Computation for Humanity

17

Visualizing Emancipation: Mapping the End of Slavery in the American Civil War

Scott Nesbit

Humanists, no less than scientists, have begun thinking about increasingly large datasets in recent years. The National Endowment for the Humanities, in partnership with the National Science Foundation, the Institute for Museums and Library Services, and funding agencies in other countries, has issued calls for interdisciplinary teams to begin Digging into Data. At first glance, this seems a curious call to scholars accustomed to deep readings of literary and historical texts. Yet in recent years, humanists—often under the banner of digital history or digital humanities—have begun to find, produce, and organize large bodies of information, carefully ...