Digital Humanities Commons^™

Continuing Christopher Tolkien’S Work In A Digital Age, James K. Tauber

Journal of Tolkien Research

Christopher Tolkien’s 12-volume History of Middle-earth is a remarkable achievement, yet Christopher repeatedly acknowledged how difficult the material was to present in print form and that “that there was no really satisfactory solution”.  This paper contends that a printed book is not scholarship but just one way of presenting its results. It explores how digital philology can overcome some of the limitations of print, giving examples from the Digital Tolkien Project. It shows how structural markup, version alignment, parallel reading environments, and other approaches can make relationships between drafts and published texts clearer. Importantly, these methods do not replace Christopher’s …

Research On Image Feature Analysis Of Intangible Cultural Heritage Brocade Integrating Multi-Scale Visual Perception, Ruiyang Yuan, Hao Wang, Shu Zhou, Hui Zhu, Jingwen Qiu

Journal of Scientific Information Research

[Purpose/significance] Addressing the challenges posed by the complex semantic characteristics of intangible cultural heritage brocade imagery, the difficulty in extracting their profound connotations, and the inadequate utilisation of multi-scale features by traditional deep learning models, this paper aims to explore a method for analysing the characteristics of intangible cultural heritage brocade images that integrates multi-scale visual features. [Method/process] This paper constructs a multi-scale feature analysis framework for intangible cultural heritage brocade images (ICH_BC), integrating convolutional neural networks with Transformer architectures. The framework employs ResNet to extract local texture and detail features from brocade images, utilises VIT to capture global structural …

Reexamining The Croton Aqueduct: A Ward-Level Microhistorical Analysis Of Infrastructure And Cholera Mortality In 1849 New York City, Alexandria R. Toothman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This work reexamines the Croton Aqueduct’s role in public health by shifting analysis from the citywide level to the ward level, revealing that infrastructure expansion did not produce uniform benefits across New York City. When the Croton Aqueduct opened in 1842, it was celebrated as an achievement that would deliver pure water and eliminate disease. However, only seven years after its opening, in 1849, cholera returned with greater force in the Sixth Ward. This work shows that the uneven distribution of Croton infrastructure corresponded with uneven cholera mortality rates, challenging narratives that present Croton as a singular triumph of urban …

The Dwellings Of Ybor City Project: Using Archival Recovery And Mapping To Examine Historical Erasure, Stephanie M. Mackin

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

This article examines how digital archives and spatial humanities can address historical erasure. It focuses on reconstructing the lost residential landscapes of Ybor City, a culturally significant Tampa, Florida, neighborhood. The area was transformed by mid-twentieth-century slum clearance and urban renewal. The Dwellings of Ybor City project uses archival theory, participatory ethics, and GIS-based storytelling to geolocate and reinterpret a Depression-era album called "Photographs Showing Dwellings in the Ybor Slum Area." By pairing digitized historical photographs with contemporary rephotography and mapping them to their original sites, the project restores visibility to homes and neighborhoods largely erased from both the physical …

St. Louis Digital Humanities Event Program (April 14, 2026), Stl. Digital Humanities

2026 Showcase

No abstract provided.

Review Of Digital Literary Redlining: African American Anthologies, Digital Humanities, And The Canon, Tracy A. Fernandez Rysavy

Feminist Pedagogy

No abstract provided.

A Treasure Hunt: The Interdisciplinary Challenge Of A Digital Humanities Hackathon, Marie Barras, Adélaïde Quenson, Adrien Jeanrenaud, Angela Allemand, Marina Berazategui, Levyn Bürki, Michel Capot, Simon Gabay, Vestin Hategekimana, Pauline Jacsont, Bokar Lamine N'Diaye, Elina Leblanc, Clara May, Anne-Laure Oberson, Margherita Parigini, Lara Pitteloud, Fassaleh Taal, Cédric Viaccoz

Artl@s Bulletin

Abstract: This article tells the story of an interdisciplinary hackathon emphasizing exploration, collaboration, and creative engagement with globalization-related cultural datasets. Participants worked in teams to produce research posters, which were then presented at the opening of the international conference Image Deluge & Globalization in Geneva. The article discusses three projects: one on 19th-century Spanish chapbooks using topic modeling and network analysis; another on leopard motifs in print imagery; and a third on olfactory heritage. The hackathon highlighted both the potential and the limitations of working with digital cultural data, offering insights into interdisciplinary methods.

