Not so much a replacement as a supplement to digital humanities, DLA broadens the scope and relocates the center of gravity of what I have referred to as the digital humanities situation, the recurring, playful encounter of humanists with technology. Instead of focusing on what may better be described as the computational humanities (a useful term recently proposed by Lev Manovich), the digital liberal arts seeks to locate digital media squarely within the frame of the liberal arts, broadly conceived as a curriculum, not a discipline or even set of disciplines, and as a distinctive mode of educational experience, not a set of received theoretical concerns. It is a framing particularly suited to liberal arts colleges — America’s great contribution to higher learning — but also to universities, such as UVa, whose souls are in the liberal arts as well.
