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September 21, 2008
Towards State of the Art in the Humanities
On September 5, 2008, Bruce Cole, chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, gave a lecture at Vanderbilt University titled "The State of the Humanities". Cole's talk detailed NEH initiatives to use digital technologies in humanities research, bringing it more in line with current trends in the sciences and social sciences.
Cole spoke of three effects of the digital age on humanities scholarship. First, whereas humanities scholarship has traditionally focused on individual work, digitization brings greater opportunities for interdisciplinary, collaborative work. Second, Cole predicted that the ability to search resources on a larger scale will make humanities scholarship more data-intensive. Finally, he spoke of increased public access to federally funded humanities resources.
Cole described the work of the NEH's Office of Digital Humanities (ODH). ODH, working with the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation, hopes to apply supercomputing power to humanities research. The office is also awarding start-up grants to promote innovative ideas for digital humanities research. In addition to its national projects, ODH also works with e-humanities initiatives in the United Kingdom, Germany, and Italy. ODH has proposed such a partnership with China.
Cole also spoke of the National Digital Newspaper Program that NEH and the Library of Congress have developed. This program will eventually digitize 30 million pages of historic microfilmed newspapers, transferring them into a searchable format available for free online.
In concluding his lecture, Cole advocated a greater democratization of the humanities, critiquing scholars whose highly specialized research interests have led to self-marginalization. Cole hopes the humanities will return to center stage by focusing on big questions that can engage a larger public. Cole, a Bush appointee, here echoes conservative critics of elitism in the academy, bringing to mind the politics behind government funding agencies.
--Brian Boling
Posted by colldev at 02:59 PM