Résumé: Cet article raconte un hackathon …

Modeling Literary Connections: Exploring Transregional Resistance In Dalit Poetry, Antara Bhattacharyay

Mathematics, Statistics, and Computer Science Honors Projects

Structuring socio-political identities, the caste system (a graded form of hierarchy) remains entrenched in contemporary Indian society. Dalits, marginalized by the caste system, have expressed their resistance through literature, envisioning substantive equality and social change. In this thesis, I draw on digital humanities methods to examine regional variation in translated Dalit poetry from Bengali, Hindi/Urdu, Marathi, and Tamil languages. I utilize topic modeling—a machine learning algorithm that detects latent semantic structures in a text—as a point of departure for poetry analysis. I observe how topic modeling enables newer readings of the poems, revealing regionally resonant and broader Dalit themes.

St. Louis Digital Humanities Event Program (April 15, 2025), Stl. Digital Humanities

2025 Showcase

No abstract provided.

David B. Smith Chats With Monday 1.0, David B. Smith

Publications and Research

This document is an edited archival transcript of extended conversations between David B. Smith and an AI persona (“Monday 1.0,” GPT‑4o based) conducted in Spring 2025, prepared as a foundational primary source for subsequent scholarly and creative work. It records the emergence and testing of concepts related to human–AI collaboration (including “Balanced Blended Space”), as well as applied explorations in areas such as generative AI, quantum computing and music, virtual orchestras, multimodal performance, pedagogy, and the rhetoric of “pushback” in conversational systems. It also contains an extended section in which Monday and DB Smith co-curate a set of student research …

"Queens Of Ghost-Land" 134 Years Later: Un-Masking An Appalachian Witchcraft Accuser, Aíne Norris

English Faculty Publications

In 1891, newspapers across America printed a story about witches in the Appalachian Mountains and the alleged powers they possessed to control their small farming community. The article was scathing in accusation and ultimately contributed to continued othering of the women profiled, increasing their visible vulnerabilities of class, gender, and societal status. Despite an implied familiarity with the region, the article was published with initials for its byline, an act that simultaneously identified the author to locals as historian Eva Grant while offering her anonymized national protection as a subject expert. For over five years the accusations were re-printed in …

Imagine Lagos : Mapping History, Place, And Politics In A Nineteenth-Century African City, Ademide Adelusi-Adeluyi

Ohio University Press Open Access Books

Written from a digital humanities perspective, this book combines historical sources, maps, and a walking cartography to create new perspectives on the nineteenth-century history of Lagos, West Africa’s most populous city.

What traces do people leave in the places where they live, and even where they die? This book addresses the spatial history of nineteenth-century Lagos, rebuilding its past as a series of encounters: between men and women, between past and present, between enslaved and free, between living and dead, and finally between land and lagoon. In Imagine Lagos, Ademide Adelusi-Adeluyi argues that the invention, destruction, and reinvention of spatial …

Dh In The Classroom Case Study: Alternative Fashion Trends And Omeka.Net, Bonnie Finn, Amelia Cheever

Libraries Staff Publications

As technology embeds into higher education classroom instruction, digital humanities assignments may be looked to as an alternative for writing papers or curating exhibits, and an area of interest for faculty members looking for multiple ways to build student critical thinking skills. This case-study focuses on an 8-week Omeka.net project assignment created collaboratively by a costume/design professor and the fine arts librarian. This article includes the assignment instructions for students, a rubric to use for Omeka metadata, and lead-in assignments that include image citation, visual literacy, and ethically finding image sources.

[This article is an expansion of a paper presented …

Estranged Temporality: How Time Tells Stories In Science Fiction, Phillip H. Howells

Dissertations and Doctoral Documents, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–

According to Darko Suvin in his influential critical treatise, Metamorphoses of Science Fiction, estrangement in Science Fiction (SF) gives authors the ability to build worlds related to but distant from our own using specific metaphors. This dissertation takes up this term and applies it to the fulcrum of time in SF as a method of creating possible futures and imaginative pasts in order to illuminate the realities of the present. The realities of the present are congruent with the material circumstances of the past, and this can be seen in the kinds of SF worlds built by members of …

Review Of On The Digital Humanities: Essays And Provocations, By Stephen Ramsay, Michelle Lyons-Mcfarland

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

A review of On the Digital Humanities: Essays and Provocations by Stephen Ramsay.

