The application of computational tools and methods to traditional humanities disciplines such as literature, history, and philosophy.A curated collection of digital humanities projects, tools, and resources to give a sense of the innovative work being done in the field.
African Digital Heritage stands out for its innovative use of technology, including virtual reality and digital simulations, to preserve and share African cultural and natural histories. The organization effectively bridges the gap between technology and heritage, engaging communities through immersive methodologies and interactive projects. Its commitment to community engagement, education, and capacity building, alongside its strategic use of digital tools, positions ADH as a leader in the digital heritage landscape.
The project stands out for its innovative use of data visualization to analyze and illustrate the connections between individuals attending multiple Afro-Asianist conferences. By allowing users to cross-reference conferences, it highlights the mobility and interconnectedness of non-state actors in the global south during the Cold War. The visualization serves as both a research tool and a pedagogical resource, offering insights into the complex geopolitics of decolonization and internationalist engagements.
This project is innovative in its use of digital formats to present a comprehensive archive of World War II soldiers' surveys, making them accessible for both scholarly research and public education. It incorporates virtual reality prototypes and plans for interactive museum exhibits, enhancing the engagement with historical data. The project also emphasizes the importance of primary sources in understanding historical narratives, providing a valuable resource for historians and educators.
ArchivalGossip offers an innovative approach to understanding gossip as a creative social tool rather than a mere personal indulgence. By providing interactive features such as thematic timelines and geographic maps, the project allows users to explore the transatlantic role of gossip in cultural meaning-making. The archive not only serves scholars but also engages a broader audience through its blog, which includes unique features like the 'Euphemism Challenge.'
The BCDA is innovative in its use of digital tools to map and interpret the contributions of Black craftspeople, offering a transformative public-facing platform that combines archival records with geographic information. By allowing community contributions and leveraging digital repositories, the project expands the narrative of Black craft culture and provides a scalable model for examining the legacy of Black people in the United States. The interactive map and educational resources enhance both pedagogical and research opportunities, making the BCDA a valuable resource for understanding Black labor and expertise.
The project innovatively uses geospatial technology to map James Baldwin's literary references to Paris, offering a unique visual and analytical tool for exploring the geographical influences on his work. It features interactive layers that trace character paths from Baldwin's novels, providing insights into the spatial dynamics of his narratives. The project is accessible, with features like alt-text and compatibility with text-to-speech apps, and has been recognized by several academic initiatives.
This project stands out for its extensive digital archive and its focus on the folk revival's history on the West Coast, which is less studied compared to the East Coast. The exhibit not only documents the festival's history but also connects it to broader cultural and social movements, such as the Free Speech Movement. The inclusion of multimedia elements like audio recordings and television footage enhances the interactive experience, making it a valuable resource for both academic and general audiences.
The Bitter Aloe Project stands out for its innovative use of digital tools to explore postcolonial linguistic materials, offering a nuanced approach to understanding human rights violations during apartheid in South Africa. By integrating technologies like sentence embeddings and named entity recognition, the project not only enhances the accessibility of historical data but also pioneers new methods in digital humanities research. Its approach to visualizing data through maps and network graphs, despite challenges like the Modifiable Areal Unit Problem, highlights its commitment to advancing geospatial narratives and uncovering hidden patterns in historical testimonies.
CantApp offers an innovative multimodal interface that enhances the accessibility of Middle English text. It allows users to read and hear the text in both Middle and modern English, view high-resolution manuscript images, and access video performances. This customizable interface is particularly beneficial for students and educators, providing a dynamic tool for teaching and appreciating Middle English poetry.
The CPMR project is innovative in its use of the 'archive as encuentro' methodology, which fosters dialogue between subjects and the community. This approach not only preserves Chicana memory but also builds transgenerational collectives through digital recovery. The project integrates pedagogy by involving students in the archival process, from interviews to digital curation, making the CPMR website a valuable educational resource. The use of Clowder as a data management tool enhances the project's ability to manage and publish digital assets efficiently.
