About
The Department of Digital Humanities (DDH) is home to scholarly approaches at the intersection of digital technology and the humanities. Digital Humanities (DH) draws its origins from the 1940s and 50s at the very dawn of computing and has evolved alongside the development of other technologies with broad cultural consequences, such as the internet, mobile devices, gaming, and artificial intelligence. Defining DH has been a perennial concern for the discipline because it is continually renewed and reimagined alongside the evolution of contemporary technology, with the understanding that technological change drives changes in knowledge formation, digitization, preservation, communication, and other cultural work. More durably stated, DH seeks to augment the methodologies available within the humanities, which further extends the scale of research questions, research availability, and research impact globally.
Digital Humanities has also been highly innovative pedagogically since its formalization in universities. For much of its history, DH took root in the margins of traditional humanities departments in the form of workshops, interdisciplinary collaborations, and networks of institutional mentorship and support. In this way, the DDH naturally suited to advancing Brock’s academic vision for transforming people and reimagining the future through curiosity and creativity. These tenants are reflected in the forward-looking approach of our discipline as well as our commitment to collaboration, teamwork, and engaging with a broader public of knowledge stakeholders.
DH methods are animated by the verbiage used to describe our relationship to technology. DHers are makers; we tinker, hack, play, and prototype with technology to better grasp our cultural context and communicate within it. In 2001, Jerome McGann published Radiant Textuality: Literature After the World Wide Web, wherein he argued that “the next generation of literary and aesthetic theorists who will most matter are people who will be at least as involved with making things as with writing text.” DH extends the definition of literacy to include the technologies that communicate culture. By “making things,” we understand how they work and why they matter. We are better able to grasp the cultural consequences of technology by using it to tell stories, preserve the past, and analyse cultural information. This hands-on, experiential approach is fundamental to our research and teaching practice and perfectly expresses the aims of the academic plan.
The DDH is home to two undergraduate degree programs. Interactive Arts and Digital Media (IADM, formerly IASC) is a multi-disciplinary degree that prepares students to be developers, user interface developers, project managers, and content creators in the Interactive Digital Media (IDM) industry. GAME is an award-winning, dual stream degree shared between the Department of Computer Science (COSC) and Niagara College. Students can pursue a BA in Game Design or a BSc in Game Programming, preparing our students to enter the game industry at large or small studios, while some graduates go on to open indie studios and other game related businesses. The DDH is also home to Canada’s only MA in Game Studies, preparing the next generation of industry leaders and shaping the future of the largest sector of the media industry.
The DDH is planning to launch one of Canada’s first undergraduate BA in Artificial Intelligence in the 2026-2027 recruitment year, pending final approval.
