Writing

This book provides new critical and methodological approaches to digital humanities‚ intended to guide technical development as well as critical analysis. Informed by the history of technology and culture and new perspectives on modernity‚ Smithies grounds his claims in the engineered nature of computing devices and their complex entanglement with our communities‚ our scholarly traditions‚ and our sense of self. The distorting mentalité of the digital modern informs our attitudes to computers and computationally intensive research‚ leading scholars to reject articulations of meaning that admit the interdependence of humans and the complex socio-technological systems we are embedded in. By framing digital humanities with the digital modern‚ researchers can rebuild our relationship to technical development‚ and seek perspectives that unite practical and critical activity. This requires close attention to the cyber-infrastructures that inform our research‚ the software-intensive methods that are producing new knowledge‚ and the ethical issues implicit in the production of digital humanities tools and methods. The book will be of interest to anyone interested in the intersection of technology with humanities research‚ and the future of digital humanities.

This book considers the social‚ cultural and economic responses to natural and human-made disasters such as the atomic bombing of Japan and major earthquake events and the challenges post-disaster in reviving communities‚ offering a key contribution to disaster studies....

During the 2016–2017 financial year‚ King’s Digital Lab (King’s College London) undertook an extensive archiving and sustainability project to ensure the ongoing management‚ security‚ and sustainability of \textasciitilde100 digital humanities projects‚ produced over a twenty-year period. Many of these projects‚ including seminal publications such as Aphrodisias in Late Antiquity‚ Inscriptions of Roman Tripolitania‚ Henry III Fine Rolls‚ Jonathan Swift Archive‚ Jane Austen Manuscripts‚ The Gascon Rolls‚ The Gough Map‚ and Inquisitions Post Mortem‚ occupy important positions in the history of digital humanities. Of the projects inherited by the lab‚ about half are either of exceptionally high quality or seminal in other ways but almost all of them struggled with funding and technical issues that threatened their survival. By taking a holistic approach to infrastructure‚ and software engineering and maintenance‚ the lab has resolved the majority of the issues and secured the short to medium term future of the projects in its care. This article details the conceptual‚ procedural‚ and technical approaches used to achieve that‚ and offers policy recommendations to prevent repetition of the situation in the future.

Although television‚ computer games and the Internet play an important role in the lives of children they still also play with physical toys‚ such as dolls‚ cars and LEGO bricks. The LEGO company has become the world’s largest toy manufacturer. Our study investigates if the LEGO company’s products have become more violent over time. First‚ we analyzed the frequency of weapon bricks in LEGO sets. Their use has significantly increased. Second‚ we empirically investigated the perceived violence in the LEGO product catalogs from the years 1978–2014. Our results show that the violence of the depicted products has increased significantly over time. The LEGO Company’s products are not as innocent as they used to be.

Digital History – the use of computational methods to analyze‚ understand and disseminate knowledge about the past – has been evolving since the 1960s‚ slowly developing scholarly standards and accumulating a range of accepted technical methods. In its modern guise it is related to Public History‚ but it has applications across all the sub-disciplines. Public historians can use it to publish historical writing on the world wide web‚ or create archives of historical sources using increasingly easy-to-use software. Economic historians can analyze vast datasets that are being made openly available online‚ medievalists can view delicate manuscripts from anywhere in the world‚ and there are emerging techniques in 3D visualization‚ geo-spatial mapping‚ and natural language processing that offer exciting new opportunities to understand the past. All of this translates into new pedagogical opportunities‚ and imperatives. We have never been in a position to make History more engaging for students and the general public or to open up more new vistas of knowledge‚ but there are few people capable of teaching the new skills – and the technologies come with a cost. While it is fair to say there is no turning back now‚ there are also significant challenges ahead.

John A. Lee stood squarely at the intersection between literature and politics‚ although it is clear that he owed his strongest allegiance to the latter. For Lee‚ literature was the most efficient means by which he could connect with a broad cross-section of the New Zealand public and press his social vision to both the working-classes and the middle-class supporters of the Labour party who were demanding a less radical version of the welfare state than he entertained. A producer of voluminous quantities of prose‚ and a noted orator‚ Lee came to intellectual maturity between 1914 and 1945‚ when New Zealand culture was confronted with the harsh realities of global conflict and political unrest‚ and although it would be inaccurate to suggest that he gained mastery over either of his chosen fields‚ he remains one of the most important literary and political figures of early twentieth-century New Zealand.

