH have changed since the book was first published. Still, the book still has value in its ability to conceptualize the role of both the humanities and the digital in the modern world. Digital_Humanities begins with a preface (vii–x) that lays out the goals for the book before it moves on to its four chapters titled: “Humanities to Digital Humanities,” “Emerging Methods and Genres,” “The Social Life of the Digital Humanities,” and “Provocations.” From the beginning, the authors warn that this is not a “standard-format” academic book, nor is it conceived of as a textbook (though, …