What's going on?

Abstract

Here I survey activities in the digital humanities as a primary source for our conceptualization of the field. I argue for the fundamental nature of modelling to these humanities and describe three varieties: analytical, synthetic and improvisational. I argue that these three kinds are distributed unevenly over the affected fields according to the degree to which each primarily reports on its objects of study, interprets them or invents new genres of expression. The changes in the disciplines are of course incremental - old things done better, more thoroughly and so forth. But what requires our attention and effort is the refiguration of them, of disciplinarity itself and of the conflicted economies in which academic work is increasingly taking place. I conclude by recommending that the institutional structures we build for the digital humanities should reflect the nature of the practice as it has emerged in the last few decades. © The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of ALLC and ACH. All rights reserved.