Week One – Introduction
1A Syllabus, Expectations, Examples of Digital Humanities in 2016, Digital Narratives (29 August)
During and after class: Digital Narratives: Write about one page of digital/computational personal narrative. Things to address could include: How do you use digital resources? Which are the most time-consuming for you? Easiest for you? What kinds of computers/devices have you used/owned? Can you find pictures of these “heritage” devices? How do you feel about the word “data?” Where do you encounter data in your life? Where do you create it? What do you know already about the intersection of computing and humanities? Have you ever learned a programming language (which ones?) Do you know any CSS, HTML?
1B Reflecting on the Humanities Yesterday and Today (31 August)
Reading before class: Gardiner/Musto (DHP) “Introduction to Digital Humanities,” 1-13; Digital_Humanities, 2-26, Drucker, “Humanistic Theory and Digital Scholarship;” watch Tinkering as a Mode of Knowledge Production (Brown).
In-class discussion: Can you come up with a working definition of the humanities?What contrasting views of the humanities do Gardiner/Musto, Burdick et al, Drucker and Brown hold? What kinds of things do humanists do? How does the world of the digital add to that? how does it trouble that?
Week Two – Humanities Data and Project-Based Scholarship
2A How Do We Organize Humanities Knowledge? (5 September)
Reading before class: Blair “Introduction,” 1-10 and “Epilogue,” 265-268 Too Much to Know: Managing Scholarly Information Before the Modern Age, 264-268; Bush “As We May Think (1945)”; Gardiner/Musto (DHP), 14-30 “The Organization of Humanities Research;” optional: Sperberg-McQueen (NCDH), 377-393 “Classification and its Structures”
In-class discussion: What are classificatory systems we live in in the digital work? How do they compare with those presented in the readings? How have the humanities created ways of classifying knowledge? Using dh101 2B, we will take the examples of Foucault, Borges and Raganathan for discussion.
2B What do Digital Humanities look like? Where are they Done? (7 September)
Readings before class: Demystifying DH – Values of DH
Preparation before class: Exploring Project-based Research. Choose two digital projects, one from the list below, and one from one of the many Digital Humanities Centers around the world found in the centerNet listing here. NYU’s Center for the Humanities features projects here. Try to identify the “project notes” for each. How many people were involved? What kinds of data they use? What kind of argument does the digital project make? Is it funded? How long has it existed? What parts of the world are most represented in what you found? What parts are underrepresented? How do the projects describe what it is that they are doing (notice especially the verbs, especially gerunds, -ing verbs).
Arabic Collections Online / Digital Harlem / The Grub Street Project / The Walt Whitman Archive / Linguistic Landscapes of Beirut / Songs of the Victorians / Interactive Ibn Jubayr / Rai’tu Ramallah / The Blue Mountain Project / Mapping the Republic of Letters / The World’s Fair in Italy / Ieldran / Digital Karnak / Austen Said / Contested Memories / A Colony in Crisis / Selfie City
In-class presentations: Come to class ready to report back on, and discuss, what you found. This is your first participation grade. After today’s whirlwind tour through some digital projects, you might want to skim through Posner’s How Did They Make That?, Koh’s Introducing Digital Humanities Work to Undergraduates and dh101 section 1B.