Digital Humanities

The absence of an entry on digital humanities in the last volume of The Year’s Work in Critical and Cultural Theory due to the Covid-19 pandemic as well as the exacerbation of academic precarity (that was acknowledged in the editorial preface of the last volume) predicates that this chapter develop a narrative bibliography of notable scholarship in the digital humanities from both 2021 and 2022. Therefore the unprecedented circumstances that have extended the scope of scholarly review for this chapter beyond a single chronological year also provide the unique opportunity to not only ‘trace and expand upon currents in critical and cultural theory, and to engage in [the] areas’ key debates’ (Quinn and Ghosh, ‘Preface’ to YWCCT 2022) but also (and more importantly, one might argue) understand some of the radical thematic transformations brought about and anticipated by the legacies, presents, and futures of digital humanities within the supposedly ‘new normal’ of a post-Covid world.

Through consolidating diverse conversations from varied contexts that are shaping contemporary digital humanities and in anticipating the futures of the discipline, this chapter locates scholarship in the digital humanities and related fields from the years 2021 and 2022 within the interconnected themes of resistive ontologies, organizations, and new directions in the digital humanities. While the focus remains on the scholarship produced within the aforesaid chronological period, our methodological attempt in this intervention has been to acknowledge and put into dialogue relevant contributions related to the three primary themes of analysis that may fall beyond the ambit of a specific period.