This project stands out for its use of digital tools to make oral histories widely accessible, bridging gaps in historical narratives by prioritizing marginalized voices. It effectively combines multimedia elements to enhance storytelling and aligns with contemporary digital humanities trends. The project not only documents history but also fosters empathy and connection with the lived experiences of civil rights activists, making it a significant resource for understanding these movements.
CWRGM stands out for its comprehensive approach to making historical documents accessible to a wide audience through digital means. The project not only digitizes and annotates a vast collection of letters but also engages the public through educational materials, podcasts, and a blog. Its innovative use of document tags allows for the exploration of lesser-known historical voices, enhancing the discoverability of the collection. The project exemplifies the power of public collaboration and sets a high standard for transparency and volunteer acknowledgment in digital humanities projects.
Cocôzap stands out for its innovative use of digital tools to empower marginalized communities in Rio de Janeiro. By leveraging WhatsApp for real-time reporting and georeferencing sanitation issues, the project not only addresses immediate community needs but also fosters broader public policy discussions. Its methodology of 'Citizen Data Generation' allows residents to actively participate in shaping their environment, making it a replicable model for other regions facing similar challenges.
This project stands out for its use of digital mapping and visualization to chronologically and geographically document the spread of massacres across Australia. It integrates extensive archival research with modern digital tools to offer a nuanced understanding of colonial violence. The project has been influential in media and politics, contributing to national discussions on Indigenous history and reconciliation. Its innovative approach includes detailed data models and interactive maps, although it could further benefit from incorporating Indigenous mapping perspectives.
The CFRP exemplifies the potential of digital humanities projects by providing a data-driven approach to theatre history. It encourages computational use of digitized collections and offers a unique online archive that allows users to explore historical data through search and visualization tools. The project has inspired new methodologies in the study of French theater history and expanded the sensory understanding of the past. Its commitment to open and reusable data scholarship sets a standard for future digital humanities projects.
The project stands out for its innovative use of digital tools to map and visualize the historical movement and settlement patterns of Jewish communities in Boston. It encourages interdisciplinary collaboration and offers a model for similar projects in other communities. The use of tools like StoryMap JS and Scene VR allows for interactive and engaging presentations of historical data, although the project is best experienced on a desktop. The potential for expansion to other communities and the integration of mobile-friendly features are notable future directions.
The Digital Transgender Archive is notable for its expansive and inclusive approach to transgender history, offering a trans-historical and trans-cultural collection of materials. It provides multiple pathways for users to explore its content, including thematic collections and sophisticated metadata indexing. The project is a model for digital humanities initiatives, engaging both scholarly and public audiences while remaining accountable to diverse communities.
This project stands out for its innovative use of digital mapping and narrative storytelling to transform academic research into public scholarship. By integrating ArcGIS StoryMaps, it offers a visually engaging and accessible platform for exploring the Camphill movement's history and expansion. The project also emphasizes accessibility, with features like alt-texted images and narrated maps, making it inclusive for users with disabilities. It serves as a model for scholars aiming to share research with diverse audiences through digital means.
The Documenting Judeo-Spanish project stands out for its innovative use of digitization technology to preserve and make accessible the nearly-extinct Solitreo script. By providing interactive features such as hover-over translations and tooltips, the project allows users to explore and learn the script in an engaging manner. The project not only aids in the preservation of cultural heritage but also serves as a resource for educators, students, and speech communities interested in the Judeo-Spanish language. Future developments aim to enhance searchability and expand the document collection, further supporting language learning and scholarly research.
The East End Digital Library stands out for its innovative approach to digital archiving, using multimedia elements like soundscapes and podcasts to bring historical texts to life. It offers a platform for experiential learning and productive exchange, encouraging users to explore the cultural and historical significance of archived materials. The project not only preserves historical objects but also invites reflection on their contemporary relevance, making it a powerful tool for education and cultural preservation.
