chapter 2 and3

荣华富贵

Chapters 2 and 3 lay the foundational “elements” of digital humanities (DH), unpacking how traditional人文 (humanities) objects are transformed and expanded through digital frameworks. Together, they reveal DH’s core logic: reimagining humanities materials as actionable digital data while honoring their intrinsic contextual value.  

Chapter 2, “Text and Document,” centers on the most foundational DH element—textual materials. It demystifies how digitization transcends mere “copy-pasting” of texts: processes like optical character recognition (OCR), text encoding (e.g., TEI), and markup turn static documents into searchable, analyzable datasets. The chapter emphasizes that DH’s power lies in balancing technical precision with humanities rigor—for example, encoding 19th-century novels to tag character relationships or historical references enables distant reading (e.g., tracking thematic patterns across corpora) without losing sight of close reading’s nuance. It also addresses challenges, such as OCR errors in archaic fonts or preserving paratexts (marginalia, bindings) that shape a text’s meaning.  

Chapter 3 broadens this scope to “Object, Artifact, Image, Sound, Space,” expanding DH beyond text to multimodal materials. It explores how non-textual objects—from medieval manuscripts (artifacts) to Renaissance paintings (images) and folk music (sound)—are digitized and contextualized. For instance, 3D scanning of artifacts preserves tactile details (e.g., pottery textures) for remote study, while spatial mapping tools (e.g., GIS) layer historical maps with modern data to visualize changes in urban landscapes. A key insight is that DH “remediates” these objects: digitization doesn’t replace physical forms but creates new access points—e.g., sound editing software lets scholars isolate instrumental layers in classical music previously unnoticeable.  

Both chapters underscore DH’s interdisciplinary essence: technical tools (encoding, scanning) serve humanities questions (about authorship, cultural context, or materiality). They remind readers that DH is not just “digital tools for humanities” but a reorientation of how we engage with humanities materials—making them more accessible, collaborative, and open to new analytical approaches.