Startwords, an online publication from Princeton’s Center for Digital Humanities, recently published its debut issue. From the issue’s announcement:
With an emphasis on exploration and creativity in both content and presentation, Startwords is “a forum for experimental humanities scholarship” that invites a broad audience to think about new or underexplored aspects of DH work. The title has three meanings: it references a computer science term for the words used to start a programming sequence, a literary term for the first time a genre appears in print, and a cheeky alternative to “stop words,” words discarded in the course of natural language processing.
Startwords aims to be “more experimental than an academic journal but more formal than a blog,” with the site open to content ranging from creative nonfiction, essays, and data journalism to writing that on new approaches to code and documentation, according to editor and CDH digital humanities strategist Grant Wythoff.
In addition to the site’s broad range of content–which currently includes items such as 3D models and a high-resolution interactive photo–it also features contextual note feature, which “showcases the interaction of development, design, and content creativity that is at the heart of the Startwords mission.” The publication will be of interest to the digital humanities community, both for its articles and its innovative design and supplementary materials.