The project stands out for its use of a knowledge graph and Linked Open Data to aggregate and disambiguate vast amounts of historical data related to the African slave trade. It uniquely combines data from numerous sources with narrative stories to provide a humanistic context, while also addressing ethical considerations in data handling. The initiative is supported by a wide range of institutions and aims to make historical data more accessible and interconnected.
This project stands out for its comprehensive digital exhibition that not only honors Eileen Southern's contributions to musicology but also integrates innovative digital tools like ArcGIS StoryMaps for an interactive experience. It combines archival research with modern technology to create a rich, educational resource that highlights Southern's global impact and her role as a cultural vanguard. The project also fosters student involvement in digital humanities, encouraging them to experiment with new technologies and contribute to the ongoing narrative of Southern's legacy.
Furnace and Fugue stands out for its innovative use of digital tools to bring a 17th-century multimedia work to life. The project offers an interactive platform that allows users to explore the emblems through text, image, and music, with features like manipulable vocal recordings and a downloadable performance edition. This digital edition not only fulfills Maier's vision of his emblems being 'seen, read, meditated upon, understood, distinguished, sung and heard,' but also encourages new interpretations and playful engagement with early modern culture.
The project stands out for its innovative use of digital tools to facilitate 'digital reconciliation,' providing a platform for Native communities to access and contribute to the historical narrative of boarding schools. By involving community advisors and using a culturally sensitive content management system, it ensures that the dissemination of information respects Indigenous privacy and knowledge systems. This approach not only aids in uncovering hidden histories but also supports ongoing reconciliation efforts by empowering descendant communities to tell their stories.
The innovative aspect of GeoNewsMiner lies in its ability to visualize the density of locational references in historic newspapers, addressing key issues in spatial humanities. By providing historic maps and using machine learning for data processing, it offers a comprehensive view of changing geopolitical borders and locational references over time. The project is notable for its meticulous documentation and open-access approach, making it a valuable resource for researchers interested in historical data and spatial analysis.
The George Eliot Archive stands out for its extensive collection of George Eliot's works and related materials, all freely accessible under a Creative Commons license. Notably, it includes interactive elements such as a detailed chronology of Eliot's life and a forthcoming visualization of her social network. The project is implemented on the Omeka platform, making it user-friendly for the student team involved. This digital archive not only preserves Eliot's literary legacy but also enhances the study of Victorian literature through innovative digital tools.
The Guide to Indigenous DC stands out for its focus on contemporary Indigenous activism and its use of digital technology to educate users about Indigenous contributions to Washington, DC. By offering both a physical and virtual tour, the app provides a flexible and accessible way for users to engage with Indigenous history and culture. Its innovative use of augmented reality and geolocation enhances the user experience, while its educational content challenges misconceptions about Indigenous peoples as solely historical figures.
The Hajj Trail stands out for its innovative use of Twine, an open-source platform for digital storytelling, to create an interactive and educational experience. By simulating the spatial and temporal aspects of early modern travel, the game offers a dynamic understanding of the challenges faced by pilgrims. It diverges from traditional orientalist depictions by focusing on the social and cultural histories of the Ottoman Empire. The project is notable for its potential to expand narratives by incorporating diverse historical sources, and its contribution to undergraduate pedagogy in digital Ottoman studies.
This project stands out for its use of the CollectionBuilder platform, which enables an intuitive exploration of the Hispanic Theater Collection through digital means. By digitizing and georeferencing the collection, the project offers a dynamic way to engage with the materials, including a map, timeline, and word cloud for browsing. The project is notable for its bilingual text descriptions and ongoing efforts to create a plurilingual platform, enhancing accessibility and engagement with U.S. Latino cultural heritage.
