DH Grad Class Fall 2013
Introduction to Digital Humanities
HURC 604
Fall 2013
Tuesdays/Thursdays 10:50-12:05
Sewall 101
Updated 10.3.2013
Instructors:
Dr. Melissa Bailar
melba at rice dot edu, x5968
Herring Hall 303
Dr. Lisa Spiro
lisamspiro@gmail.com
Fondren 354 (look for NX512-NX705 in the Brown Fine Arts Library stacks)
713-348-2480
Course Description
This course introduces students to current digital humanities projects as well as tools for approaching humanities research in new ways. Faculty from across the humanistic disciplines will address trends in this expanding field and guide hands-on workshops. Sessions will also focus on the job market and grant opportunities. (3 credit, pass/fail course.)
Requirements
- Blog posts:Write at least 4 blog posts [revised number] in response to prompts given in the syllabus. In addition, you should write at least 4 responses to your classmates’ blog posts. While there is no set deadline for blog posts, you should spread your responses throughout the semester. We have included some prompts for potential blog posts in the syllabus, but you are also encouraged to come up with your own topics, such as reflecting on a class reading, discussion or lab, posing a question, or sharing a resource or tool.Since blogging facilitates the free exchange of ideas and raises your visibility as a scholar, we encourage you to blog publicly under your own name. However, you can choose to keep your blog private to the Rice network and/or you can blog under a pseudonym. Please speak with Lisa Spiro and/or Melissa Bailar if you have any concerns about blogging.
- Readings and project explorations: We’ve deliberately kept the reading load light. In order to contribute to class conversations, it’s important for you to be familiar with the material. Come to class with questions for our guest instructors.
- Project proposal: Working in a small group, you will draft a proposal for a real or imagined digital humanities project using the NEH’s Digital Humanities Startup Grantguidelines. As part of the proposal, your group will develop a small prototype or experiment that demonstrates your project idea.Work on the project will be divided into phases:
- Project charter (draft developed in class, September 12)
- Initial project description: One or two paragraphs describing your group’s idea for a digital humanities project (due October 8). For ideas of what the NEH has funded in the past, see the NEH’s funded projects query form and limit the Program to “Digital Humanities Start-Up Grants.”
- Pecha kucha: As a group, you will give a brief presentation about your project, contextualizing it through an environmental scan and describing how it is “enhancing the humanities through innovation” (due October 29). It is up to each team to determine how to divide the labor for the presentation; each team member can speak or take on different duties (e.g. presenter, researcher, slide developer, etc.). Conform to the pecha kucha format: 20 slides of 20 seconds each. See Jason Jones’ “Challenging the Presentation Paradigm (in 6 minutes, 40 seconds): Pecha Kucha.”
- Work plan describing tasks, timeline, staff, resources, and evaluation plans (due November 12). For information about how to create a work plan, see DevDH’s “Building Your First Work Plan.” For example plans, see the Sample Application Narratives for the Digital Humanities Start-Up Grants.
- Draft proposal (due December 2 at 10 a.m., to be workshopped in class on December 3)
- Final proposal (due December 18)
- Presentation: In addition to the pecha kucha associated with the project proposal (see above), you will give a 3-4 minute presentation analyzing a digital humanities project (due September 3).
- Active participation
- Optional: Consider visiting Lina Dib’s “Murmurations” at the Lawndale Art Center (on display August 23-September 28). We’ll meet Dr. Dib and learn about her work on October 24.
Attendance policy: Attendance is taken each class. You may miss two classes without penalty; any beyond two will require advanced notice and instructor approval. Any more than two unapproved subsequent missed classes or partially missed classes will significantly lower the class participation portion of your grade. When you miss a class, the assignments are still due at the class start time unless we have made prior arrangements.
Office hours
- For Melissa: 4-5 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays or by appointment.
- For Lisa: 9:30-10:30 a.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays or by appointment.
Special Accommodations: Any student with a disability that requires accommodation should contact both the instructor and the Disability Support Services office in Allen Center so that we can ensure all needs are met.
