Review: Computation and the humanities : towards an oral history of digital humanities

Nyhan J., Flinn A., Springer International Publishing, New York, NY, 2016. 285 pp.  Type: Book (978-3-319201-69-6)

Date Reviewed: Sep 19 2017. Review #: CR145551. Reviewer: Anna Jordanous

ACM Computing Reviews

© ACM, 2017. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of ACM for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Computing Reviews, Sep 19 2017, http://www.computingreviews.com/review/review_review.cfm?review_id=145551
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To learn about an emerging research area such as Digital Humanities, why not get the people embedded at the heart of that research and its development to tell you about it? With this oral history of Digital Humanities, "interviewees [are] trying to explain to those of us who weren’t there how things really were"
 (Ritchie 2014, cited p.21 of this volume).

This is a well-worked collection of interviews that lead the reader through the development of the field of Digital Humanities (DH). DH (as discussed) is difficult to define, but falls somewhere between the p.1 characterisation of "tak[ing] place at the intersection of computing and cultural heritage" and the comment by interviewee Gabriel Egan (p.247): "if it can’t be done other than by digital means and it’s in the Humanities, then its DH" [sic]. 

Reviewing as a Computer Scientist who has worked in DH, I found this a useful and well-grounded insight into the field. Several Digital Humanists have have been interviewed to construct an ‘oral history’ of how they have seen DH evolve (and how their careers have evolved alongside). Many leading figures in the field have participated e.g. Willard McCarty, Susan Hockey, Manfred Thaller. The authors justify the need for oral histories as one way of studying how DH developed, to complement documents and other sources. To my knowledge, no such collection currently exists and as Nyhan & Flinn point out (p.11), the collation of such a resource is driven by some "urgency due to advancing years" of many potential contributors. The book is an output of the underlying Hidden Histories project [http://hiddenhistories.omeka.net/interviews], where all chapters and audio resources are made available open access. 

This book is quite accessible to readers with an interest in DH who are not from a Humanities background. The presentation as transcribed interviews often gives this reader the feeling of listening into chats about various people’s careers and experiences, rather than working through a heavy scholarly tome. Each interview is preceded by a summary abstract and the interviewee[s]’s biography. Interviews are semi-structured around core questions on the interviewee[s]’s experiences in encountering and learning to use computing, how they got involved in DH, who they have been influenced by and engaged with, and how they compare their experiences to people not working with computers. Some fascinating insights come up, such as Gabriel Egan’s unusual take on digital vs paper  resources (Chapter 16), or the different types of roles that a Humanist might work in - for example Michael Sternberg-McQueen (Chapter 12)’s reports that he went from academic training to a non-academic staff post contrasts with John Bradley’s movement from a non-academic to a academic position. The interviews are well researched (for example where the interviewer reminds Mary Dee Harris of an occasion she’d forgotten about, but had posted about in the Humanist mailing list for DH in 1990). Those of us excited by cross-disciplinary research collaborations might be interested to note the impression in Chapter 17 from a related interview with Geoffrey Rockwell (see the book website for a link): historically, involvement with computing was sometimes seen negatively, hampering career progression in the Humanities. Hopefully this negative association has now changed, though the authors refrain from further comment.

The interviews are neatly brought together in the penultimate chapter of the book, by discussion of an emerging trend in the interviews of digital humanists as being "Revolutionaries and Underdogs" (Chapter 17). Nyhan and Flinn use the chapter to discuss why a field characterised by such roles has been able to develop to the level of maturity it has now reached, and whether people should feel justified to identify themselves this way. With this discussion, the book looks towards the future of digital humanities and points out that the field should be able to learn from the past in order to prepare for the future. This book is a good source to help this process. 

Computation and the Humanities is a unique portrayal of the history of DH, and is recommended as an authoritative source - to be dipped into as your interests dictate, or to study more thoroughly to better understand how DH has developed. Those in Computing who are interested in cross-disciplinary research around the humanities can use this volume and the accompanying open access resources to understand the differences and commonalities around how people within DH think, how they see DH, and how the field has come into existence.