Taking a Visual Turn in DH

The long paper will make an observation and offer a provocation. We are seeing and need a Visual Turn in DH. Scholars who identify as a part of DH have been pursuing what Münster and Terras have recently termed “visual digital humanities” for decades. Yet, this work has been less visible or ignored by the institutional structures that create, shape, and define “the big tent”, what Jessica Marie Johnson terms "DHDH". In the sections that follow, I will focus on why and how we are seeing the Visual Turn in structures such as publications, conferences, grants, and awards. I argue that this turn has been in motion for decades but only recently occurring in DHDH. I’ll finish with a provocation. We need a Visual Turn in order to center and credit exciting visual work as well as need to intervene in pressing questions about computational image analysis.