What are the essential DH books on your class reading list? « Digital Humanities Questions & Answers

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What are the essential DH books on your class reading list?

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Asked 6 years ago by MelissaTerras
Latest answer from MelissaTerras

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MelissaTerras
Member
Hi Everyone,

I'm just wondering what the essential books you tell your students are on your course reading lists. It may be useful to compile a list of those used (and point out to others ones that they have missed?) I'm aware that a lot has been published over the last few years - what am I missing? Thanks.

Here are my essentials:
-Set Text: "A Companion to Digital Humanities". Schreibman, S., Siemens, R., Unsworth, J. (Eds). Blackwell Companions to Literature and Culture. Paperback Edition, 2007. Available freely online at http://www.digitalhumanities.org/companion/
-Set Text: "A Companion to Digital Literary Studies". Schreibman, S., and Siemens, R., (Eds). Blackwell Companions to Literature and Culture. 2008. Available freely online at http://www.digitalhumanities.org/companionDLS/

-Susan Hockey. (2000). Electronic Texts in the Humanities: Principles and Practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
-Deegan, M. and Tanner, S. (2006) “Digital Preservation”. London, Library Association Publishing.
-Deegan, M. and Tanner, S. (2001) “Digital Futures: strategies for the Information Age”. London, Library Association Publishing.
-Hughes, L. (2004). “Digitizing Collections, Strategic Issues for the Information Manager”. London, Facet.
-Kenney, A. and Reiger, O. (2000) "Moving Theory Into Practice, Digital Imaging for Libraries and Archives". RLG.
- Macdonald, L.W. (2006). “Digital Heritage: applying digital imaging to cultural heritage”. Elsevier
-Naughton, J. (2000) “A Brief History of the Future: Origins of the Internet”. Pheonix.
-Cameron and Kenderdine (2007), “Theorizing Digital Cultural Heritage: A Critical Discourse”. MIT Press.
-Greengrass, M. and Hughes, L. (2008).”The virtual representation of the past”. Ashgate
-Matthew G Kirschenbaum (2008) “Mechanisms: New Media and the Forensic Imagination”, MIT Press.

Thanks,

Melissa
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Posted 6 years ago Permalink
Patrick Murray-John

This clearly reflects my medievalist background, but I'd add at least some of Walter Ong's "Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word". It's a core text for the movement from "oral" culture to print culture, but that can make a very useful contrast in our movement from print to digital.

Also in the unintuitive category, Scott McCloud's "Understanding Comics". It's an amazing introduction to how comic books work, and so gives some key insights into visual media.

Posted 6 years ago Permalink
Meagan Timney
Member

I'd add:

N. Katherine Hayles. (2005) "My Mother Was a Computer: Digital Subjects and Literary Texts", University of Chicago Press.

For a Canadian Twist:
"Mind Technologies: Humanities Computing and the Canadian Academic Community". Ed. Raymond Siemens and David Moorman. (2006). University of Calgary Press.

For something fun:
Levy, David. (2007) "Love + Sex with Robots." HarperCollins.

Posted 6 years ago Permalink
Julie Meloni
Admin

Echoing the additions of Ong and Hayles above, here are a few more of my go-to texts (which certainly shows my interpretation of DH):

Bolter, Jay David and Richard Grusin. Remediation: Understanding New Media. New York: MIT Press, 1999.

Landow, George. Hypertext 3.0: Critical Theory and New Media in an Era of Globalization. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2003.

Manovich, Lev. The Language of New Media. New York: MIT Press, 2001.

McGann, Jerome. Radiant Textuality: Literature after the World Wide Web. New York: Palgrave, 2001.

McGann, Jerome. The Scholar's Art: Literary Studies in a Managed World. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2006.

Posted 6 years ago Permalink
Vika Zafrin
Member

One book I don't see mentioned very often, but do recommend, is:

Burke, Peter. A Social History of Knowledge: From Gutenberg to Diderot. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000.

It is not directly about the digital humanities, but it situates the role of [DH] knowledge work and knowledge dissemination in an important historical context.

Posted 6 years ago Permalink
ethan.watrall
Member

For game stuff, I would suggest Koster's A Theory of Fun, Marc Prensky's Digital Game-Based Learning and Don't Bother Me Mom--I'm Learning!, Bogost's Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames, andSalen and Zimmerman's Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals....jut to name a few.

Posted 6 years ago Permalink
MelissaTerras
Member

Crikey, I need to get out my credit card and start exploring some of these - thanks all!

Posted 6 years ago Permalink
Ethan Gruber
Member

I don't teach a class, but if I did it would be on digital tools in archaeology.

Frischer, Bernard and Anastasia Dakouri-Hild, eds. 2007. Beyond illustration: 2D and 3D technologies as tools for discovery in archaeology. Oxford: Archaeopress.

Posted 6 years ago Permalink
katherineharris
Member

Replying to @MelissaTerras's post:

Recently, the DH honors students found Hacking the Academy extremely useful as a very contemporary view about the multiple views within Digital Humanities: http://hackingtheacademy.org/

Posted 6 years ago Permalink
Aurelien Berra
Member

I definitely would recommend Willard McCarty's stimulating views:
- Willard McCarty, "Humanities Computing", Houndmills, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.
- Willard McCarty, "Attending from and to the machine", Inaugural Lecture, Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College, London, 2010.

Classics being a dynamic field in which general DH questions are discussed, I think the following reference could be suggested (even by one the editors of the book?):
- Melissa Terras & Gregory Crane (ed.), "Changing the Center of Gravity. Transforming Classical Studies Through Cyberinfrastructure", Piscataway, Gorgias Press, 2010.
Along the same lines, Alison Babeu's CLIR report "Rome Wasn't Digitized in a Day: Building a Cyberinfrastructure for Digital Classicists" will be extremely relevant in its final form.

Posted 6 years ago Permalink
James Neal
Member

I am in the process of forming a DH reading group of "essential" and canonical texts for an informal student reading group at the iSchool-UMD/CP. This discussion has been invaluable. Thanks. BTW our group is starting with Matthew Kirschenbaum's "Mechanisms".

Posted 6 years ago Permalink
Mats Dahlstrom
Member

In addition to those already mentioned, I would add:

Burnard, Lou, O'Brien O'Keeffe, Katherine & Unsworth. John, eds. (2006). Electronic textual editing. New York: MLA/TEI. http://www.tei-c.org/Activities/ETE/Preview/index.xml

Shillingsburg, Peter (2006). From Gutenberg to Google: electronic representations of literary texts. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.

Sutherland, Kathryn & Deegan, Marilyn (2009). Transferred illusions: Digital technology and the forms of print. London: Ashgate.

Terras, Melissa (2008). Digital Images for the Information Professional. London: Ashgate.

A promising item to be issued the upcoming year is:
van der Weel, Adriaan (2011). Changing Our Textual Minds: Towards a Digital Order of Knowledge. Manchester UP.

An instructive case of library digitisation students can look at is:
National Library of Australia (2010). Collection Digitisation Overview.
Available through http://www.nla.gov.au/digital/index.html

Posted 6 years ago Permalink
MelissaTerras
Member

@James - do have a look at the individual papers also talked about in the "Decoding Digital Humanities" discussion group: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/dh/decoding_digital_humanities

@Mats - aw shucks, thanks for the recommendation.

Posted 6 years ago Permalink

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