Introduction

• Ideally this section should introduce your project, why you decided to study it, and what you hope to achieve. The goal is to really explain why this topic is relevant to the course and interesting to you. I would also include any details about having to pivot or change your project, if that happened.
• In this section, I would lay out what the Humanist Listserv is and why I decided to study it. So for example, I might say something like the following:

While working with cultural materials is relatively new, scholars have been experimenting with how computing can help us understand the humanities for decades. One of the earliest examples of this is the Humanist Listserv, a long-standing email listserv for the digital humanities community that has been in operation since 1987 and continues to run today. The archives of this listserv are publicly available and contain a wealth of information about how digital humanists have communicated with one another over the years. However, while this listserv is open and accessible, trying to understand the conversations that have taken place on it can be challenging. For example, much of the current listserv is provided as one long text file, which can be difficult to read and explore patterns over time. In this project, I explore how we can transform these listserv archives into data and in turn demonstrate how this computational methods to understand the conversations that have taken place on the listserv. In particular, I'm interested in exploring how humanities scholars have discussed various technologies over time, especially since the listserv coincided with the rise of the internet. For instance, can we find patterns that correspond to the rise of the web, or the development of new tools like XML or TEI? Furthermore, do the types of problems and discourses stay the same but simply the names of the technologies change? By exploring these questions, I hope to demonstrate how we can use computational methods to understand the history of the digital humanities and how scholars have engaged with technology over time.

• In this section, I would also include a brief literature review of the Humanist Listserv to help explain how scholars have studied it and its origins. So for example, I might say something like the following:

Scholars like Julia Nyhan have explored the history of the Humanist listserv. In her chapter, "In Search of Identities in the Digital Humanities: The Early History of Humanist," Nyhan traces the origins of the listserv and how it has evolved over time. She argues that the listserv has been a key site for the development of the digital humanities and has helped to shape the field in important ways. Established in 1987 by Willard McCarty, Humanist was conceived as a proto-social media platform that facilitated critical discussions on the intersection of computing and humanities, rather than serving as a mere publication outlet. The discourse within this community reflected a complex engagement with technology—while some members championed digital tools as a means to innovate and break down disciplinary barriers, others expressed reservations, warning against the potential dehumanization of the humanities. Such debates highlighted the community's struggle to balance traditional humanistic values with the opportunities presented by technological advancements, ultimately striving to define a new identity for humanities scholars that integrates digital methods while maintaining the discipline's core principles. This discourse on Humanist not only influenced humanities research practices but also highlighted the broader implications of digital integration in reshaping academic and disciplinary boundaries.¹ This project builds on Nyhan's work by exploring how we can use computational methods to understand the conversations that have taken place on the listserv and how these conversations have evolved over time.