Developing standards to evaluate scholarly digital output is one of the most significant problems our generation of digital humanists can work on. The improvement of tools and methods‚ the elaboration of theoretical perspectives‚ and (above all else) the development of digital outputs‚ will always be of primary importance. The elaboration of evaluation standards‚ however‚ has a broader reach: it is part of our responsibility as good scholarly citizens. Regardless of how digital humanities develops in the next few years humanists are going to need quality standards that help us distinguish ‘good’ from ‘bad’ work. In our universities this is primarily connected with the administrative requirements of performance and tenure review‚ but it goes much further than that.

As digital humanities projects grow in size and complexity university programs will need to adapt‚ balancing the needs of technological systems with the imperatives of the humanities tradition. While it makes sense to adapt the accumulated expertise of the commercial and government IT sectors‚ care needs to be taken to ensure any new approaches enhance rather than undermine the aims of the humanities generally. While digital humanists are uniquely positioned to help the humanities‚ care needs to be taken to ensure new project management and design techniques sourced from the IT world are applied critically and do not undermine the core aims of the discipline. If these caveats are kept in mind the IT world has a lot to offer digital humanists‚ however‚ especially in the field of Enterprise Architecture (EA)‚ which aims to produce a holistic‚ high level view of technological systems with a view to understanding social and cultural as well as technological issues.

For most of the 20th century literature and criticism of literature functioned as central engines of cultural change across the western world. This was especially the case in ex-colonial societies like New Zealand where writers and intellectuals frequently expressed a desire to create sophisticated local cultures which could compete with the foundation societies in Europe. Between 1940 and 1984 New Zealand writers and intellectuals developed a mode of literary criticism which this essay refers to as ‘Literary Critique’ for this very reason. In the absence of well established cultural traditions and a sense that they had a duty to import and indigenise western intellectual thought in order to further the evolution of New Zealand culture‚ a series of writers wrote often scathing critiques of their culture‚ using literature as their point of entry. Post-War New Zealand Literary Critique stands as evidence of a provincial‚ masculine‚ and angry intellectual culture.

The extension of the ‘All Red’ telegraph network to Australia and New Zealand during the 1870s greatly enhanced communication between the centre and periphery‚ consolidating British imperial expansion and offering the Australasian colonies the opportunity to engage more fully in imperial affairs. For contemporaries‚ the Trans-Tasman cable between Australia and New Zealand provided the final link in a grand imperial chain of communications‚ which promised to bolster their significance in world affairs and offset the cultural isolation which appeared to be stifling their development. The cable represented an essential bond between the furthest-flung imperial ‘bridgehead’ (John Darwin) and the cultural and strategic centre of London. In real terms‚ however‚ the promises of the new technology of submarine telegraphy failed to live up to expectations. Although quickly integrated into New Zealanders’ dawning cultural nationalist myth‚ the cable was expensive and underused for many years. Its real significance lies in its symbolic power as a symbol of imperial expansion‚ and as a case study in the vagaries of technology transfer.

Kendrick Smithyman is one of New Zealand’s lesser-known poets and literary critics‚ but this article argues that he was instrumental in developing a globally oriented critique which provides a welcome line of sight towards both America and the postmodern age. His series of essays on “Post-War New Zealand Poetry”‚ written between 1961 and 1963 and published in the fringe journal Mate‚ employed the principles of New Criticism to suggest ways of looking at New Zealand literature that were almost totally at odds with dominant New Zealand critics like Allen Curnow‚ E. H. McCormick and Bill Pearson. The essays were eventually expanded into the only full-length treatment of New Zealand poetry written (A Way of Saying‚ 1965)‚ and represent a substantial contribution to the country’s literary critical tradition.

