Where’s the Beef? Does Digital Humanities Have to Answer Questions?
Where’s the Beef? Does Digital Humanities Have to Answer Questions?
This chapter considers the criticism most frequently leveled at digital humanities, the so-called “Where’s the beef?” question—that is, what questions does digital humanities answer that can’t be answered without it? What humanities arguments does digital humanities make? It acknowledges that digital humanities must eventually make arguments and answer questions. However, digital humanists need time to articulate their digital apparatus, to produce new phenomena that they can neither anticipate nor explain immediately. At the very least, they need to make room for both kinds of digital humanities, the kind that seeks to make arguments and answer questions now, and the kind that builds tools and resources with questions in mind, but only in the back of its mind and only for later.
Keywords: digital humanities, digital humanists, arguments, questions
Minnesota Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.