Reading Visually: Can Art Historical Reading Approaches go Digital?

Abstract

As the field of digital humanities grows, scholars are translating and adapting their investigative processes to suit the digital environs. Questions about how digital technologies will enhance and transform historical scholarly reading practices have arisen, but they have not been extensively considered from the perspective of visual culture historians and less so from those working on select non-Western cultures. This paper approaches these questions from an Islamic and South Asian art historical perspective, mapping out the particularities of reading historical texts when conducting visual cultural research and considering the implications for the development of future digital research tools.