Digital Humanities at Emory brings together faculty who teach with—and about—data and digital technologies across the humanities disciplines. These include English and other literary fields, history and art history, African American studies, Middle Eastern and South Asian studies, film and media, philosophy, religion, women’s and gender studies, and all those devoted to understanding the complexity of human experience. With College faculty and expert technical staff located in places such as the Emory Center for Digital Scholarship and the Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry, Emory is home to a vibrant and diverse community of digital humanities scholars with national and international reach.
Digital humanities (DH) integrates digital methods and tools into traditional humanistic inquiry, exploring questions about human culture, expression, and experience at larger scales and in new digital forms. Across a range of disciplines, students learn to produce and analyze data and digital content, and to think critically about how these and other technologies shape culture and society. Within this broad field, areas include:
Humanities Data / Computational Humanities — Uses computational methods and data-driven analysis to explore patterns, meaning, and interpretation in text, image, sound, and other forms of cultural expression.
AI & Humanities / Critical AI Studies — Investigates how artificial intelligence transforms culture, knowledge, labor, and power while developing frameworks for designing, deploying, interpreting, and critiquing algorithmic systems.
Information Design and Data Visualization — Communicates complex ideas through clear, ethical, and visually compelling representations of data, processes, and stories.
Media Studies and Media Production — Analyzes how media creates meaning and influences society. Teaches students to design and produce work in a variety of media.
Spatial Humanities and GIS — Uses maps, geospatial tools, and spatial theory to study how location, environment, and movement shape human histories, cultures, and experiences.
Digital Projects and Archives — Creates websites that enable the preservation, access, curation, and analysis of primary sources in digital form.
Science and Technology Studies (STS) — Examines how science and technology shape—and are shaped by—social, political, ethical, and cultural forces.
Digital humanities courses equip students with both the knowledge and practical skills to interpret the past, engage the present, and imagine the future. DH students learn how data and other media forms circulate in society, how algorithms shape public life, and how knowledge can be communicated clearly and ethically, among many other topics. Students develop projects that include journal articles, maps, databases, visualizations, digital exhibits, and machine learning pipelines.
Students develop fluency in data analysis, programming, web design, metadata creation, media editing, archival work, and storytelling—skills that employers in technology, cultural institutions, publishing, public policy, and research consistently seek.
Because DH is grounded in the humanities, students learn not only how to analyze data and digital content, but also why they matter: how they can represent, empower, silence, or mislead; how algorithms can amplify bias; and how technical infrastructures shape power and access.
Emory’s DH curriculum is built on the idea that technical skills alone are not enough for meaningful work in the age of AI. Our DH courses teach students to think critically about technology:
The answers to these questions require both digital and computational tools and critical thinking about data and media. In the process, students develop the skillsets that are the most highly sought by employers across a range of fields: AI research, responsible AI, data science, UX research, digital product design, government analytics, and public-facing innovation by cultural institutions such as museums and libraries, as well as nonprofits and community groups.
Students emerge from our courses ready not only to use new technologies but to shape them, thoroughly equipped to tackle digital internships, graduate study, and leadership roles.