Teaching historians the ways of the machine: building the digital literacy of humanists, 1966-1987

Research seminar with Sofia Papastamkou

This presentation offers a long perspective on the debates on the computer/digital/code literacy of historians and other humanists between the mid-sixties and the mid-eighties.

Its main sources are five surveys conducted by the journal Computers and the Humanities (CHum) between 1971 and 1987, contemporary literature regarding computer literacy for humanists, and oral histories shedding light on the twenty-year period.

The period is framed by the opening of the debate about teaching computers to humanists, on the one hand; the 1986 Vassar workshop and the last survey of CHum a year later, on the other hand – before internet, the web and the subsequent rise of digital humanities and history contribute to generalize the debate out in the open. In doing so, this work aims at revealing continuity and change in the debates on whether to program or not in the humanities; in the tension between holistic versus localized knowledge of programming considered necessary for the humanists; the evolution of pedagogical materials used for the purpose of teaching; the way our understanding of computer/digital/code literacy progressed; and the principal lieux of both institutionalized knowledge, but also informal mechanisms that came to constitute the invisible college of digital history and humanities (as per Crymble 2021). From FORTRAN and ALGOL to current use of Python and R, a long path has been traced since, but debates, and stakes, for history and the humanities may sound strangely familiar while revealing a quest for control of research and teaching process in history and the humanities.  

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