Flipped Learning: Digital Humanities

This blog task is given by Dilip Barad sir,

1. What is Digital Humanities? What’s it doing in the English Department?

Digital Humanities is an interdisciplinary field where the traditional study of humanities meets digital technologies. It involves using computational tools, digitization, text mining, network analysis, and digital archiving to explore questions in literature, history, philosophy, culture, and linguistics. It is not simply about using technology to process texts but about critically rethinking how texts, narratives, and cultural artifacts can be studied, preserved, and reinterpreted in the digital age.

In the English Department, Digital Humanities has a very specific role. It allows literature to be studied in new ways, for example, by analyzing entire corpora of novels or poems through data analysis to identify themes and stylistic patterns that could not be detected by manual reading alone. It also supports the creation of digital critical editions of literary texts, where different versions, annotations, and multimedia elements can be brought together in one platform. The study of electronic literature, hypertexts, and experimental digital storytelling further expands what counts as “literature.”

For students, Digital Humanities enhances pedagogy by enabling them to interact with texts through visualization, annotation, and creative digital projects. It also fosters collaboration between humanities scholars and experts in computing, design, and media studies. Importantly, Digital Humanities encourages critical reflection on how digital technologies and AI affect culture, authorship, and interpretation. This is why it finds a natural home in English Departments—it both enriches the study of literature and provides new tools to critique the digital world we live in.

2. Introduction to Digital Humanities | Amity University | Video Recording

The introductory video explains the foundations of Digital Humanities for students who are new to the subject. It outlines definitions, major goals, and applications of the field. The lecture emphasizes how traditional texts transform into hypertexts in the digital environment, where they are not only read but also linked, annotated, visualized, and remixed.

Examples of projects such as online archives, variorum editions, and digital storytelling platforms are discussed to show the practical scope of the subject. The video also highlights how DH encourages critical and creative engagement—students are not just passive readers but also active makers of digital projects. Another important aspect is the challenges that come with this new field, including ethical concerns, questions of authorship, and the need to preserve digital archives in the long run.

The video introduces DH as a living, evolving discipline that reshapes English studies, preparing students to both study literature with new tools and question the digital culture around them.

3. Reimagining Narratives with AI in Digital Humanities

This article focuses on how AI and narrative intersect in the field of Digital Humanities. Its main aim is to challenge the dominant negative portrayals of AI in popular culture and encourage students to imagine new, constructive possibilities of human–AI interaction.

The author suggests a classroom activity where students watch short films about AI and robots, most of which show tragic or dystopian outcomes. After this, students are asked to create alternative storylines where AI is not a threat but a collaborator or a supportive presence in human life. By doing this, students become aware of how cultural narratives shape our perception of technology and how limited those narratives often are.

The article also raises deeper questions about authorship and creativity. If AI can generate texts, images, or stories, what does it mean for human authorship? Is narrative still entirely human, or is it now co-created with machines? The task of reimagining AI narratives becomes a way of practicing Digital Humanities—using storytelling to explore cultural anxieties, to critique dominant discourses, and to imagine alternative futures.

This approach makes AI not just a tool but also an object of humanistic inquiry. Instead of seeing AI as purely technical, the article treats it as a cultural phenomenon that needs to be studied through narrative, critique, and pedagogy.

4. Watching Short Films and the Blog: “Why Are We So Scared of Robots / AI?”

The short films mentioned, such as Ghost Machine, iMom, and Anukul, present robots and AI in troubling ways. In these narratives, robots designed for caregiving or companionship become harmful or uncontrollable, reinforcing the popular fear that technology will eventually overpower or replace humans. These fears also appear in the blog discussion, which points out how society often imagines AI in dystopian terms—whether as job stealers, emotionless machines, or existential threats.

By watching these films, one becomes aware of the repetition of certain tropes: AI as cold, dangerous, or lacking empathy. This reveals how cultural imagination about technology is shaped more by fear than by possibility. However, the exercise does not end with critique. Students are asked to create counter-narratives, imagining futures where AI contributes positively to human life—by helping in education, offering companionship, or supporting creativity.

This reimagining is central to the humanities approach. It does not deny the risks of AI but also resists being trapped in one-sided negative stories. Instead, it uses narrative as a method of expanding cultural imagination. In doing so, students and scholars learn to see AI not only as a technical reality but as a cultural and narrative construct that can be reshaped through storytelling.