HEALD stands out for its innovative use of digital tools to connect keywords, images, people, and places, creating an interactive and comprehensive resource for understanding early American landscape design. The project leverages the MediaWiki platform for its digital sustainability, allowing for high-resolution image handling and data migration. Its semantic query capabilities enable users to explore relationships between various elements, enhancing the study of historical landscapes. The project also addresses gaps in traditional narratives by including diverse voices and lesser-known figures in landscape history.
The innovative aspect of I'm Still Surviving lies in its approach to public history, where women living with HIV/AIDS are not just subjects but active historians of their own narratives. This project empowers them to share their experiences and insights, challenging the marginalization of women's voices in the history of the epidemic. The digital platform offers a dynamic and interactive way to explore these stories, making them accessible to a wider audience and fostering a deeper understanding of the intersection between health, systemic injustice, and community resilience.
jsLDA stands out for its user-friendly, browser-based interface that makes topic modeling accessible without the need for extensive technical setup. It leverages the Gibbs sampling algorithm to perform LDA topic modeling entirely in JavaScript, making it a versatile tool for both beginners and experienced users. The project is notable for its focus on usability and accessibility, providing clear instructions and explanations to help users understand and utilize the tool effectively. It also supports advanced features like loading custom text collections and saving reports, making it a valuable resource for humanities researchers.
imagineRio stands out for its innovative use of GIS and WebGL technologies to create an interactive and educational platform that visualizes urban change in Rio de Janeiro. It allows users to explore historical narratives and spatial data, making it a valuable tool for both academic research and community history recovery. The project fosters collaboration and inclusivity by inviting contributions from diverse communities, thereby enriching the historical narrative of the city.
This project is innovative in its use of digital tools to explore Holocaust testimonies, offering a new way to understand the experiences of those who perished. By employing natural language processing and digital storytelling, it provides a unique method to access and analyze the collective and individual experiences of persecution. The project stands out for its ability to make the implicit presence of the voiceless explicit, ensuring that the memory of the Holocaust is preserved for future generations.
The project innovatively combines digital mapping with scholarly collaboration to explore the transnational and transcolonial movements of Black intellectuals in the 20th century. It provides interactive visualizations that reveal historical trajectories and intersections, encouraging further scholarly exploration of Afro-Atlantic intellectual traditions. The use of open-source tools like D3 and Jekyll, along with a collaborative data assembly process, highlights its commitment to accessible and dynamic scholarship.
The LGLC project is notable for its comprehensive approach to documenting queer Canadian history through a digital prosopography. It utilizes TEI-XML encoding to represent bibliographic data and is committed to openness by inviting public contributions. The project is also pioneering in creating machine-readable data for the Semantic Web, enhancing linked open data projects. Its use in diversity training by Canadian health organizations underscores its practical impact and relevance.
LiC stands out for its community-sourcing approach, allowing students to contribute to the anthology and be credited for their work. It leverages digital tools to create interactive and accessible literary resources, addressing the high cost of textbooks and the lack of contextual annotations in freely available archives. The project also plans to expand its collection to include more diverse voices, such as Indigenous and Caribbean authors, and to improve its technical features for better usability.
The London Stage Database stands out for its innovative approach to making historical theatre data accessible and usable in the digital age. By recovering and digitizing the data from the 1970s London Stage Information Bank, the project overcomes past technological obsolescence and data loss. It aligns with contemporary digital humanities practices by offering transparency in data handling and ensuring long-term accessibility through open file formats. The database not only preserves historical data but also enhances it with modern tools, making it a significant resource for theatre historians and digital humanities scholars.
The Louisiana Slave Conspiracies project stands out for its innovative use of digital tools to present historical data in a multimodal format. By offering an interactive map and searchable databases, it allows users to explore the events, people, and places associated with the 1791 and 1795 conspiracies in a non-linear fashion. This approach not only enhances accessibility to primary sources but also encourages users to engage with the material critically, fostering a deeper understanding of the historical context and the complexities of slave resistance.
