Humanist (electronic seminar)

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Humanist is an international electronic seminar on humanities computing and the digital humanities, in the form of a long-running electronic mailing list and its associated archive. The primary aim of Humanist is to provide a forum for discussion of intellectual, scholarly, pedagogical, and social issues and for exchange of information among members.

Contents

Humanist is also a publication of the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations (ADHO) and the Office for Humanities Communication (OHC) and an affiliated publication of the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS). In 2008, there were 1650 subscribers. [1]

History

The Humanist list was created in 1987 by Willard McCarty, then at the University of Toronto, as a BITNET (NetNorth in Canada) electronic mail newsletter for people who support computing in the humanities for the Association for Literary and Linguistic Computing. McCarty, later at King's College London, continued to edit it.

Although Humanist started off as a means of communication for people directly involved in the support of humanities computing, it grew in scope to become an extended conversation about the nature of "humanities computing" (or "digital humanities", or one of a contested range of other names), about what computing looks like viewed from the humanities, and humanities from computing: "Humanist remains the forum within which the technology, informed by the concerns of humane learning, can be viewed from an interdisciplinary common ground." [2]

As of 12 August 2020 the list went on hiatus for "a few weeks" for technical improvements. [3] However, in February 2021 the list eventually moved to a new infrastructure, hosted at the University of Cologne, Germany. [4]

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Willard McCarty is Professor of Humanities Computing in the Department of Digital Humanities at King's College London, England, where he is director of the doctoral programme in the department. He is a visiting professor in the Digital Humanities Research Group in the School of Humanities and Communication Arts at the University of Western Sydney, Australia. He is a Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute, London, and the editor of the Humanist Discussion Group established by him in 1987, dealing with humanities computing and the digital humanities.

Susan Hockey is an English computer scientist. She is Emeritus Professor of Library and Information Studies at University College London. She has written about the history of digital humanities, the development of text analysis applications, electronic textual mark-up, teaching computing in the humanities, and the role of libraries in managing digital resources. In 2014, University College London created a Digital Humanities lecture series in her honour.

Ray Siemens is a professor in the faculty of humanities at the University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada and former Canada Research Chair in Humanities Computing. Siemens is a recipient of the Antonio Zampolli Prize, presented by the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations (ADHO) for outstanding contributions to the field of Digital Humanities.

Harold Short is Emeritus Professor of King's College London. He founded and directed the Centre for Computing in the Humanities until his retirement (2010). He was involved in the development with Willard McCarty of the world's first PhD programme in Digital Humanities (2005), and three MA programmes: Digital Humanities, Digital Culture and Society, and Digital Asset Management.

References

  1. Willard McCarty (June 15, 2008). "Report on Humanist 2007-8" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on May 1, 2012. Retrieved October 20, 2013.
  2. What is Humanist?
  3. "Humanist Discussion Group - Volume 34". Archived from the original on 2020-09-29.
  4. "Humanist Discussion Group". Archived from the original on 2021-02-19.