Changes to the syllabus: The syllabus will change (with advanced notice) as the instructors deem appropriate, particularly to address student interests and incorporate input from our guest instructors. Changes will not result in a significantly increased workload or alterations to the absence policy.
Goals of the course:
- Students will speak and write fluently about the broad scope of digital humanities, including current research, ongoing debates, challenges, and their own engagement in the field.
- Students will demonstrate basic familiarity with core digital humanities tools and methods, including text analysis, information visualization, 3D modeling, and mapping.
- Students will evaluate digital humanities research with a critical eye.
- Students will consciously craft a public presence as engaged scholars by blogging.
- Students will become acquainted with digital humanities research at Rice and across Texas.
- Students will demonstrate their understanding of project planning and management by creating a project proposal in which they explain the scholarly rationale for a digital humanities project, conduct a landscape review, describe the technical approach, and lay out a clear project plan and budget
Acknowledgements
This syllabus was inspired by a number of digital humanities syllabi, particularly those by Tanya Clement, Ryan Cordell, Brian Croxall, Kevin Kee, Matt Kirschenbaum, and Jentery Sayers.
August 27: The Emergence of Digital Humanities (Melissa Bailar and Lisa Spiro)
What are the digital humanities? Why digital humanities?
In-class
- Introductions
- Why are you interested in the course?
- How might digital humanities be relevant to your work?
- What research question might digital methods help you to answer?
- Getting started in digital humanities
- HASTAC Scholars
- Discuss things to keep in mind in setting up a blog:
- private or public?
- hosted at Rice’s WordPress platform or by WordPress.com?
- how to name it
- Keeping up with Digital Humanities:
- Day of DH
- Jason Heppler’s “What Is Digital Humanities?”
- Digital Humanities Now
- Hands-on exercise: In a small group, use Voyant to explore a corpus of research materials on digital humanities. What do you notice about the results? What do you find surprising? How might this method be useful in humanities research, and what are its limitations?
August 29: Best Practices in Blogging Lab (Lisa Spiro)
How do you set up a WordPress blog? What are blogging best practices?
Before Class
- Complete a brief survey on the course. This survey will allow us to shape the course so that it meets your needs and expectations.
- Dip your toe into the tweetstream by browsing tweets from one of the Digital Humanities twitter lists, such as https://twitter.com/dancohen/digitalhumanities
- Read Ryan Cordell’s “Creating and Maintaining a Professional Presence Online: A Roundup and Reflection,” ProfHacker, October 3, 2012.
In Class
- Explore a few sample academic web sites and discuss strategies for establishing your own professional presence.
- Hands-on workshop on using the WordPress platform to blog. See Creating a Web Site Using WordPress (pdf)
Suggested Resources
- Lisa Spiro, “Getting Started in Digital Humanities,”Journal of Digital Humanities (Winter 2011)
September 3: Exploring Digital Humanities (with Melissa Bailar and Lisa Spiro)
What different forms does digital humanities scholarship take? How might digital methods help us to answer particular research questions?
Before Class
- Read Anne Burdick et al, A Short Guide to the Digital_Humanities (2012)
- Prepare for your presentation. Select a digital humanities project, ideally one related to your own research interests. We’ve provided you with an initial list of projects, but you’re welcome to find your own– just explain why you selected it. Address the following questions:
- goals: What is the project trying to achieve?
- methods: How does the project pursue those goals?
- scholarly contexts: How does the project try to advance humanities scholarship?
- project development: How was the project created? Who was involved with the project?
- strengths: What does the project do well?
- limitations: What could the project do better?
In Class
- Give a 3-4 minute presentation on the project that you examined.
- Discuss the projects and what they tell us about the digital humanities.
Suggested resources:
- Davidson, Cathy N. (2008). “Humanities 2.0: Promise, Perils, Predictions” PMLA 123(3): 707–17
- “Interchange: The Promise of Digital History.” Special issue, Journal of American History 95, no. 2 (September 2008). http://www.journalofamericanhistory.org/issues/952/interchange/index.html
- Kirschenbaum, Matthew G. (2010). “What is Digital Humanities and What’s it Doing in English Departments?” ADE Bulletin
- Svensson, P. (2009). “Humanities Computing as Digital Humanities.” Digital Humanities Quarterly 3(3). http://digitalhumanities.org:8080/dhq/vol/3/3/000065/000065.html
September 5: Scholarly Communication (with April DeConick and Caleb McDaniel)
What are the advantages and disadvantages of a scholar sharing work online? How are scholarly communications changing in the digital age?
