WORD LAB

Topic: Experimental/Research design

Two recent critiques of digital humanities, both presented at the “Varieties of DH” panel at this year’s Modern Language Association, raise a potential impasse for digital humanities broadly and cultural analytics more specifically. Ted Underwood suggested that cultural analytics must acknowledge its own multidisciplinarity if it wants the sophistication allowed by developing methodologies in collaboration with the quantitative social sciences rather than by simply (and uncritically) drawing from them. Lauren F. Klein, in contrast, argued that distant reading, by its relationship with a discipline whose goal is to generalize, undermines its own ability to deal with the innately individual experiences of gender, sexuality, or race that are of foundational importance to humanistic inquiry. These pleas of, on the one hand, a methodological movement towards the social sciences and, on the other, a renewed focus on humanistic values, seem to pull DH in opposite directions.  

We argue these critiques are not as incompatible as they might first appear, and that both can be at least partially addressed by more careful research design. Using three demonstrative examples from our own works-in-progress, we argue that several crucial aspects of research design can be more directly integrated with digital humanities inquiry. Such interventions can help bridge the perceived gap between the generalizing methodologies of the social sciences and the experiential values of the humanities.