''Humanist'' is an international electronic

seminar A seminar is a form of academic instruction, either at an academic institution or offered by a commercial or professional organization. It has the function of bringing together small groups for recurring meetings, focusing each time on some part ...

on humanities computing and the

digital humanities Digital humanities (DH) is an area of scholarly activity at the intersection of computing or Information technology, digital technologies and the disciplines of the humanities. It includes the systematic use of digital resources in the humanitie ...

, in the form of a long-running

electronic mailing list A mailing list is a collection of names and addresses used by an individual or an organization to send material to multiple recipients. Mailing lists are often rented or sold. If rented, the renter agrees to use the mailing list only at contra ...

and its associated archive. The primary aim of ''Humanist'' is to provide a forum for discussion of intellectual, scholarly, pedagogical, and social issues and for exchange of information among members. ''Humanist'' is also a

publication To publish is to make content available to the general public.Berne Convention, articl ...

of the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations (ADHO) and the Office for Humanities Communication (OHC) and an affiliated publication of the

American Council of Learned Societies The American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) is a private, nonprofit federation of 75 scholarly organizations in the humanities and related social sciences founded in 1919. It is best known for its fellowship competitions which provide a ra ...

(ACLS). In 2008, there were 1650 subscribers.

History

The ''Humanist'' list was created in 1987 by Willard McCarty, then at the

University of Toronto The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public university, public research university whose main campus is located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park (Toronto), Queen's Park in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It was founded by ...

, as a

BITNET BITNET was a co-operative United States, U.S. university computer network founded in 1981 by Ira Fuchs at the City University of New York (CUNY) and Greydon Freeman at Yale University. The first network link was between CUNY and Yale. Backgrou ...

(NetNorth in Canada)

electronic mail Electronic mail (usually shortened to email; alternatively hyphenated e-mail) is a method of transmitting and receiving Digital media, digital messages using electronics, electronic devices over a computer network. It was conceived in the ...

newsletter for people who support computing in the humanities for the Association for Literary and Linguistic Computing. McCarty, later at

King's College London King's College London (informally King's or KCL) is a public university, public research university in London, England. King's was established by royal charter in 1829 under the patronage of George IV of the United Kingdom, King George IV ...

, continued to edit it. Although ''Humanist'' started off as a means of communication for people directly involved in the support of humanities computing, it grew in scope to become an extended conversation about the nature of "humanities computing" (or "digital humanities", or one of a contested range of other names), about what computing looks like viewed from the humanities, and humanities from computing: "''Humanist'' remains the forum within which the technology, informed by the concerns of humane learning, can be viewed from an interdisciplinary common ground." As of 12 August 2020 the list went on hiatus for "a few weeks" for technical improvements. However, in February 2021 the list eventually moved to a new infrastructure, hosted at the University of Cologne, Germany.

References

External links

* {{official website, http://miskatonic.hki.uni-koeln.de/ (from February 2021) at th
Department for Digital Humanities
of the

University of Cologne The University of Cologne () is a university in Cologne, Germany. It was established in 1388. It closed in 1798 before being re-established in 1919. It is now one of the largest universities in Germany with around 45,187 students. The Universit ...

, Germany
Old website
(effective until August 2020) at

, allied with Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations (ADHO)
Office for Humanities Communication (OHC)
Digital humanities Electronic mailing lists Humanities education Computer-related introductions in 1987