Digital Humanities Now

Editors’ Choice: For Whom and For What Purpose? A Position Paper on Digital Humanities and AI in African Studies

Wed, 23 Sep 2026 16:30:00 +0000

Our take: In “For Whom and For What Purpose? A Position Paper on Digital Humanities and AI in African Studies,” Frédérick Madore and colleagues critically examine the growing role of artificial intelligence in African Studies. The paper considers how large language models intersect with digital archives, linguistic inequality, data governance, consent, and uneven technological infrastructures. The authors foreground questions of access, representation, and power in knowledge production. Their intervention contributes to ongoing conversations about decolonial digital humanities and responsible AI, asking scholars to consider not only what these technologies can do, but whom they ultimately serve.

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Job Announcement: Assistant/Associate Professor, History of Artificial Intelligence at Rice University

Colleen Nugent — Wed, 23 Sep 2026 16:30:00 +0000

The Department of History in the School of Humanities and Arts at Rice University in Houston, Texas, seeks applicants for a tenure-track assistant or associate professor in the history of artificial intelligence, broadly conceived. A PhD or equivalent degree in History or a closely related field is required by the time of appointment. The area of geographical specialization is open. The appointment will begin on July 1, 2027. We seek applicants from any sub-field of history and welcome all historical methodologies and approaches, such as social, cultural, intellectual, political, economic, business histories, the history of war, and the history of science, amongst others. The successful candidate will be expected to teach and advise students at both the graduate and undergraduate levels. Rice University has a semester-based teaching schedule with a 2-2 teaching load. The University expects faculty members to maintain an active program of scholarly research and publication and to contribute service to the Department, University, and profession.

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Interview: Where Are the Hypertexts Now? Mark Bernstein on Storyspace, Eastgate, AI, and the Future of Electronic Literature

Mehulkumar Desai and Deena Larsen — Wed, 23 Sep 2026 16:30:00 +0000

Mark Bernstein is a visionary in hypertext and electronic publishing. He founded Eastgate Systems, the first publisher of electronic literature, in 1982, to advance nonlinear, intertwingled storytelling and thought through creating tools, publishing non-linear works, authoring peer-reviewed scholarly articles, fostering discourse, and much more. In this interview, Mark Bernstein reflects on hypertext, electronic literature, Storyspace, Eastgate Systems, literary publishing, large language models, and the continuing problem of form, structure, and reading in digital literary culture. Bernstein covers his work as a theorist, software designer, publisher, critic, and creative practitioner, situating hypertext within the humanities and arguing that “Computing is a Humanism.”

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Editors’ Choice: An Agenda on Generative AI for the Digital Humanities

Fabio Ciotti — Wed, 23 Sep 2026 16:30:00 +0000

Our take: In “An Agenda on Generative AI for the Digital Humanities,” Fabio Ciotti explores the growing significance of generative artificial intelligence for digital humanities research. The article considers how large language models are reshaping established methods of textual analysis, knowledge representation, and scholarly interpretation while introducing new methodological and epistemological questions. Ciotti argues for a research agenda that moves beyond the uncritical adoption of AI tools and instead examines their underlying models, limitations, and implications for humanities scholarship. The article offers a timely framework for DH researchers seeking to understand how generative AI may transform computational methods while preserving critical and interpretive approaches to cultural data.

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Weekly Highlight: The Digital Orientalist

Colleen Nugent — Wed, 23 Sep 2026 16:30:00 +0000

Our take: This source is an online magazine, published from Tsukuba, Japan, that highlights digital scholarship on African, Asian, and Middle Eastern spaces and histories. The magazine is run by a team of scholars, librarians, and students, and features many contributors. They describe their use of the term ‘Orientalist’ as follows: “we are making a distinction then between “Orientalism” as a tool of oppression and political domination and “Orientalism” as the study of non-European spaces.”

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Resource: Management of Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) Metadata

Xiaoli Ma, Stasha Gardasevic & Anna Goslen — Wed, 23 Sep 2026 16:30:00 +0000

Electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs) often have specialized workflows and metadata management requirements due to factors such as varied ingest methods and inconsistent source metadata. This blog post features descriptions of ETD metadata management from three institutions in the United States, outlining the systems, tools, and workflows used to process and provide access to ETDs at each institution. This post is intended to help other metadata professionals working on ETD metadata management by providing brief descriptions of how the work is handled at other institutions. A list of additional resources on ETD metadata management is provided at the end of the post.

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Job Announcement: Special Collections Metadata Librarian at University of Rochester

Colleen Nugent — Wed, 23 Sep 2026 16:30:00 +0000

Under the direction of the Metadata Operations Librarian, the Special Collections Metadata Librarian leads the creation of bibliographic descriptions for materials in all formats, including books, maps, broadsides, audiovisual materials, continuing resources, and manuscripts with an emphasis on materials acquired or held by Rare Books & Special Collections and Preservation (RBSCP) at the River Campus Libraries (RCL). Along with their colleagues in Metadata Services, the incumbent supports workflows and targeted projects requiring MARC-based cataloging and catalog maintenance activities and is responsible for continuing resource cataloging and holdings maintenance. They contribute to and maintain RCL’s guidelines and best practices for rare materials cataloging and serve as the domain authority in rare materials cataloging across the UR Libraries. The Special Collections Metadata Librarian collaborates closely with RBSCP’s curators and colleagues in Metadata Services.

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Video: How LLMs Distort Our Written Language

Colleen Nugent — Wed, 23 Sep 2026 16:30:00 +0000

Large language models (LLMs) are used by over a billion people globally, most often to assist with writing. In this work, we demonstrate that LLMs not only alter the voice and tone of human writing, but also consistently alter the intended meaning. First, we conduct a human user study to understand how people actually interact with LLMs when using them for writing. Our findings reveal that extensive LLM use led to a nearly 70% increase in essays that remained neutral in answering the topic question. Significantly more heavy LLM users reported that the writing was less creative and not in their voice. Next, using a dataset of human-written essays that was collected in 2021 before the widespread release of LLMs, we study how asking an LLM to revise the essay based on the human-written feedback in the dataset induces large changes in the resulting content and meaning. We find that even when LLMs are prompted with expert feedback and asked to only make grammar edits, they still change the text in a way that significantly alters its semantic meaning. We then examine LLM-generated text in the wild, specifically focusing on the 21% of AI-generated scientific peer reviews at a recent top AI conference. We find that LLM-generated reviews place significantly less weight on clarity and significance of the research, and assign scores that, on average, are a full point higher. These findings highlight a misalignment between the perceived benefit of AI use and an implicit, consistent effect on the semantics of human writing, motivating future work on how widespread AI writing will affect our cultural and scientific institutions.

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DHNow Newsletter, September 23, 2026

Colleen Nugent — Wed, 23 Sep 2026 16:30:00 +0000

This issue was curated by Colleen Nugent McLean, DHNow’s Editor and Mehulkumar Desai, DHNow Guest Editor.

Our Editors’ Choices this week include an article arguing for the DH community to adopt an agenda on generative AI and a paper on the current state of DH in Africa. We have also included announcements, projects, reports, and tools, including a report on best practices for metadata for digital theses and dissertations.

DHNow Newsletter, September 16, 2026

Colleen Nugent — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 16:31:49 +0000

This issue was curated by Colleen Nugent McLean, DHNow’s Editor and Yuchun Zhang, DHNow Guest Editor.

Our Editors’ Choices this week include an article reflecting on the Equal Earth projection and if there is still a need for a default map projection at all. We have also included announcements, projects, reports, and tools, including a report on the state of AI and education.