Call for Articles: Colloquia Humanistica 2024, Digital studies of culture in Central Europe
Now more than ever, the Covid-19 pandemic has made us realize how deeply reliant we are on digital resources and research methods. Such an awareness has undoubtedly opened new opportunities for research across distant geographical spaces and datasets, but simultaneously pointed to the so far rather fragmented landscape of online available data, their forms and content, and limitations related to the utilization of various analytical tools across different datasets, institutions and disciplines. In comparison to major language communities and/or resourceful academic environments, Central Europe, with its limited funding opportunities and diverse language communities, generally appears to be reacting to the new challenges at a slower pace (with the exception of a few cutting-edge projects).
The transnational cooperation that is crucial for comparing datasets and arriving at wider conclusions is sometimes hindered in Central Europe by conflicting historical narratives, which continue to be rooted in nationalist myths and boosted by the dubious practices of memory politics. While it is generally true that digital methods have yet to be integrated into the usual research toolkit of scholarly communities in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, this semi-peripheral region has arguably also been affected by extensive “top-down” approaches in expanding Digital Studies. The overuse of buzzwords and ambiguous experiences with methodologies fostered “from above” has resulted in a considerable distrust towards the field even among many of those who could not be charged with methodological conservativism. Furthermore, fear of a new version of what American performance artist Lydia Lunch (1993) called “the elitism of computers” has emerged.
This journal issue proposes to address the roots, contexts and consequences of reserved attitudes towards digital research tools and communication platforms in contemporary academia in Austria and the Visegrad countries to foster a better understanding of the caveats of this emerging field and help find solutions to the most pressing issues.
We invite contributions that address the problems and possible solutions by either providing a sweeping account or focusing on specific case studies. Questions to answer may include:
- What do academics mean when they are talking about digital methods?
- What are the conditions of doing digital research?
- What factors appear to be the major obstacles to the spread of DH?
- How digital methods are used to study a variety of cultural phenomena? What conclusions one can draw from “best practice” cases? What such success stories tell us about digital research in the region?
- How do they change the research process and sharing of the research outcome?
To find replies to these questions, we are searching for papers of up to 20 standard pages discussing examples of successful projects, approaches and tools, or papers that simply develop the germs of ideas for future research.
We would like to call upon cultural historians, cultural sociologists, cultural anthropologists, cultural geographers, scholars with interdisciplinary approaches to cultural and heritage studies and members of all other relevant academic disciplines.
Timeline:
- Abstract (300 words) and biography (50 words) by 20 February 2023.
- Contacting selected authors by 28 February 2023.
- First draft (5000 words) by 15 May 2023.
- First round of editorial comments and proofreading by 30 May 2023.
- Peer review by 15 November 2023.
- Final manuscript by 30 June 2024.
- Further proofreading and publication by the end of the year 2024.
Further information about the project: https://digihum.cspk.eu/
Journal website: https://ispan.waw.pl/journals/index.php/ch/
Editors of the special issue:
- Ondřej Daniel, Charles University, Prague, CZ
- Robert Kulmiński, Warsaw University, Warsaw, PL