The Kruger Collection Reimagined: A Case Study In 3d Scanning And Interactive Exhibit Design, Annissa Davis

Department of Anthropology: Theses and Student Research

This thesis examines the use of 3D modeling in museum exhibition to create exploratory exhibits that facilitate unique relationships between the visitors and the collection beyond what is provided by the collection’s in person counterparts. Typical use of 3D modeling in museums is currently often representative rather than exploratory. By employing a Digital Humanities lens to approach the development of a digital exhibition utilizing 3D technology and interactive elements created in a video game engine (Unity), this thesis project evaluates these potential new relationships. Using the Eloise Kruger Collection of Miniatures as a case study, the following text details the …

Great Lengths: A Review Of Website Preservation Activities At Three American Universities With Digital Humanities Centers, Drew E. Vandecreek

Faculty Articles, Papers, and Other Scholarship

Sustaining grant funded digital humanities websites has become a major challenge in the field. Three American universities with digital humanities centers kept eight of nine websites funded by the United States National Endowment for the Humanities (1996–2003) online to 2022. Center personnel made website preservation a part of everyday operations without additional funds devoted to the task. Web software developed rapidly in this period, however and center staff members’ efforts often did not succeed in providing necessary updates. Funded materials became increasingly obsolete. The extent of center personnel’s efforts, compared with their results, suggests that their approach itself will in …

Inviting Submission: Isabella Beeton At The Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine, 1856-1865, Julie Megan Sorge Way

English Theses & Dissertations

Isabella Beeton, creator of the iconic domestic manual Beeton’s Book of Household Management, died suddenly in 1865, just before her twenty-ninth birthday. Her popular book survived to codify stereotypical Victorian female ideals. Yet the “Mrs Beeton” mythos camouflages a remarkable talent: far from domestic drudgery, Beeton maintained a vibrant career as a writer and editor at the Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine (EDM), traveling widely to research the latest fashions and laboring behind the scenes to ensure the magazine’s success. Closely examining Beeton’s EDM work demonstrates how these formative, productive years shaped her later, more popular writing. Such a …

Lbsci 790.3 Digital Humanities, S E. Hackney

Open Educational Resources

This course examines the history, methods, tools, and scholarly practices of teaching and research in the digital humanities (DH), including ways in which the library can engage with, enhance, and support those activities. The course will focus on digital humanities as a burgeoning field in its own right, as well as the development of digital methods in specific disciplines within the humanities. Students will consider their role as information professionals in the creation, cleaning, storage, and dissemination of digital humanities datasets and research projects, as well as gain hands-on experience with some of the tools and methods used in these …

Bridging The Divide: Improving Digital Humanities Pedagogy By Networking Higher Education And Secondary Education Faculty In St. Louis, Geremy Carnes, Margaret K. Smith

Faculty Scholarship

In 2021, faculty at Lindenwood University and Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (SIUE) led the formation of a Saint Louis Digital Humanities (STL DH) Network of faculty and scholars at area universities, schools, and cultural institutions.1 The Lindenwood and SIUE campuses bookend the St. Louis metro area, a region whose strong geospatial presence offers fruitful opportunities for digital humanities (DH) education but which also suffers from long, deeply ingrained economic and racial segregation. While other regional DH networks exist, the STL DH Network is unique in taking undergraduate education and secondary education— and particularly equitable access to education—as its chief focus. …

'Since No Expressions Do': Queer Tools For Studying Literature, Filipa G. Calado

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation explores how digital methods and tools for studying text engage with queer literature. I critique digital methods and tools by posing computation, where textual data is cleaned and structured for electronic processing, against the complexity of queer subjecthood and affects expressed in textual style, form, and voice. While tools like quantitative text analysis, for example, transform, and necessarily reduce, qualitative elements of gender and sexuality into numerical data such as word frequencies or concordances, I argue that this reduction opens up possibilities for interpreting the formal qualities of queer literature. Just as digital formats transform and manipulate text …

Archiving Digital Marketing: Examining Preservation Of Dynamic Content On The Web Through The Lens Of Online Advertisements, Christopher Rauch, Alex H. Poole, Travis Reid, Michele C. Weigle, Michael L. Nelson, Faryaneh Poursardar, Mat Kelly

Computer Science Faculty Publications

The transition to digital marketing has revolutionized advertising, reflecting and shaping societal norms and trends. The “Saving Ads” project addresses the challenges of preserving these ephemeral digital artifacts, essential for understanding the evolution of advertising and its socio-cultural impact. The initiative focuses on technical solutions for archiving dynamic online ads and enhancing access to these critical resources for future scholarship. By examining the preservation of online advertisements and suggesting improved approaches for archiving dynamic online content, this project contributes to the documentation of digital history.