The project innovatively uses digital mapping to represent queer spaces historically, offering a visual and interactive exploration of LGBTQ-friendly locations across the U.S. from 1965 to 1980. By incorporating a methodological section and inviting community contributions, it not only preserves historical data but also encourages further research and engagement with LGBTQ history. The use of Leaflet, a JavaScript library, enhances the project's interactivity and accessibility, making it a valuable tool for understanding the changing landscapes of queer spaces.
The innovative aspect of Mapping Marronage lies in its broad conceptualization of marronage, which includes any act by which enslaved individuals sought to move beyond the control of slaveholders. The project employs an interactive digital map to illustrate the complex networks and movements of enslaved people, challenging dominant narratives and emphasizing the role of women in these histories. By integrating archival documents and interactive timelines, it provides a comprehensive view of the material correspondences and exchanges that defined the lives of enslaved individuals, offering new insights into their strategies for claiming freedom.
MHDL stands out for its commitment to pedagogical use, offering sample assignments and tutorials for educators and students. It has received substantial funding to improve its data model and user interface, and to expand its content beyond U.S. sources. The project utilizes innovative technologies like Lantern and Arclight for search and visualization, and has been recognized with awards for its contributions to research. MHDL's efforts to align with RDF and linked open data standards, and its collaboration with the American Film Institute, highlight its forward-thinking approach in digital archiving.
This project innovatively combines digital technology with historical research to decolonize the archive and amplify Black voices in early Caribbean music. By offering an interactive experience with soundscapes and narratives, it challenges traditional archival practices and provides open access to significant cultural heritage. The project also addresses accessibility issues, aiming to make the content available to a broader audience, including those with visual impairments or limited internet access.
Native Land Digital stands out for its innovative approach to counter-mapping Indigenous territories, using technology to create a dynamic and interactive platform. It allows Indigenous communities to update and share information about their territories, fostering a global dialogue on Indigenous rights and histories. The project emphasizes the use of verified sources and encourages users to engage with the content actively, making it a valuable educational resource.
Newspaper Navigator introduces innovative methodologies for interacting with historic newspapers by enabling visual similarity searches and facilitating large-scale analysis of visual content. It empowers humanists to explore visual motifs and patterns not capturable by standard keyword searches, thus opening new avenues for research in cultural heritage and media studies. The project also critically examines the socio-technical implications of using machine learning in cultural heritage contexts.
The project innovatively applies machine learning and text mining to uncover and analyze Jim Crow laws, highlighting the biases inherent in algorithms while providing educational resources and historical context. It engages diverse audiences, including legal scholars and educators, by making previously inaccessible historical data available and understandable through digital means. The collaboration with various experts ensures a comprehensive approach to digital scholarship and education.
The innovative aspect of A People’s Atlas of Nuclear Colorado lies in its hypertextual organization and dual-path navigation, which allows users to explore both the acknowledged and unacknowledged sides of nuclear history. The project effectively blends human, social, and historical narratives with their environmental impacts, offering a multi-layered understanding of the nuclear industry. Its design, using the Scalar platform, provides an intuitive and visually appealing experience, enhancing user engagement through interactive exploration.
The Princeton Prosody Archive stands out for its innovative approach to organizing and presenting historical texts on English prosody. It offers a unique categorization system that facilitates cross-navigation between collections, prompting scholarly inquiry into the intersections of rhetoric, poetry, and oratory. Despite challenges with OCR accuracy in older texts, the project provides high-quality digitized images and links to HathiTrust resources, making it an invaluable tool for researchers. Future developments include creating token-based corpora in collaboration with HathiTrust, enhancing its utility for computational analysis.
Readux stands out for its ability to present highly visual works, such as those with music notation or illustrations, alongside textual content by starting with digitized page images. This approach retains the original bibliographic form and design, enhancing the presentation of multimodal works. The platform's innovative use of open source software and its development of additional tools like piffle and django-annotator-store highlight its contribution to digital humanities. Furthermore, its export functionality using Jekyll allows scholars to manage their own content independently of proprietary systems.
