Edited by Matthew K. Gold, Lauren F. Klein – Debates in the Digital Humanities 2016

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University Of Minnesota Press, ISBN: 978-0816699544, English, 632 pages, 2016, USA

The scope of the digital is aptly represented in the scope of the definition of “digital humanities”. Initially acknowledged to be an umbrella term, it is gradually becoming more specific. The current direction is to look “inside” to try to unpack the nature of digital humanities through the various dynamics and relationships among its subfields and contributions. In this 2016 annual edited collection, this challenge comes to the fore, and the general approach to have a “disciplinary home” through which to develop a digital discourse seems to serve this self-defining need. Nevertheless, in the more than 600 pages of this edition, it’s worth noting that a space has been dedicated to contributions enquiring into the digital role in social and cultural issues involving minorities, race, and gender-related questions, including some specific research groups, and a kind of manifesto for a QueerOS. Furthermore, beginning with this volume there is room dedicated to one specific forum from the previous year, which here is “Text analysis at scale”. Even if digital humanities “names itself”, it has been one of the most successfully adopted labels in academia, and this annual selection proves once more that the collection can be heterogeneous in both content and formats, including commissioned interviews and position statements.