South Asian Digital Humanities

"Pertinent, provocative, and powerful – the contributions in South Asian Digital Humanities align and advance, engage and intervene, together documenting, situating and resituating essential foundations, rich contexts and imperative perspectives that collectively inform this important area. Risam and Gairola have produced a commendable volume that situates timely dialogues and debates of the digital humanities in the historical, theoretical, and geographical contexts of postcolonial South Asia."

- Ray Siemens, Distinguished Professor of English and Director of the Electronic Textual Cultures Lab (ETCL), Implementing New Knowledge Environments Project, and the Digital Humanities Summer Institute (DHSI) at the University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada; and Global Innovations Chair in the Digital Humanities in the PVC Office of Education and Arts at the University of Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia

"The digital record has an increasingly important role to play in the study of South Asian texts and cultures. Gairola and Risam's timely collection is an important intervention at the nexus of humanities and digital research techniques, articulating the need for methodologies that embrace de-colonial, feminist and intersectional perspectives to understand South Asian approaches to identity, nationality, colonialism, and diaspora. Covering literature, poetry, digital archives, and data infrastructures, this formidable volume provides a roadmap for interrogating issues of diversity, equity, and representation, while providing a necessary platform for digital postcolonial studies that is inclusive of South Asian voices and cultures."

- Melissa Terras, Professor of Digital Cultural Heritage at the University of Edinburgh's College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences; Director of the Edinburgh Centre for Data, Culture and Society; and Director of Research in the Edinburgh Futures Institute, Scotland

"How do the digital afterlives of colonialism shape the formation of the digital record, and in turn, the cultural memory of humanity? In raising these questions, the contributors to this stimulating collection stake new and important terrain for the digital humanities. This collection of essays prises open rich veins of thinking around the digital turn and its implications not only for archives, pedagogy and research, but for the reproduction of silences, inequalities and broader workings of power. In revisiting the project of postcolonialism through the lens of the digital humanities, the gift of these essays is a re-spiriting of both. A politically engaged postcolonial scholarship must now contribute to envisioning a post-surveillance society, a politics of the disconnected subject and a differently connected global community."

- Melinda Hinkson, Director of the Institute of Postcolonial Studies, Melbourne; and Convening Editor of the journal Postcolonial Studies

"Roopika Risam and Rahul K Gairola’s South Asian Digital Humanities is an important and timely volume offering a collection of innovative chapters which explore digital humanities in the South Asian context. The contributors come from diverse disciplinary backgrounds and make innovative methodological and theoretical interventions. The field-defining introduction is followed by chapters that deal with digital politics, archives, literary texts and infrastructures. As an emerging discipline, I believe this will be a key text for digital humanities in South Asia."

- Rohit K Dasgupta, Senior Lecturer in Cultural Industries, University of Glasgow; and Visiting Fellow, Loughborough University, UK

"South Asian Digital Humanities breaks new ground by drawing together established and emerging voices to set out an ambitious agenda and key issues for contemporary comparative research at the intersection of digital humanities, postcolonial and diaspora studies. In this impressive, innovative volume, diverse strands of critical debate are interwoven with wider historical and cultural trajectories, expanding our understanding of the possibilities of digital approaches to South Asian scholarship."

- Paul Arthur, Vice-Chancellor’s Professorial Research Fellow; and Chair in Digital Humanities and Social Sciences, School of Arts and Humanities, Edith Cowan University, Western Australia

"This volume truly innovates valuable scholarship. Roopika Risam and Rahul Gairola have done an admirable job in producing and curating a collection of essays that constellates diverse scholarly questions and insights that explore, and expand, the boundaries of postcolonial studies and digital humanities. With nuance, breadth, and depth, this volume critically responds to the ever-growing complexity of the increasingly digital contexts in which we work, think, and live. And perhaps just as importantly, this work reveals possibilities of what contemporary digital humanities can be, as well as the vital contributions that emerge from innovative explorations like this. South Asian Digital Humanities is a building block for much more to come."

- Tyler Shores, University of Cambridge ThinkLab Manager; and Senior Research Associate, Intellectual Forum at Jesus College, University of Cambridge, UK.