Before Class
- Read
- Dan Cohen, “Introducing PressForward”
- Explore
- the HASTAC site. How does it function as a scholarly network? How do participants shape identities as public intellectuals? What perspectives does HASTAC offer on digital humanities?
- April DeConick’s blog Forbidden Gospels
- Caleb McDaniel’s blog (particularly “Open Notebook History”) and research wiki
- Complete your application for the HASTAC Scholars program (optional)
In Class
- Brief presentations by Dr. Caleb McDaniel and Dr. April DeConick
- Panel discussion on blogging and scholarly communications in the humanities
Suggested Resources
- Digital Humanities Now
- Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Planned Obsolescence
September 10: Framing Arguments in the Digital Humanities (Lisa Spiro)
How might we frame new kinds of arguments using digital methods? What are emerging scholarly genres?
Before Class
- Read Tara McPherson, “Scaling Vectors: Thoughts on the Future of Scholarly Communication”
- Explore
- Will Thomas and Edward Ayers, “The Difference Slavery Made: A Close Analysis of Two American Communities”
- Mark Hansen, shi jian: time, Vectors
- Suggested blog topic: Analyze the relationship between the argument and the form it takes. How do digital media and method enrich and/or detract from the scholarship? How would you describe the genre?
- Pick out a work of your own that you could “remix” as a work of digital scholarship, and bring a copy to class.
In Class
- Discussion of emerging genres of digital scholarship. [Slides]
- Mini-workshop: Sketch out how you might remix one of your essays as a work of digital scholarship. [Handout]
Suggested Resources
- Edward Ayers, “Does Digital Scholarship Have a Future?” Educause Review (August 5, 2013).
- Southern Spaces
- Kairos
- MediaCommons
- Sensate Journal
- Vectors
- Scalar projects
- Frederick W. Gibbs and Trevor J. Owens, “The Hermeneutics of Data and Historical Writing,” Writing History in the Digital Age (edited by Jack Dougherty and Kristen Nawrotzki)
- Will Thomas, “Writing A Digital History Journal Article from Scratch: An Account” (2007)
September 12: Collaboration and Project Management Lab (Melissa Bailar and Lisa Spiro, with Monica Rivero)
How does digital work differ from traditional humanities work? What are the benefits and challenges of working in a team? What are some strategies for keeping track of a large-scale project?
Before Class
- Read Stan Ruecker and Milena Radzikowska, The Iterative Design of a Project Charter for Interdisciplinary Research
- Review the Praxis Program’s Project Charter
- Read Bethany Nowviskie’s “Ten rules for humanities scholars new to project management”
- Think about how you might like to approach the project charter for your group.
In Class
- Discuss strategies for launching and managing a digital humanities project
- Work in teams to develop an initial project charter.
Suggested Resources
- DevDH.org: Development for the Digital Humanities
- Sharon Leon, “Project Management for Humanists,” alt academy
- Praxis Program,“Toward a Project Charter”
September 17: Building Digital Collections: OAAP (with Melissa Bailar) and the Ephemera Project (with Steve Lewis)
What are the advantages to digital archives? What are their limitations? How might they change the nature of humanities research?
Before Class
- Explore:
- Our Americas Archive Project: http://oaap.rice.edu
- Rice Ephemera Archive
- The William Blake Archive
- Read Tim Sherratt, “Every story has a beginning”
- Suggested blog topic: analyze one or more of the collections we looked at today. How do you think works were selected? How do the collections present research materials? How (well) do the interfaces work?
In Class
- Panel discussion on building digital collections.
Suggested Resources
- Carole Palmer, “Thematic Research Collections,” A Companion to Digital Humanities, ed. Susan Schreibman, Ray Siemens, John Unsworth. Oxford: Blackwell, 2004.
