Hidden Histories symposium on computing in the Humanities

ISR’s Editor-in-Chief and Book Reviews Editor are involved in a symposium entitled ‘HIDDEN HISTORIES: SYMPOSIUM ON METHODOLOGIES FOR THE HISTORY OF COMPUTING IN THE HUMANITIES c.1949-1980’, which will take place in UCL, on Saturday 17 September sponsored by HKFZ and UCLDH.

The symposium is being organised by Julianne Nyhan and Anne Welsh and is part of a research pilot that they have been undertaking on the history of computing in the Humanities. The application of computing to the Humanities is not new and can be traced back to at least 1949, when Fr Roberto Busa began researching the creation of an index variorum of some 11 million words of medieval Latin in the works of St Thomas Aquinas and related authors. Notes and contributions towards a history of the computer in the Humanities have appeared in recent years; however, our understanding of such developments remains incomplete and largely unwritten.

This project gathers and makes available sources to enable the social, intellectual and cultural conditions that shaped the early take up of computing in the Humanities to be investigated. The project draws on an interdisciplinary method bundle from Oral History, Digital Humanities and Historical-Cultural Studies. With the aim of capturing memories, observations and insights that are rarely recorded in the scholarly literature of the field it carries out interviews with ‘pioneer’ or ‘early adopter’ scholars and practitioners from c. 1949 until 1980 (that is, from main frame computing to the coming of the personal computer). These interviews will be published online in due course and Saturday’s symposium will bring Historians, Information Studies and Digital Humanities scholars together who have either been researching this area or who have expertise in  methodologies that may allow new insights into such histories to be won.

 Presentations include, in the following running order:

• Opening Keynote: Beyond chronology and profession: discovering how to write a history of the Digital Humanities, Willard McCarty, Department of Digital Humanities, King’s College London; Centre for Cultural Research, University of Western Sydney. 

• Knowledge Spaces and Digital Humanities, Claudine Moulin, Universitaet Trier, Germany 

• Unwriting the history of Humanities Computing, Edward Vanhoutte, Royal Academy of Dutch Language and Literature – Ghent, Belgium 

• Crowd sourcing: beyond the traditional boundaries of academic history, Melissa Terras, Dept. Information Studies, UCL 

• Different stories to be lived and told: recovering Lehmann James Oppenheimer (1868-1916) for the narrative of the Irish Arts & Crafts movement (1894-1925), James G.R. Cronin, School of History & Centre for Adult Continuing Education, University College Cork, Ireland. 

• Oral History and acts of recovery: humanizing history?, Andrew Flinn, Dept. Information Studies, UCL 

• Lost origins of Information Science, Vanda Broughton, Dept. Information Studies, UCL 

• Plus ça change: a historical perspective on the institutional context of Digital Humanities, Claire Warwick, Dept. Information Studies, UCL 

• (Virtual presentation) DH pioneers and progeny: some reflections on generational accomplishment and engagement in the Digital Humanities, Ray Siemens, Faculty of Humanities, University of Victoria

• Closing Keynote: Data vs. Text: forty years of confrontation, Lou Burnard, Oxford University Computing Services (Emeritus) 

• Discussion: towards an oral history of Computing in the Humanities, Chaired by Anne Welsh and Julianne Nyhan, Dept. Information Studies, UCL 

Podcasts of some lectures will be posted online after the even - watch this space!