This is just around five months into my ever giant academic endeavor , that is, PhD , I happen to be a part of Winter Institute In Digital Humanities fondly abbreviated as #WIDH. This winter institute comprises of lecture series and a number of workshop sessions , some of them up till now , are on GIS , Georeferencing and Textual Communities organized from 8th December – 22nd December 2019 .This institute is as an academic service delivered by IIT Gandhinagar and University of Saskatchewan around a sweet , cool ,and breezy Indian winter of the birthplace of Mahatama. This blog is in reference to a short progress report of the academic aspirations or thirst I had when I derailed, and efforts of this winter institute and its commendable scheduled digital-assisted services , that helped a lot to quench a considerable amount of my academic thirst.
I happened to unwind the tilism regarding role of digital media by getting deeper insights into the young discipline of Digital Humanities. The discourses this Institute offers is how digital media perceived as a form of abuse now through efforts of Digital Humanities is shaping it into an ocean of enlightenment so profuse. Although traditional English Departments divorced themselves from technology , Digital Humanities and its framework , its dialogue or panel discussions with other fields of academia, provides substantial evidence , that there has been a history of collaborative idea like that of literature and psychology , literature and ecology , literature and linguistics etc. , so it is absolutely okay for the traditional field of English Literature to give a chance to digital world and its content for research collaborations and that it will also retrieve back in a positive manner , keeping their specificity intact.
This Institute also gave me a journey into the compartments of digital texts. What I from day one referred as a “question of text “ at its own pace, is fetching for argumentative answers. Web Archives as a digital text in itself , I learned should not look after for traditional print culture for the validity of its existence as a primary source in the process of research.
The case of HUMAN in the DIGITAL , is investigated through one of the tagline of this institute as focus on humanizing the digital world through academia. It is disheartening to note that due to lack of textual scholarship ,due to misreading of rotten manuscripts , people have died in the name of wrong religious or social revelation. Textual Communities , as the representatives of humans are making commendable efforts in painstaking jobs of reviving these manuscripts in digital forms , for the betterment of civilization at large. The use of AI not only has solutions regarding biological cure but also aims to humanize the unintended preys of juvenile delinquency.
There is a lot more in coming weeks of the winter school , a quick update on an further development in the field that I encounter readers ! , will surely be conveyed to your doors of memory. Wishing strength to you O Young Discipline !
Winter Institute in Digital Humanities 