September 19: Building Digital Collections with Omeka Lab (with Amanda Focke)
Meet in Digital Media Commons, Herring 129
What questions must one consider in the development of a digital collection? How can you set up a collection using Omeka? How might you use an Omeka collection?
Before Class
- View “What is Omeka” [note: change to syllabus]
- Explore two Omeka sites. How does Omeka work? What are its strengths and weaknesses?
- Skim these articles and know that we will be focusing in class on using the Dublin Core descriptive metadata standard.
- “Mapping the world of cultural metadata standards,” idea.org blog post , 4-Nov-2011 http://www.idea.org/blog/2011/11/04/mapping-the-world-of-cultural-metadata-standards/
- “Understanding Metadata.” NISO Press, 2004. Pgs. 1-4 and 10-16. http://www.niso.org/publications/press/UnderstandingMetadata.pdf
In Class
- Hands-on Lab: Create a simple Omeka collection using the Sandbox (or Rice’s Omeka installation) [slides]
Suggested Resources
- Miriam Posner, “Up and Running with Omeka.net”
- Omeka documentation
September 24: Oral History and the Houston Asian American Archive (Linda Ho Peche)
Before Class
- “Archival representations of immigration and ethnicity in North American history: from the ethnicization of archives to the archivization of ethnicity” by Dominique Daniel. Arc Sci (2013)
In Class
- Exploring digital narratives: oral history and online storytelling
Suggested Resources
- Houston Asian American Archive http://chaocenter.rice.edu/haaa/
- South Asian Digital Archive http://www.saadigitalarchive.org/browse/type/oral-history
- Visibility Project http://www.visibilityproject.org/videos/
- Women’s Worlds in Qajar Iran http://www.qajarwomen.org/en/
September 26: Digital Reading and Victorian Poetry (with Natalie Houston)
What does “digital reading” entail?
Before Class
- Read
- NEH Startup Grant application for Dr. Houston’s The Visual Page (a successful proposal)
- Natalie Houston, “What Can Digital Reading Tell Us About the Material Places of Victorian Poetry?”
- Suggested blog post topic: Analyze how the project description advances an argument for funding.
In Class
- Brief presentation and interactive session with Dr. Houston
October 1: Doing Digital Research (with Caleb McDaniel)
**Meet in the DMC, Herring 129**
How can humanities scholars use computational methods, digital workflows and algorithmic thinking to advance their work? What hazards should they avoid?
Before Class
- Jason Heppler, “How I Learned Code”
- Caleb McDaniel, “Learning Python”
- William Turkel, “A Workflow for Digital Research Using Off-the-Shelf Tools”
- Suggested blog topic: How might digital tools and methods help you address a research challenge, large or small?
Suggested Resources
- Caleb McDaniel, “Mining the BPL Anti-Slavery Collection on the Internet Archive” (10/1/2013) and mining-bpl scripts
- Miriam Posner, “Some things to think about before you exhort everyone to code”
- Stephen Ramsay, “Learning to Program”
October 3: Spatial Humanities Lab, Part 1 (with Jean Aroom)
How might we use GIS to support the representation and exploration of humanistic ideas? What does it take to create a GIS map?
**Meet in the Fondren 156 Classroom**
Before Class
- TBD
In Class
- Hands-on workshop using GIS software
October 8: Spatial Humanities (with Alida Metcalf and Wright Kennedy)
Meet in the DMC
How does the Imagine Rio project function across disciplines? How is it innovative? What challenges does it pose?
Before Class
- David Underwood, “‘Civilizing’ Rio de Janeiro: Four Centuries of Conquest through Architecture,” Art Journal, Vol. 51, No. 4, (Winter, 1992), pp. 48-56.
- Explore Terrain of History
- Initial one to two paragraph project description of your group project due by 5 p.m. Provide a summary of what your group aims to accomplish and your initial ideas about how you will do so. Submit as a group.
In Class
- Discussion and demonstration of the Imagine Rio Project.
- Brief presentation on Wright’s HGIS yellow fever research.
