The Center for Textual Studies and Digital Humanities (CTSDH) is a collaborative multidisciplinary research center in the College of Arts and Sciences. It supports research across the humanities, as well as in the arts, communication, computer science, social sciences, and University Libraries. In addition to supporting research projects, the CTSDH sponsors conferences, lectures, and workshops, and offers undergraduate and graduate students the chance to work with faculty on advanced research, and to take courses in and pursue research of their own in the interdisciplinary areas of textual studies and digital humanities.

The CTSDH administers Loyola’s professional M.A. degree in Digital Humanities, one of the few such programs in the country. The Digital Humanities MA program offers training in the practice and critical study of the intersections between the humanities and computational sciences. Our interdisciplinary program offers rigorous hands-on training in digital research projects within a theoretical framework that explores the critical, social, and ethical contexts for thinking about Digital Humanities research and applications.

Digital humanities comprehends a spectrum of practices and approaches, ranging from digital textual editing, archiving, publishing, and data analysis, to the study of new media from the combined perspectives of computer science and the humanities. The CTSDH has a longstanding strength in the study of the intersection of textual studies and digital humanities. Scholarship in textual studies investigates original documents, whether manuscript, print, or electronic, and studies the processes of composition, revision, editing, printing, production, distribution, and reception. Interdisciplinary by its very nature, its activities are central to all periods of literary criticism, as well as to disciplines such as philosophy, history, music, theology, and media studies.

The CTSDH was founded in fall 2008 by co-directors Steven Jones (English, now University of Southern Florida) and George K. Thiruvathukal (Computer Science) with the support of the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, the Dean of the Graduate School, and Associate Provost for Centers, as well as the chairs of the departments of English and Computer Science. It was started with the help of a Digital Start-Up Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, among other sources of funding. Today it is run by a Director and a steering committee composed of faculty from across the university.