Among scholars involved in digital humanities, one question often stands out above the rest: what is/are digital humanities? But for some of us, knowing what digital humanities are becomes less important that knowing what they can do.
The following quotations are drawn from around the web to demonstrate the many ways in which scholars have tried to describe what “digital humanities” can do.
To find the source, click the link, search for “digital humanities can”
digital humanities can often become a laboratory and means for thinking about the state and future of the humanities at large
digital humanities can and should be understood as including and supporting literary interpretation
digital humanities can be applied in pedagogical terms
digital humanities can be defined as the humanities in and for a digital age, the humanities in and for the age of Big Data, and in many other terms
digital humanities can help them to do the traditional work in their fields more effectively and efficiently
digital humanities can seem to be detached from traditional literary methods even though it arguably became prominent thanks to its origin in literary studies
digital humanities can be understood both as a field in its own right and as a way of identifying digital research and project development efforts in specific humanities fields
digital humanities can be seen as a humanities project in a time of significant change in the academy
digital humanities can accept scholarly and technological challenges in relation to the digital as well as being an important place for thinking about, experimenting with and rethinking the humanities
digital humanities can also be much more complex, promoting tools and content for more sophisticated analysis
digital humanities can be traced back to this grand project, in which computation was applied to humanistic inquiry for the first time
digital humanities can and should be encouraged across all arts, humanities and social science disciplines
digital humanities can be seen as a synthesis of several major research areas and practical activities
digital humanities can’t read
digital humanities cannot abide critique
digital humanities can embrace new ways of doing research
digital humanities can also be weaponized
digital humanities can yield progress in both academia and the job market
digital humanities can help to redefine our traditional humanistic practices of history, critique, and interpretation
digital humanities can be whatever you define it to be
digital humanities can be defined as the contemporary phase of the humanities that tackles to fathom, apply–and make sense of–the emerging digital globalization of society
digital humanities can be perceived as: creating tools, developing methods, using the tools and the methods, teaching the tools and the methods, the meta-perspective I: analyzing the effect of the tools and the methods, the meta-perspective II: analyses based on the materiality of cultural objects (digital archives, e-books etc.)
digital humanities can be forward-looking only by looking back