September 4, 2008

Neil Fraistat (Day 1, Part 2)

Neil Fraistat (Professor of English & Director of the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities, University of Maryland)
 
The Digital Humanities, Local and Global
 
The emergence of the Digital Humanities as a coherent field in the 1990s was accompanied by and largely a result of the concomitant evolution of the Digital Humanities Center as an institution. Such centers have become important laboratories for the application of information technology to the humanities; powerful advocates for the significance of such work; crucial focal points for the theorization of the Digital Humanities as a field; and local nodes for what is being called in North America “cyberinfrastructure.” I will discuss the history and function of Digital Humanities Centers, focusing especially on their role in cyberinfrastructure and on the centerNet initiative, which seeks to create a truly global network of local digital humanities centers.