Suggested Resources
- Bodenhamer, David J., John Corrigan, and Trevor M. Harris. The Spatial Humanities: GIS and the Future of Humanities Scholarship. Indiana University Press, 2010.
- Jo Guldi, “What is the Spatial Turn?”
- Richard White, “What Is Spatial History?”
- Spatial History Project
- HyperCities
- Mapping the Lakes
- Neatline
October 10: Spatial Humanities Lab, Part II (with Jean Aroom)
**Meet in Fondren 156**
Before Class
- TBD
In Class
- Hands-on workshop using GIS software
Suggested Resources
- The Spatial History Project Blog and Wiki
- Cameron Blevins, Working with Maps lab
- Spatial Humanities Step by Step
- Jean Aroom & Kim Ricker, GIS (Digital Humanities Bootcamp Series)
October 15: NO CLASS (MIDTERM RECESS)
October 17: Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) Lab (with Lisa Spiro)
Why would scholars want to mark up texts using TEI? Why not?
**Meet in Digital Media Commons, 129 Herring Hall**
Before Class
- Explore these sample projects:
- Read “A Gentle Introduction to XML,” TEI Guidelines
In Class
Suggested Resources
- Jerome McGann, “The Rationale of Hypertext”
- Allen Renear, “Text Encoding,” Companion to Digital Humanities, ed. Susan Schreibman, Ray Siemens, John Unsworth. Oxford: Blackwell, 2004.
- Women Writers Project Lab
- TEI Guidelines
October 22: Visualizing Culture (with Kirsten Ostherr)
Meet in the Digital Media Commons, Herring 129
To what extent does the way we visualize information shape how we understand it? What impact does visualization have on culture, politics, and scholarly knowledge?
Before Class
- Read Kirsten Ostherr, “Operative Bodies: Live Action and Animation in Medical Films of the 1920s,” Journal of Visual Culture, “Science and Documentary” vol. 12, no. 2 (2012)
October 24: (Digital) Humanities Making (with Matthew Wettergreen and Lina Dib)
What happens when use digital processes to craft physical artifacts or experiences? What is “critical making”?
**Meet in the Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen**
Before Class
- Read
- Lina Dib and Abinadi Meza, Microsoundtrack for Pitman Park
- Lina Dib, “Of Promises and Prototypes: the archeology of the future”
- Jentery Sayers, “Made to Make”
- Suggested blog topic: Write a brief blog post discussing how making can inform humanities scholarship.
In Class
- Tour of OEDK
- Brief presentation from Lina Dib about her work at the intersection of art and scholarship.
Suggested Resources
- Devon Elliott, Robert MacDougall, William J. Turkel, “New Old Things: Fabrication, Physical Computing, and Experiment in Historical Practice,” Canadian Journal of Communication, Vol 37 (1)
- Bethany Nowviskie, Resistance in the Materials
- Bill Turkel, “The History Department with a Fab Lab”
- University of Victoria Maker Lab in the Humanities
- Shawn Graham, Mesoamerica in Gatineau: Augmented Reality Museum Catalogue Pop-Up Book
October 29: Project Pecha Kucha
**Meet in the DMC, Herring 129**
What does it mean to “innovate” in digital humanities? How do DH projects build on what has gone before?
In Class
- Each group will present its pecha kucha, focused on their project’s humanities innovation and environmental scan.
- Discuss and provide feedback on presentations.
- Draft next steps for developing project proposals.
October 31: Modeling and Visualization: Reconstructing Rome (with John Hopkins)
**Meet in the DMC, Herring 129**
How might we use 3D modeling technologies to answer scholarly questions about the past? How do scholars represent conjecture and doubt in their models?
Before Class
- View “Rome Reborn 2.2: A Tour of Ancient Rome in 320 CE”
- Explore Humanities Virtual World Consortium
Suggested Resources
November 1: Optional – Attend the lecture by Joseph Viscomi of the William Blake Archive (details TBD)
November 5: Modeling and Visualization: Rice’s Chevron Visualization Lab (with Erik Engquist)
How might visualization technologies open up new ways of seeing?
