As my project has been coming along, the concepts of the digital humanities has become more clear and understandable to me. To me, the digital humanities are the presentation of information and data in a way that is visual and accessible to all. When relating this definition to my project, I can say that through the use of the digital tools that I use I have been able to present my research in a visual way. With these digital tools, I have allowed for my project to transform the presentation articles and how they are broken down. The possibilities for the digital humanities to be transformative are endless. The openness and diverse ways of presentation are what allow for new and innovative visuals to be created and used for the presentation of information. What makes these specific projects digital humanities or not is still up for debate, but my thoughts on the question has remained the same. Digital humanities and scholarship is any project that has useful and factual information that is presented in some sort of digital way. By this definition, the idea that the digital humanities is transformative only becomes greater.
I have even taught myself new information through this project. This is information related to the understanding of both the digital humanities and my project itself. By learning digital tools like TimelineJs and StorymapJs, the information I have gathered becomes much easier to understand and breakdown. I believe that in my project and many others, the most transformatie aspect is the transformation of written information to visual information. An example within my project are text analysis visuals. These visuals are all articles broken down and analyzed in a visual way that is pleasing the viewer’s eye and easier to learn and understand. My visuals make a complicated form of the digital humanities, like text analysis, into an interactive and fun way to learn about the details of writing. Another example within my article is my interactive timeline. This timeline takes articles and presents them in chronological order in a way that is interactive with the user. The user can scroll and see the headlines and thumbnails of the articles as they use the timeline. These two examples are how my project can be transformative. My project may inspire other scholars to use visual elements to make the presentation of information easier and more of an interactive thing.
The DSSF program as a whole is transformative itself. The program allows for this information that students gather to be presented in transformative ways. Programs like this are just now becoming popular, and the general theme of it has spread to other schools in different areas across the U.S. Programs like these are changing what we perceive as learning, which was usually either through visuals or text. With the digital humanities, we can learn through both put together in one project. As the digital humanities continues to grow, I believe that it wIll only become more and more transformative and more inspirational for scholars alike.
I’m glad that you point out that the program itself can be transformative regarding how students think about their scholarly work! That’s a key thing that we want to get across, that doing work with DH methods and tools changes how you think about scholarship, and also what scholarship is at its core.