The University College London (UCL) Centre for Digital Humanities–in collaboration with 4Humanities–has created a new The Humanities Matter! infographic with statistics and arguments for the humanities in high-impact visual form. [Download PDF] Countering clichéd, factually ungrounded criticisms, The Humanities Matter! draws on published statistics and a crowdsourced poll to give a shout out to the humanities in sections on “What the Humanities Do,” “But the Evidence Shows,” and “Culture is Important.”
The digital version of The Humanities Matter! is a large, vertical-format banner available as a PDF file. A limited number of printed posters made from the infographic is being mailed to newspapers and magazines, national councils and commissions, public and private funding agencies, humanities centres and programs, and digital-humanities associations and programs around the world.
As a follow-up to the UCL Centre for Digital Humanities’ “Quantifying Digital Humanities” infographic from 2012 (PDF), The Humanities Matter! starts a more expansive effort by the Center and 4Humanities to gather statistics and create infographics about the humanities. The Humanities Matter! is part of the 4Humanities Humanities Infographics initiative, including Infographics Friday online posts.
4Humanities invites additional statistics (including from more parts of the world) so that it can expand the infographics initiative and, funds allowing, produce future versions.
The Humanities Matter! was created by the UCL Centre for Digital Humanities under the supervision of its director Melissa Terras, who is also a co-leader of 4Humanities. Terras collected data for the infographic with assistance from Ernesto Priego (an international correspondent for 4Humanities), Lindsay Thomas (lead research assistant for 4Humanities), Victoria Smith (research assistant, Humanities Computing, U. Alberta), and the other co-leaders of 4Humanities: Christine Henseler, Alan Liu, Geoffrey Rockwell, and Stéfan Sinclair.
Please download The Humanities Matter! and help 4Humanities circulate it ; feel free to print in small or large format and distribute. The Humanities Matter! is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Hi Johnny,
Yes! I will pass your information along to Geoffrey Rockwell and Melissa Terras, who are handling print distribution. Thanks for your interest and for spreading the word!
Hello all,
I really like your posters! We are slowly starting to support DH projects with the library at uOttawa. I was wondering if we can purchase the two posters you have on this page?
Thank you for any information you might have,
Nancy
Hi Nancy,
Thanks for your interest! We unfortunately don’t have any print posters at this time, and we aren’t set up to take payments for them. We recently gave away just over 100 copies and are now out of stock. Stay tuned for future giveaways, which we will announce on the site and via our Twitter account, @4Hum. You can also download a PDF copy of the infographic in the post above and print one out for yourself (it is quite long though – over 80 inches).
Dear Ma’am
Greetings
How can I encourage the students to take Humanities in the Higher secondary classes. I would be grateful if you kindly response with some guidelines. According to Indian education system there are very few students opting for humanities in class XI & XII.
Regards
Dr.S S Khaira
Here’s what Nick Mount, Professor of English at the University of Toronto, thinks about why the studies of humanities matter http://www.vidoyen.com/questions/why-does-the-study-of-the-humanities-matter-in-the-21st-century/answers/nick-mount
great infographic. i’d love to blog about this, but i’m not seeing a link to use to embed the infographic into my blog entry, and reading in the pdf doesn’t seem to be a good solution. tips?
Thanks for your interest, Curt! Here is a jpg of the infographic you, or anyone else, can use for embedding purposes: https://4humanities.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/WhyHumanitiesMatter_72dpi.jpg
Would it be possible for you to provide a pdf with page breaks, so that this information could also be printed out on 8.5″ x 11″ paper? Thank you in advance for your reply.
Thanks for your interest in our infographic! We can make a printed 8.5″ x 11″ version. We will get back to you when we’re finished making it. More soon! -Ashley