A lot has been written about the digital humanities (DH). But where do you start? What are good standard works? Our affiliated members and programme team have compiled a list of recommended basic books on DH, based on their own expertise.

List of basic works

• Berry, D. M. (Ed.). (2012). Understanding digital humanities. Houndsmill: Palgrave Macmillan.; confronting the digital revolution in academia, this book examines the application of new computational techniques and visualisation technologies in the Arts & Humanities.

• Berry, D. M., & Fagerjord, A. (2017). Digital Humanities: Knowledge and Critique in a Digital Age. Cambridge: Polity Press.; A guide that explores the history, intellectual work, key arguments, ideas and important critique of the emerging discipline of digital humanities.

• Burdick, A., Drucker, J., Lunenfeld, P., Presner, T., & Schnapp, J. (2012). Digital_Humanities. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.; this compact, game-changing report provides an in-depth examination of the emerging field of digital humanities.

• Dobson, J. (2019). Critical Digital Humanities. University of Illinois Press.; Can established humanities methods exists with computational thinking? The author explores the opportunities and complications faced by humanists in this new era.
• Graham, S., Milligan, I., Weingart, S., & Martin, K. (2022). Exploring Big Historical Data. The historian’s Macroscope. World Scientific.; This book describes and demonstrates the ways historical data can be explored to construct cultural heritage knowledge, for research and in teaching and learning and helps humanities scholars to grasp Big Data in order to do their work.

• Kitchin, R. (2014). The Data Revolution: Big data, open data, data infrastructures, & their consequences. London: Sage.; illustrates how the data landscape is rapidly changing and calls for a revolution in how we think about data:

• Quené, H. (2017). De kansen van spreiding [in Dutch]. Inaugural lecture, Utrecht University, 13 March 2017.; in this inaugural lecture, the author argues whey quantitative methods are indispensable for further scientific progress in the humanities.

• Schäfer, M.T. & Van Es, K. (2017). The datafied society. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. doi:10.5117/9789462981362.; this book critically reflects on the role and usefulness of big data.

• Schreibman, S., Siemens, R. & Unsworth, J. (2004). A companion to Digital Humanities. Oxford: Blackwell.; offers a thorough, concise overview of the emerging field of humanities computing.

• Terras, M., Nyhan, J., Vanhoutte, E., Nyhan, J., & Vanhoutte, E. (2016). Defining Digital Humanities: A Reader. London: Routledge.; this reader brings together in one core volume the essential readings that have emerged in digital humanities with a commentary provided by the authors on the original piece:

• Benjamin Wiggins, Course design in the digital humanities, in: Routledge International Handbook of Research Methods in Digital Humanities. (2020); this chapter asks: how can instructors effectively teach about the role of digital technology in the humanities in an era in which the power and potential of digital technology grows so rapidly?:

• Debates in the Digital Humanities; a book series that explores debates in the field of digital humanities as they emerge.
• Quanthum is a blog to the book Quantitative Methods in the humanities. An Introduction, that provides humanists with the basic tools and recipes (tutorials, reading lists, etc.) that will help them quantify.
• Walsh, M. (2021). Introduction to Cultural Analytics & Python. Powered by Jupyter Book. A freely available online textbook which offers an introduction to the programming language Python that is specifically designed for people interested in the humanities and social sciences.

Journals

• Digital Humanities Quarterly (DHQ)
• The Journal of Digital Scholarship in the Humanities (DSH)
• Language Resources and Evaluation (previously: Computers and the Humanities)

Further reading

Are you looking for a book or paper on a specific topic? Ask our affiliated members or send an email to cdh@uu.nl.