Experimental Humanities

How does technology mediate what it means to be human? The Experimental Humanities (EH) concentration is Bard’s liberal arts–driven answer to the Digital Humanities. Digital humanities is an evolving field that typically employs digital tools and research methods to investigate humanities subjects. In addition, EH engages with media and technology forms from across historical periods, combining experimental research methods with critical thinking about how such forms function as a part of cultural, social, and political inquiry.

EH emphasizes critical thinking about media and technology and their intersections; the relationship between digital methodologies and humanities scholarship; collaboration between traditionally disparate disciplines such as computer science, literature, and the arts; and the role of experimentation, often associated with the sciences and arts, in humanities research. The concentration embraces the ethos of practice and making that characterizes the digital arts and humanities, even as it insists on the importance of writing and theory as humanistic practices in their own right. Students moderating into EH do so simultaneously with their primary program, with the option of adding a practice-rich component to their Senior Project in conjunction with that program.