New Approaches to the Arts and Humanities

Digital Humanities is a term that refers to the use of digital technology to explore the traditional subjects of humanistic inquiry. In doing so, Digital Humanities continues to explore and challenge the core values of academic humanism, while also embracing the emerging digital technologies that enable the study, teaching, and dissemination of texts in innovative ways. Digital Humanities both complements and expands the traditional ways that scholars and students of literature, languages, history, and archaeology interpret, analyze, and influence the world around them. The Digital Humanities cultivate skills that not only shed new light on old texts, but also to inspire different ways of thinking, reading, and viewing our culture.

Similarly, new media studies is an emerging field that combines an expansive range of arts practice, theory, and research--emphasizing digital media across multiple disciplines. Digital technologies are revolutionizing contemporary art, literature, and society; they are rapidly transforming the way traditional arts are practiced and creating unlimited possibilities for new forms of expression. By merging digital video, digital media art, digital narrative, computer music, sound art, and computer animation in ways unimaginable just a decade ago, digital media enables us to transcend cultural boundaries and open new channels of artistic communication in a University setting.

New Texts, New Methods, New Goals.

Digital Humanities and New Media Studies seeks new answers to traditional questions in the humanities through a whole range of techniques, methods and approaches.

• Digital Humanities and New Media studies includes converting traditional media (texts, photographs, video) into digital formats that follow recognized guidelines in order to make it available to scholars and students across campus and the world. So far at UND, work by Digital Humanists had made some of the earliest records of the University and other unique collections available to a wider public through the internet. Meanwhile, new media artists are creating innovative cultural objects.
• Digital Humanities includes processing quantitative data collected over the course of archaeological or archival field work. Scholars at UND have long experience in analyzing complex datasets ranging from 19th century ship manifests to archaeological data, using sophisticated computer programs.
• Digital Humanities and New Media Studies also include the production of new digital texts, video, and audio that explore and redefine the limits imposed by more traditional media. Already at the University there are weblogs, digital video, podcasts, photographic projects, and interactive texts that seek to redefine how scholars interact with their students, the community, and their peers.
• Digital Humanities recognizes the need to preserve traditional texts by migrating them to digital media, as well as archiving various “born digital” texts. By embracing and developing specific protocols and standards for the creation and preservation of digital media, the Digital Humanities ensure a global audience for fragile or geographically limited materials.

Teaching and Learning in the 21st Century.

Digital Humanities and New Media Studies recognizes that teaching and learning are ongoing requirements in the rapidly changing world of new media, technology, and digital approaches to texts and culture. Thus, teaching the broad theoretical approaches to understanding the new media and the specific technical skills necessary to produce digital media is at the very core of our project.

Scholarly Collaboration.

Digital humanities and New Media Studies are inherently transdiciplinary. Our group is meant to develop the synergy on campus to tap into existing faculty, staff, student, and technological resources will maximize the university’s commitment to engaging the emerging information and knowledge economy. Our goal is to facilitate conversation and collaboration between interested members of the UND community.

Cultivating the Future.

The UND Working Group in Digital and New Media is designed to facilitate the visibility of existing Digital and New Media projects, cultivates the scholarly activity in this vibrant and innovative discipline, and encourages the teaching of skills necessary to compete in a world increasingly dominated by digital technology. The Working Group in Digital and New Media is a focal point for the energies, technologies, and expertise for the University to embrace the challenges of humanistic inquiry and artistic creativity in the 21st century.