**Meet in Dell Butcher 110 (building 17 on the Rice map)**
November 7: Culturomics (with Erez Lieberman Aiden)
**Meet in the DMC, Herring 129**
Read as much as you can of Dr. Lieberman Aiden’s forthcoming book.
November 8
Attend Jerome McGann’s lecture “Title Page as Interface and Metadata, with an Example from Cooper,” 2-3:30 p.m., Humanities 117. (Optional but recommended)
November 12: Visualizing History (with Anne Chao and Andrew Torget)
**Meet in Digital Media Commons, 129 Herring Hall**
How might we use visualization tools to deepen our understanding of complex historical processes and phenomena, such as social networks and the quality of digitized newspapers?
Before Class
- Explore
- Read
- Andrew Torget and Jon Christiansen, “Mapping Texts” and “Building New Windows into Digitized Newspapers,” Journal of Digital Humanities (2012)
- Robert Nelson, “Review of Mapping Texts,” Journal of Digital Humanities (2012)
-
Padgett, John F., and Christopher K. Ansell. “Robust Action and the Rise of the Medici, 1400-1434.” American Journal of Sociology (1993): 1259–1319. [access on campus or via Proxy Server]
- Project work plan due.
In Class
- Brief presentations by Dr. Chao and Dr. Torget
- Panel discussion of visualization techniques in history
Suggested Resources
- Voting America
- Ayers, Edward L., and Scott Nesbit. “Seeing Emancipation: Scale and Freedom in the American South.” The Journal of the Civil War Era 1, no. 1 (2011): 3–24. doi:10.1353/cwe.2011.0013.
- Ed Finn, “Revenge of the Nerd: Junot Díaz and the Networks of American Literary Imagination.” Digital Humanities Quarterly 007, no. 1 (July 1, 2013).
- Elijah Meeks and Karl Grossner, “ORBIS: An Interactive Scholarly Work on the Roman World” and “Modeling Networks and Scholarship with ORBIS,” Journal of Digital Humanities (2012)
- Elijah Meeks, “More Networks in the Humanities or Did books have DNA?”
- Mapping the Republic of Letters
- Scott Weingart, “Demystifying Networks”
- Visualizing Emancipation
- Visualizing the Past: Tools and Techniques for Understanding Historical Processes, A White Paper for the National Endowment for the Humanities (from the Visualizing the Past conference)
November 14: Theory, Transformation and Digital Humanities (with Melissa Bailar and Lisa Spiro)
**Meet in the DMC, Herring 129**
Are cultural criticism and theory absent from digital humanities? What would it mean to “transform” the digital humanities?
Before Class
- Read:
- Natalia Cecire, “When Digital Humanities Was in Vogue.” Journal of Digital Humanities, March 9, 2012. http://journalofdigitalhumanities.org/1-1/when-digital-humanities-was-in-vogue-by-natalia-cecire/.
- Alexis Lothian and Amanda Phillips, “Can Digital Humanities Mean Transformative Critique?”
- Jean Bauer, “Who You Calling Untheoretical?” Journal of Digital Humanities (Winter 2011)
- Nicholas Carr, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” The Atlantic (July 1, 2008)
In Class
- Open discussion/ debate.
Suggested Resources
- Natalia Cecire, “Introduction: Theory and the Virtues of the Digital Humanities,” Journal of Digital Humanities, March 9, 2012. (see also other essays in the “Conversations” section)
- Wendy Chun, “The Dark Side of the Digital Humanities – Part 1”
- Matthew Gold, ed., Debates in the Digital Humanities
- Alan Liu, “Where Is Cultural Criticism in the Digital Humanities?”
November 19: Gaming, Interaction and Play (with Carlos Monroy)
**Meet in the DMC, Herring 129**
Before Class
Please look at the work by Jane McGonigal on gaming and answer the following question on the class blog or bring your answers to the class:
Based on McGonigal’s ideas (see links below), choose a work or collection of art, literature, music or other humanities domain relevant to your major (e.g. History, English, Religious Studies, etc.) and explain how games can be used to disseminate those resources and engage the public. In order to frame you answer, think of games in a broader sense, that is, video games, computer games, board games, card games, or any other kids’ playground game you remember.
http://janemcgonigal.com/
http://www.ted.com/talks/jane_mcgonigal_gaming_can_make_a_better_world.html
In Class
- Brief presentation/ demonstration by Dr. Monroy, followed by discussion.