Recogito stands out for its semantic annotation capabilities, allowing users to disambiguate spatial data by linking it to global authority records. Its user-friendly interface supports collaborative and individual work, making it accessible to scholars without technical expertise. The platform's open source nature and focus on linking open geo-data have made it a valuable tool in the digital humanities, recognized as the Best Tool of 2018 by the Digital Humanities Awards.
The Resemblage Project stands out for its innovative use of digital storytelling to explore the aesthetics of aging, a relatively undeveloped area in digital humanities. By involving young storytellers and focusing on intersectionality, the project challenges traditional narratives about aging and creates a platform for diverse voices. Its emphasis on process documentation and creative decision-making further distinguishes it from conventional digital film curation, offering a unique perspective on intergenerational storytelling within a Canadian context.
The Scribes of the Cairo Geniza project stands out for its innovative use of crowdsourcing to tackle the challenge of accessing and analyzing dispersed historical texts. By leveraging Zooniverse's platform, the project has developed custom linguistic tools, such as keyboards for Hebrew and Arabic letters, to aid volunteers in accurately transcribing the Geniza fragments. This approach not only democratizes access to these important historical documents but also enhances the understanding of the pre-modern Islamic world and Jewish diaspora. The project's success is marked by its extensive volunteer engagement and the open sharing of data, which supports ongoing research and educational initiatives.
This project is innovative in its use of digital tools to provide a comprehensive view of the Shakespeare and Company bookshop's lending library activities. By digitizing and structuring data from library cards and logbooks, it offers a new perspective on the reading habits and cultural exchanges of the interwar period. The project employs technologies like Python, Django, and Solr, and emphasizes accessibility and transparency, making it a valuable resource for researchers and the general public interested in modernist literature and cultural history.
Terrastories stands out for its focus on Indigenous storytelling and data sovereignty, offering a platform that respects community control over their data. Its ability to function offline broadens accessibility, and its open-source nature ensures that it can be adapted to various community needs. The app's design allows for interactive engagement with cultural heritage, making it a valuable tool for preserving and sharing oral histories. Its multi-instance capability ensures that multiple communities can use the platform while maintaining their own private spaces.
Ticha exemplifies collaborative digital scholarship by integrating existing digital humanities tools and creating new ones when necessary, such as a transcription interface. It employs a 'progressive archiving' approach, making manuscripts publicly available at various stages of analysis. The project is notable for its community engagement, involving Zapotec speakers and students in its development, and for its commitment to making all transcribed and encoded texts accessible via a Github repository. This approach not only fills a significant gap in Zapotec documentation but also underscores the urgency of preserving indigenous languages.
This project is notable for its decolonial approach to digital stewardship, focusing on ethical collaboration with the Urarina community to digitally repatriate cultural artifacts. It uses the Mukurtu platform to manage access and cultural protocols, ensuring that the Urarina people are involved in the process. The project also addresses technical challenges by exploring static websites and multilingual metadata to enhance accessibility and inclusivity.
The project is notable for its use of advanced digital technologies, including TEI-based encoding and a client-side search engine, staticSearch, to provide open access to Eaton's works. It emphasizes minimal computing and sustainability, ensuring accessibility and longevity through practices like Creative Commons licensing and static page building. The archive also addresses the challenges of editing Eaton's work in an ethical and anti-racist manner, contributing to the broader discourse on Asian North American literature.
The World Historical Gazetteer is notable for its commitment to decentering colonial place names and promoting toponymic multivalence. It serves as a portal rather than an authoritative repository, encouraging dialogue and collaboration among researchers. The platform's innovative use of the Linked Places data format and its integration with other platforms like Recogito and Annotorious highlight its role in advancing spatial humanities. Its educational resources further support its use in diverse teaching scenarios, making it a vital tool for exploring historical narratives and power dynamics.