Digital Environmental Humanities: An overview of recent nature-culture-computer entanglements
Manuel Burghardt
Core Questions
- What are current perspectives on Digital Environmental Humanities?
- How can digital humanities tools and methods support research in the environmental humanities?
Abstract
In this talk, I will introduce the Environmental Humanities—a multidisciplinary field that explores the cultural, historical, and ethical dimensions of human-environment interactions—and the Digital Humanities, which integrates computational tools and methods into humanities research to analyze and interpret cultural artifacts. I will argue for the promising future of their combination, known as Digital Environmental Humanities, where digital technologies enhance our understanding of environmental issues and nature-culture relationships. I will provide an overview of existing research projects in this emerging field, ranging from studies on Babylonian climate conflicts and the digitization of 18th-century handwritten meteorological observations to the application of biodiversity measures and species distribution models from ecology to cultural objects like books and manuscripts. Together, we will explore the future potential of digital and computational approaches in environmental humanities and discuss how they can contribute to addressing the environmental crises we currently face, thereby advancing sustainability efforts.
Literature
- Charles Travis (2022): New Machines in the Garden: The Digital Environmental Humanities, in Routledge Handbook of the Digital Environmental Humanities. (1st Ed., London)
Further sources
- Web pages on DEH at McGill Digital Humanities
Talk on 28 November 2024 — Ringvorlesung in Winter Term 2024/25