New book: hidden and devalued feminized labour in the digital humanities
I’m relieved and of course a little nervous to say that my latest book, entitled Hidden and Devalued Feminized Labour in the Digital Humanities: on the Index Thomisticus project 1954-67, has been published by Routledge. I worked on this book for around 7 years in total, so it is quite something to finally see it in the world!
It hasn’t been possible to secure an open access contract for this book, as I’ve managed to do for many of my other books. The paperback and e-book are available for a reasonable price though, at £27.99 each. You can also read the introduction to the book here.
The book draws on oral history accounts and extensive archival research to understand more about the devalued, feminized labour that was contributed to Busa’s Index Thomisticus project. By seeking to reconstruct the nature of the contributions made by female keypunch operators to the Index Thomisticus, and the processes that served to devalue and ultimately silence this work, my book delivers new insights into how knowledge was defined at the dawn of Digital Humanities and into the categories of people who were permitted to make that knowledge. In doing so, I draw attention to the sometimes unexamined or obscured historical dynamics and processes that are encoded in the ‘deep time’ of the digital tools, data and algorithms that DH makes and uses. This book thus opens new understandings of otherwise ‘hidden histories’ of the intersectional power dynamics that have converged on the data foundations of the Humanities.
OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Julianne Nyhan (April 4, 2023). New book: hidden and devalued feminized labour in the digital humanities. Arche Logos. Retrieved June 18, 2026 from https://doi.org/10.58079/bby4

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