Focusing primarily on the Computers and the Humanities surveys (1971–1987), this paper examines how early pedagogical knowledge in humanities computing was articulated, circulated, and consolidated, and identifies the main issues that structured these discussions.
Between 1971 and 1987, Computers and the Humanities (CHum) organized five surveys devoted to teaching computers in the humanities (Bowles 1971; Campo 1972; Allen 1974; Rudman 1978; Rudman 1987). Founded in 1966 by Joseph Raben, professor of English at Queens College, with support from an IBM grant, the journal marked the emergence of a scholarly community around humanities computing. The surveys functioned as instruments for collecting and disseminating information about courses that integrated computing into humanistic inquiry, with the explicit aim of encouraging similar initiatives elsewhere. Contributing to the institutionalisation of such courses and ultimately strengthening what would later be described as a community of practice, was among the journal’s programmatic objectives (Raben 1966).
The five surveys constitute a key source for investigating the place of pedagogy in the history of digital humanities and digital history (Papastamkou 2024 and 2025), an area that remains comparatively understudied in the field’s historiography (Georgopoulou et al. 2025, Hirsch 2012). They provide rare insight into the pedagogical materials used in the earliest humanities computing curricula, as well as into early assessments of what proved effective and what did not. These evaluations circulated within the scholarly community well before the digital data deluge of the past two decades and availability of pedagogical outputs that were electronically published and openly distributed through web technologies—what has been described as the “invisible college of digital history (Crymble 2019).
The surveys were conducted in 1971, 1972, 1974, 1978, and 1987. In each case, the results were analysed and published in a dedicated article in the journal. The corresponding appendices included both primary (raw) and secondary (processed, calculated, or synthesized) data. The present study is based on a partial reconstruction of the survey dataset by extracting material from these printed appendices. The source remains fragmentary, in particular because the 1987 survey survives only through secondary data and the elements discussed in its accompanying analysis. Beyond quantitative data, the surveys contain free-text responses detailing course aims, reflections, practical advice, and critical remarks. This paper focuses on these materials through a combined qualitative and quantitative reading in order to reconstruct a formative moment that preceded the community-led and open pedagogical practices that would characterise digital humanities from the 2000s onward (Kirschenbaum 2018, Varin 2013). Viewed through this early lens, the surveys reveal that many debates later associated with digital humanities pedagogy were already taking shape within the humanities computing community. These discussions would resurface in more formalised settings, including the digital humanities pedagogy conferences of the late 1980s (such as the Vassar workshop and the CATH conferences).
REFERENCES
Bowles, Edmund A. “Towards a Computer Curriculum for the Humanities.” Computers and the Humanities 6, no. 1 (1971): 35–38. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02402323.
Campo, Leila de. “Computer Courses for the Humanist: A Survey.” Computers and the Humanities 7, no. 1 (1972): 57–62. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02403762.
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