Advancing Digital Humanities: Research, Methods, Theories

Advancing Digital Humanities moves beyond definition of this dynamic and fast-growing field to show how its arguments, analyses, findings, and theories are pioneering new directions in the humanities globally. Contributions cover digital methods, critical curation, and research futures, with theoretical and practical chapters framed around key areas of activity, including modelling collections, data-driven analysis, and thinking through building. These are linked through the concept of 'ambitious generosity', a way of working to pursue large-scale research questions while supporting and enabling other research areas and approaches, both within and beyond the academy.

Table of Contents:
List of Figures List of Tables Notes on Contributors 1. Collecting Ourselves; Katherine Bode and Paul Longley Arthur PART I: TRANSFORMING DISCIPLINES 2. Exercises in Battology; Mark Byron 3. Stylometry of Dickens's Language: An Experiment with Random Forests; Tomoji Tabata 4. Patterns and Trends in Harlequin Category Romance; Jack Elliott 5. The Printers' Web; Sydney Shep 6. Biographical Dictionaries in the Digital Era; Paul Longley Arthur PART II: MEDIA METHODS 7. Digital Methods in New Cinema History; Richard Maltby, Dylan Walker and Mike Walsh 8. A 'Big Data' Approach to Mapping the Australian Twittersphere; Axel Bruns, Jean Burgess,and Tim Highfield 9. iResearch: What Do Smart Phones Tell Us about the Digital Human?; Mark Cote 10. Screenshots as Virtual Photography: Cybernetics, Remediation, and Affect; Christopher Moore PART III: CRITICAL CURATION 11. Rethinking CollectionS; Julia Flanders 12. Methods and Canons; Katherine Bode and Tara Murphy 13. Reading the Text, Walking the Terrain, Following the Map; Oyvind Eide 14. Doing the Sheep Good: Facilitating Engagement in Digital Humanities and Creative Arts Research; Deb Verhoeven 15. Materialities of Software; Ned Rossiter PART IV: RESEARCH FUTURES 16. Digital Humanities: Is Bigger Better?; Peter Robinson 17. Digital Humanities, or Digitally Based Humanities Research; Paul Turnbull 18. The Big Bang of Online Reading; Alan Liu 19. Getting There from Here: Remembering the Future of Digital Humanities; Willard McCarty

About the Author :
Paul Longley Arthur is Professor of Digital Humanities, University of Western Sydney, Australia. He was previously Deputy Director, ANU Centre for European Studies, a joint initiative of the European Commission and Australian National University. From 2010 to 2013, he was Deputy Director of the National Centre of Biography, ANU, and Deputy General Editor of the Australian Dictionary of Biography. Katherine Bode is Senior Lecturer in Literary and Textual Studies at the Centre for Digital Humanities Research at the Australian National University, Australia. Her most recent monograph, Reading by Numbers: Recalibrating the Literary Field (2012), explores the critical potential of quantitative book historical and bibliographical methods for literary history.

Review :
'Advancing Digital Humanities is essential reading for those considering the future of our interdiscipline." - Professor Ray Siemens, Canada Research Chair in Humanities Computing, University of Victoria, BC, Canada 'Defining Digital Humanities by what it does rather than wrestling with definitions of what it is, the essays in this vibrant anthology are reports of substantive engagements with the intellectual dimensions of technological tools. Each project in this collection starts from research in a core humanities discipline-literature, history, cultural studies-and extends its questions of style, authorship, influence, production and reception practices through digital means. An excellent volume for those new to the field as well as insiders, each of whom will take away something of value from the carefully crafted insights of these essays.' - Johanna Drucker, Breslauer Professor of Bibliography, Information Studies, UCLA, USA 'This collection of essays is an essential travel guide for anyone who wishes to venture into the varied, complex and challenging intellectual terrain of the digital humanities. The volume moves discussion of digital humanities beyond arid debates about the definition of the field and illustrates the wider theoretical and cultural vistas that the digital humanities are opening up. This compelling collection of thought-provoking essays vividly illustrates how humanities scholars are using digital methods to refashion our cultural understanding and transform representations of knowledge across subjects ranging from Dickens to the Twittersphere. The contributors include not only some of the most distinguished international scholars in the field, but also young researchers engaged in innovative experimentation at the digital coalface, and their energy, diversity and intellectual ambition make this volume a captivating read. Advancing Digital Humanities is a fundamental and unmissable contribution to the intellectual and theoretical formation of this important new area of scholarly endeavour.' - Andrew Prescott, Professor of Digital Humanities and Head, Department of Digital Humanities, King's College London, UK