The weekly schedule of discussion topics, reading assignments, and hands-on activities to be completed before each class session. “Watch” and “Read” should be self explanatory, but “Explore” means you should skim over the entire collection of articles, projects, or whatever is listed, and then pick a few that grab your attention to read or investigate more fully. Think critically about why you were drawn to those instead of others as you formulate your responses and think of discussion questions.
The covid-19 pandemic necessitates some flexibility, so be aware that this is a LIVING DOCUMENT that may change as the course progresses.
Week 1: Introduction to Digital Humanities
1.1 Introductions
- Introductions
- Syllabus
- Digital Making 101
Week 2: How it Works: DH Projects and the Code at their Heart
2.1 What are the Digital Humanities? Who are the Digital Humanists?
Read:
- Burdick et al. “One: Humanities to Digital Humanities,” in Digital_Humanities (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012), 1-26.
- Debbie Chachra, “Why I Am Not a Maker,” The Atlantic, January 23, 2015.
- Moya Z. Bailey, All the Digital Humanists Are White, All the Nerds Are Men, but Some of Us Are Brave
LAB:Blogging 101 and Defining Your Place in DH
2.2 Digital Humanities Projects 101
Guest Presentation on Art Museums and Digital Models by
Beth Fischer, Postdoctoral Fellow for Digital Humanities, Williams College Art Museum
Read:
- Burdick et al. “The Project as Basic Unit” (124-125) and “Project-Based Scholarship” (130-131) in Digital_Humanities (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012), 124-125.
Watch:
- Miriam Posner, How Did They Make That
Explore:
Week 3: Data and MetaData
3.1 Web Development Fundamentals
Read:
- Matt Kirschenbaum, Hello Worlds: Why Humanities Students Should Learn to Program
- Evan Donahue, A “Hello World” Apart (why humanities students should NOT learn to program)
Lab: Under the hood: HTML/CSS/JavaScript and Programming 101
- DevTools: inspecting the web
3.2 Humanities Data and Your Computer
Guest presentation by Em Palencia on navigating your server space in cPanel
Read (pick any 2 out of the 4 below):
- Big? Smart? Clean? Messy? Data in the Humanities by Christof Schöch
- Tidy Data for the Humanities by Matt Lincoln
- Stephen Marche, Literature is not Data: Against Digital Humanities
- Scott Selisker and Holger Syme, In Defense of Data: Responses to Stephen Marche’s “Literature is not Data”
Lab: Humanities Data
- Collecting Data, Where and How
- Content Management Systems
- Setting up your own server, cPanel 101
Week 4: Data Visualization
4.1 Data Viz 101
Guest lecture by Lin Winton, Director of the Quantitative Resource Center at Carleton College
Read:
- Edward Tufte, “Escaping Flatland” and “Narratives of Space and Time” in Envisioning Information (1990): 12–35, 97-119.
Lab: Basic Data Viz principles
- Cleaning Data
- Exploratory Data Analysis
4.2 Text Analysis and Network Analysis
Read:
- Scott Weingart, Demystifying Networks, Parts I & I
Lab: Network Analysis
Week 5: Spatial Humanities
5.1 GIS/Mapping 101
Read:
- Jo Guldi, What is the Spatial Turn? (read the introduction and at least one disciplinary section of interest)
- Anne Kelly Knowles, “GIS and History,” in Anne Kelley Knowles, ed., Placing History: How Maps, Spatial Data, and GIS are Changing Historical Scholarship (2008): 1–20.
Lab: DH Mapping Projects and Historical Mapping
- QGIS/ArcGIS
- Georeferencer/MapWarper
ASSIGNMENT: Spatial Humanities 101
5.2 Web Mapping 101
Read:
- Alan McConchie and Beth Schechter, Anatomy of a Webmap (use arrows to advance or go back)
ASSIGNMENT: WebMapping 101
- JavaScript APIs
- ArcGIS Online
Week 6: Virtual Humanities: 3D, VR, and Simulation
6.1 Immersive Environments and 3D Simulation
Read:
- David J. Bodenhamer, Beyond GIS: Geospatial Technologies and the Future of History
- Diane Favro, “Se Non È Vero, È Ben Trovato (If Not True, It Is Well Conceived): Digital Immersive Reconstructions of Historical Environments,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 71, no. 3 (2012): 273–77.
Lab: Virtual Humanities
- Making models
- Finding models
- Visualizing models
6.2 Analog to Digital and Back: 3D Printing and Fabrication
Explore:
- Ed Triplett, The Book of Fortresses
Read:
- Papadopoulos, Costas, and Susan Schreibman. “Towards 3D Scholarly Editions: The Battle of Mount Street Bridge.” Digital Humanities Quarterly 013, no. 1 (June 11, 2019).
Lab: Analog to digital and back
- SketchUp Cleaning
- NetFabb
- Shapeways and the Maker Space
Week 7: Putting it all together
7.1 Midterm Exam
7.2 Picking a Topic for Final Project and MakerSpace Tour
Week 8: Project Work
Week 9: Group Work to Finalize Projects and Presentations
9.1 Group Project Work
Prepare:
- Your final project materials
- Your complete bibliography of sources
9.2 Tutorial Assignments
Everyone will give a brief description of the tool or technique they wrote a tutorial for, and we will each work through 2 of our peers’ tutorials in class, leaving feedback as comments.
Week 10: Project Presentations
10.1 Group Project Work
10.2 Final Project Presentations
Prepare:
- A “Pecha Kucha” style presentation of your final project:
- 20 slides, for 20 seconds each (6:40 total), following the 1/1/5 rule: at least 1 image per slide, each used only 1 time, and less than 5 words per slide
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- the final tech familiarity assessment and
- final course evaluation
