DIGITAL HUMANITIES: A PARADIGM FOR THE 21ST CENTURY

Abstract

Our life is becoming increasingly digital and digitized, and the recent shift to an online environment is a major leap. While this rapid advancement in technology has made itself a prominent feature in such fields as medicine, marketing, communications and even education, many assume that the humanities have become a field for dinosaurs. The assumption is that the humanities focus their research output on writing and are firmly founded in a culture of books – a form of records that seem unchangeable in nature, dogmatic in intellect, and fossil-like in their searchability. The world of the digital, on the other hand, is a fluid continuum with incredible potential for creativity, dissemination, interaction, retrieval, analysis and scholarship. This review article, therefore, sets out to outline the history and rise of digital humanities (DH), explore the parameters definitive of DH, and review highlights of DH scholarship conducted currently, with the aim to open new horizons in the Arab World.