The Digital Humanities is an emerging field that brings computational and humanities methods together, with a methodological commitment to thinking through making. In a classroom context, that means that students are not just consumers of digital scholarly resources, but producers too.
Computer technology and digital tools provide the ability to analyze, visualize, map and encode text. The result is rich and diverse content collections that can be both studied and mined by researchers. In addition to close reading a text, attending to the meaning of a specific passage, students can use distant reading or the visualization of patterns in a text or in a group of texts to develop or answer new research questions. “Digital tools and computer literacy open a whole new world for learning, disseminating and teaching,” says Crompton “adding code to text, to, for example, insert footnotes, not only requires research, design and technological skill, but also provides students with a way to contribute to the creation of knowledge.”
Constance Crompton with student at the launch
Explaining the Christmas Carol project, Crompton says, “the DIHU301 students collaborated on both the research and production of The Christmas Carol digital edition. The edition is intended for use by a first- or second-year undergraduate class that has been given specific essay topics. DIHU301 students had to design with the first- or second-year undergraduate students in mind, submitting a rationale for each design choice that explained just how the text and the code in the individual parts of the edition would be of use to students who had to answer the essay questions. By no means an easy task, the edition is a testament not only to the DIHU301 students critical, creative, and research skills, but also to their hard work and willingness to problem solve.” The Digital Edition of The Christmas Carol launch was kindly hosted by the library.
A Christmas Carol digital editions launch
In this case the cultural reception is what people thought of the book and its illustrations when it was published in 1843 as well as what they thought about it in first half of the 20thC, which we can work out from the way it was adapted in the film and audio files that are part of the edition.