[Commlist] CfA special issue Colloquia Humanistica (2024)

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 October 2022.

Contacting selected authors by 31 October 2022.

First draft (5000 words) by 15 January 2023.

First round of editorial comments and proofreading by 30 March 2023.

Preprint published for International Visegrad Fund by 15 April 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/ 
<https://digihum.cspk.eu/>

Journal website: https://ispan.waw.pl/journals/index.php/ch/ 
<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

Contact: (ondrej.daniel /at/ ff.cuni.cz) <mailto:(ondrej.daniel /at/ ff.cuni.cz)>, 
(r.kulminski /at/ uw.edu.pl) <mailto:(r.kulminski /at/ uw.edu.pl)>

The call for papers below can also be viewed using this link: 
https://digihum.cspk.eu/special-issue/ 
<https://digihum.cspk.eu/special-issue/>. Please share widely with your 
networks.

*No payment from the authors will be required!!!*


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