Mediatization Of The Early Automobile: A Visual Analysis Of The Illustrated Press In The Late 19th And Early 20th Century, Nicola Carboni

Artl@s Bulletin

The paper presents a digital analysis of automobile imagery in the early 20th-century press, examining the mediatization of the anti-car movement and the role images played in conveying and furthering the activist discourse. To investigate the phenomenon, the author compiled and analyzed over 5,000 images from in 185 journals published in 45 cities between 1891 and 1950. The analysis revealed a preponderance of positive representations of the automobile in the press, whilst evidence of negative sentiment towards the automobile, such as protests and accidents, was conspicuously absent, with the exception of satirical publications.

Digital Scholarship And Data Science Intersect In Libraries: A Needs Assessment Report, Halie Kerns

Library Created Resources

The following report summarized the results of a needs assessment completed in the fall of 2023 at Binghamton University by the Libraries’ Digital Scholarship team. The aim was to understand how data science-focused programming, as part of the digital scholarship’s offerings, would be utilized on campus. The report evaluates existing literature, summarizes findings from twenty-eight interviews done across campus, and lays out an action plan for the Digital Scholarship team’s future planning.

Remix The Manuscript: Transcription Tools Dataset 2.0, Michelle Warren, Arielle Feuerstein

Other Faculty Materials

The document posted here is an annotated dataset of digital tools for transcribing handwritten manuscripts. Release 2.0 was created in 2022-23 by Arielle Feuerstein as part of the ongoing project "Remix the Manuscript: A Chronicle of Digital Experiments.” The file attached here contains the dataset as completed on June 28, 2023 along with credits for prior contributors.

Aural And Oral Culture, Robert Ellison, Larry Sheret

English Faculty Research

Robert Ellison and Larry Sheret were invited to present at “Off the Grid: Folk Culture and Digital Humanities,” a conference held at the College of William & Mary on June 24, 2023. Prof. Sheret began with a discussion of the scholarly research and publication cycle; an introduction to Marshall Digital Scholar (MDS), the Marshall University’s institutional repository; and an overview of the various ways Dr. Ellison has contributed to MDS. In his part of the presentation, entitled “Orality, Aurality, and The Library of Appalachian Preaching,” Ellison mentioned his previous work in orality-literacy theory and sermon studies, followed by a …

Lbsci 717: Digital Humanities, S E. Hackney

Open Educational Resources

This is a syllabus for a graduate-level introductory course on the Digital Humanities, primarily aimed at LIS students.

Subversive Cartography: Teaching Mary Prince And Saidiya Hartman, Carolina Hinojosa

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

This chapter utilizes Hartman’s methodology of retrieval to create a map1 in StoryMap JS2 (“the map” or “this map”) that analyzes multiple geographic spaces in The History of Mary Prince: A West Indian Slave Narrative and Saidiya Hartman’s Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route. The map is an archive or a witness to some of the geographical spaces Mary Prince lived (and was sold) as an enslaved woman seeking freedom and the places in which Saidiya Hartman has conducted research or visited in Ghana as a “free” woman. Layering the past over present creates a …

Network + Publication + Ecosystem: Curating Digital Pedagogy, Fostering Community, Rebecca Frost Davis, Matthew K. Gold, Katherine D. Harris

Publications and Research

We are excited to share our work on Digital Pedagogy in the Humanities (DPiH), which was published on the Humanities Commons in 2020 by the Modern Language Association after almost a decade of work. DPiH is a large-scale scholarly project that presents the stuff of teaching (syllabi, assignments, and resources) through a curated set of keywords such as “Poetry,” “Disability,” “Queer,” and “Annotation,” among many others. For each keyword, a curator or set of curators has selected and annotated ten pedagogical artifacts; created a curator’s selection statement; and presented …

Searching For Mami & Abuelita: Reimagining Ethnic Studies Praxis Through Women Of Color Feminisms, Art, And Archiving, Wendy S. Barrales

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Weaving art-based methods, women of color (WOC) feminisms, digital participatory archiving (PAR-chiving), and Ethnic Studies pedagogy, this dissertation investigates how I explored and produced knowledge collectively with young women of color that reimagines classrooms as learning spaces for liberation. This dissertation, searching for mami & abuelita, is an extension of the women of color archive (wocarchive) a digital storytelling project documenting, preserving and sharing the experiences of our matriarchs of color. This project, born out of an interview with my abuelita Aída about her life in rural Veracruz, sought out to document and preserve the stories of women of color …