Can the Humanities survive distance learning?

• Main Author: Mary Poovey
• Format: Article
• Language: Catalan
• Published: Universitat Oberta de Catalunya 2001-11-01
• Series: Digithum
• Subjects: humanitats; distance learning; digitalization
• Online Access: http://www.uoc.edu/ojs/index.php/digithum/article/view/593

By way of preface to my observations about the humanities and distance learning, let me make an important qualification. Scholars in the humanities have long benefited from digitalization and computer technology, and nothing I say is intended to downplay the value of digital archives of secondary and primary sources. Humanists use digital data bases to locate articles on cuckoldry in Shakespeare’s late plays, they use digital text archives to gain access to variants of Browning’s The Ring and the Book, and they use email to communicate with scholars all over the world. In these ways, digitalization has enhanced research in the humanities, and I have no reason to doubt that this will continue to be the case.