Last Monday I shared two examples of the digital humanities used outside of traditional academia. Many projects created today include elements and tools similar or even identical to those used by the professors and students who explicitly label themselves Digital Humanists. Projects developed by these people inside of academia help us to understand exactly how the humanities can be presented in new media, and how we can utilize the tools of the digital age, but the label which we’ve put on these projects can also isolate us from media which has already achieved some, if not all of the goals and criteria we’ve already established for our own work.

The first example I presented to the class was the 1969 Draft Lottery simulator which USA Today put together to complement the new Ken Burns documentary on the Vietnam War. It is a simple tool, but it perfectly demonstrates how a simple web page can augment a more traditional form of media through giving the viewer a chance to interact and identify with a crucial time in American History.

Here is the link to the Vietnam War Draft Picker if you’d like to use it yourself.

The second example I showed the class was the Fallen of World War II project by Neil Halloran. This project is much closer to what we might consider the Digital Humanities. First, the project is entirely online, in a video format. It archived on YouTube, Vimeo, and the website created explicitly for the project. The second and more important point is the presentation of the data. The entire video is presented in through animated graphics, and about seven minutes into the video Neil gives the audience a chance to interact with the information presented. He breaks down the deaths of World War II over the seven-year timeline of the war and allows the user to explore the losses by each nation at any time during the war.

Here is the link for Neil’s project. If you decide to find it on your own, be sure to go to the website he created for the video if you want to interact with the data.

The digital humanities are growing both within and outside academia. It’s important that we recognize not only the projects our fellow students and professors are creating, and also seek to understand what a world that may not know what Digital Humanities even means is also putting together for us to experience.

Join me next time as I push the boundaries of what could be considered digital humanities.

 

Graham McGrew