The many faces of theory in DH. Toward a dictionary of theoreticians mentioned in three DH journals (with Rabea Kleymann)
Group presentation in context of the conference Digital Humanities: Responding to Asian Diversity der Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations, 25.–29 Jul 2022
Participants: Silvia Gutiérrez de la Torre, Manuel Burghardt, Andreas Niekler, Rabea Kleymann
Theory in the Digital Humanities (DH) has been the subject of much debate. While the narrative of an “end of theory” is still being used, new discourses have found their way into DH scholarship. On the one hand, we observe a laboratory turn in DH that focuses on theory in practice. On the other hand, theoretical endeavours are regarded as much needed forms of criticism. Despite the relevance of these strands, a systematic investigation has yet to be conducted. This presentation contributes to these ongoing debates by laying the foundation for further empirical approaches that investigate the occurrences of theory references in scholarly written communication. We present first experiments on our theory-related dictionaries by using seed terms from a corpus of three DH journals and looking them up via the MediaWiki API.
Rabea Kleymann is a literary scholar and research associate with the project Diffractive Epistemics: Cultures of Knowledge in the Digital Humanities.