The China Historical Christian Database: Seeing the Past Differently (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: The China Historical Christian Database: Seeing the Past Differently
Author: Alex Mayfield
Abstract: For a workshop on seeing East Asia through new sources, this paper will introduce the China Historical Christian Database. It is not an archive, as such, but a collection of hundreds of thousands of data points lifted from archival material. The result is a different image of Asia than is glimpsed through letters and journals. Instead it is an aggregate picture of what place Christianity held in Chinese society.
Date: 12/06/2021
Conference Name: New England Association for Asian Studies Annual Meeting

Where are the Humans in Digital Humanities? (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Where are the Humans in Digital Humanities?
Author: Eugenio Menegon
Author: Alex Mayfield
Abstract: Digital scholarship provides new possibilities for examining the past. This paper explores how the China Historical Christian Database is trying to revisit the history of Christianity in China through geographic and social network maps, and how that can shed new light on important questions such as modernization, the evolution of science, religious change, and Sino-Western relations. However, digital tools can also flatten out history, reducing the complex lives of people to 1s or 0s. In a Digital Humanities project, how can computers enhance and enrich our understanding of human lives, rather than reduce or diminish them?
Date: 12/09/2021
Conference Name: Institute of Qing History's Conference on Digital Humanities

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