Suggested Resources
- Metadata Games
- TiltFactor
- Play the Past
- Chapman, Adam. “Privileging Form Over Content: Analysing Historical Videogames.” Journal of Digital Humanities, June 26, 2012. http://journalofdigitalhumanities.org/1-2/privileging-form-over-content-by-adam-chapman/.
- Mary Flanagan, “Creating Critical Play”
- Saldana, M. and Johanson, C.: PROCEDURAL MODELING FOR RAPID-PROTOTYPING OF MULTIPLE BUILDING PHASES, Int. Arch. Photogramm. Remote Sens. Spatial Inf. Sci., XL-5/W1, 205-210, doi:10.5194/isprsarchives-XL-5-W1-205-2013, 2013.
- Sample, Mark L. “Criminal Code: Procedural Logic and Rhetorical Excess in Videogames.” Digital Humanities Quarterly 7, no. 1 (July 1, 2013).
November 21: Lab: Data Visualization Using ggplot2 (with Hadley Wickham)
Meet in Sewall 101 computer classroom
Before Class
- Lincoln Mullen, “Using R to Chart the Historical Demography of American Judaism”
- Hadley Wickham, ggplot2
In Class
- Hands-on workshop on using ggplot2.
Suggested Resources
- “Lipsyncing for your life: a survival analysis of RuPaul’s Drag Race”
- Shawn T. O’Neill, “A Statistical Analysis of Nerf Blasters and Darts”
- Ben Schmidt, “Making Downton more traditional”
- Jeffrey Ryberg-Cox, Statistical Methods for Studying Literature Using R
November 26: The Programming Scholar Lab (with Sid Byrd)
How can you get started programming? What can you reasonably expect to be able to do individually?
**Meet in Digital Media Commons, Herring 129**
Before Class
- Install the software you’ll use for The Programming Historian on your computer (ideally a laptop). (If you can’t get it to work, you can always use the DMC’s laptop.)
- Read Working With Web Pages and From HTML to List of Words (part 1) from The Programming Historian. Bring any questions with you to class.
In Class
- You may want to bring your own laptop to class (we’ll have 5 for 6 people)
- Work on the following lesson from The Programming Historian:
Suggested Resources
November 28: NO CLASS (THANKSGIVING BREAK)
December 3: Proposal Workshop (with Phyllis McBride and Katie Carpenter)
**Meet in the DMC, Herring 129**
What funding resources are available for digital projects designed by graduate students? What makes a compelling proposal?
Before Class
- Evaluate all of the project proposals (including your own), using the NEH’s criteria for evaluating Start Up Grant proposals:
- “The intellectual significance of the project for the humanities, including its potential to enhance research, teaching,and learning in the humanities.
- The likelihood that the project will stimulate or facilitate new research of value to scholars and general audiences in the humanities, or use new digital technologies to communicate humanities scholarship to broad audiences.
- The quality of innovation in terms of the idea, approach, method, or digital technology, and the appropriateness of the technology employed in the project.
- The quality of the conception, definition, organization, and description of the project and the applicant’s clarity of expression.
- The feasibility of the plan of work, including whether the start-up activities will significantly contribute to the project’s long-term goals.
- The qualifications, expertise, and levels of commitment of the project director and key project staff or contributors.”
Indicate whether the proposal is highly recommended, recommended, has some merit, or is not recommended at this time.
In Class
- Mock grant review panel.
Suggested Resources
- Lisa Spiro, “Tips on Writing a Successful Grant Proposal”
December 5: Where next? (with Melissa Bailar and Lisa Spiro)
**Meet in the DMC, Herring 129**
In Class
- Discuss what you learned in the course and how to incorporate digital humanities into your own academic work.
- Provide suggestions for how to improve the next iteration of the course.
- Look at the direction of the field as revealed by recent job postings on HASTAC.