Modernist experimenters and self-conscious opponents of ’the Vic-torians’ claimed writer‚ painter‚ musician‚ social critic‚ explorer and photographer‚ Samuel Butler (1835–1902) as an important intellectual forebear‚ but for many years after that he was simply ignored‚ ornoted as a mere curiosity – an interesting case of a significant Victorian intellectual who coincidentally spent some time in New Zealand. John Stenhouse2 and Roger Robinson3 have gone some way towards altering this perception‚ but his significance is deserving of more detailed examination. Butler represents an excellent example of return migration – a demographic trend that is often underestimated in narratives of colonization‚ but was instrumental in the colonization of both New Zealand and the wider empire. More broadly conceived as ’transitory colonization’‚ this feature of our imperial past enables us to acknowledge the impact that transnational flows of people‚ finances and ideas had on the colonization process – even at the very edge of empire‚ where the dominant themes were of geographic‚ cultural and intellectual backwardness.4 After staking out new colonial territory‚ digging up moa bones‚ scandalizing his friends with free-thought‚ and engaging Darwin with his erudite articulation of the theory of evolution‚ Samuel Butler returned to England with a new antipodean perspective on the modern world that explicates the basically synchronous relationship between England and its antipodes that existed during the mid-nineteenth century.

The article discusses the history of technology as established in New Zealand‚ which has been very general. A detailed history of the development of industrial technology in New Zealand is highlighted.

New Zealanders have a tendency to view our literary history in terms of a progressive – if somewhat stilted - movement through the ‘great’ phases of Georgianism‚ Modernism and Postmodernism. This article suggests that Monte Holcroft can be used to complicate this narrative. His highly successful 1940 essay ‘The Deepening Stream: Cultural Influences in New Zealand’ was clearly characterised by antimodern tendencies. This insight is important in terms of our cultural as well as literary history‚ because antimodernism fits well with the themes of ‘Godzone’‚ ‘Arcadia’ and ‘South Seas Paradise’ that have dominated our past and continue to intrigue cultural commentators. Rather than being noted for his amateurism and questionable ideas‚ Holcroft should be viewed as an arch-exponent of a previously unnoticed intellectual tradition.

Upon its publication in 1940 E. H. McCormick’s Letters and Art in New Zealand immediately became a landmark in his country’s cultural landscape. Indeed‚ the book remains one of the most significant ever written in New Zealand. This “lucid and invaluable” text garnered only one negative review for over thirty years and remained in print for half a century‚ establishing the author as the first professional critic of New Zealand literature. McCormick’s work provided a basis for both literary and cultural reflection on New Zealand‚ and has the added significance of being the chief accomplishment of the 1940 Centennial Celebrations. Written in a period of both local and global upheaval‚ and with governmental backing‚ Letters and Art contains a surfeit of information for literary historians interested in the institutional and aesthetic origins of New Zealand identity. Revealingly‚ the key to understanding the book lies in the author’s exploration of what he believed was an ambiguous and troubling relationship between New Zealand and the outside world. Caught between the heady critical world of modernist Europe and exile in the South Pacific‚ McCormick posited that his situation was analogous to that of New Zealand culture generally. In doing so‚ he advanced a thesis that has yet to be resolved.

This paper was produced as part of the activities of the Humanities and Data Science Special Interest Group based at The Alan Turing Institute. The group has created the opportunity for fruitful conversations in this area and has brought together voices from a range of different disciplinary backgrounds. This document shows an example of how conversations of this type can benefit and advance computational methods and understandings in and between the humanities and data science‚ bringing together a diverse community. We believe the Turing can act as a nexus of discussion on humanities and data science research at the national (and international) level‚ in areas such as education strategy‚ research best practices‚ and funding policy‚ and can promote and encourage research activities in this interdisciplinary area.

The Research Software (RS) role definitions in this document are based on those used in King’s Digital Lab (KDL). It has been distributed to offer ideas for other eResearch teams across King’s College London‚ the United Kingdom‚ and internationally. New versions will be added periodically.

An increasing number of large humanities data sets are becoming available‚ and new tools and methods are required to analyze them. There is a risk that statisticians and humanists will fail to recognize the historical contingency of such data. If appropriate methods don’t appear‚ algorithmic analysis of large humanities datasets will only be able to be used in a heuristic sense‚ to augment current understanding and prompt new questions and angles of analysis but not to make strong empirical claims. This work develops Bayesian nonparametric models that allow researchers to ask longitudinal questions of large humanities data sets with confidence they have corrected for pre-existing bias derived from the received tradition.