Introduction to Digital Humanities

HIST 105B, Alice McGrath

Weeks: 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 Syllabus Schedule GitHub

Syllabus

Course info

Description

“Digital Humanities” includes a variety of ways that computers can be used to explore, analyze, and publish human histories and cultural objects (literature, art, music, and more), as well as the study of computer technologies through humanistic frameworks. This course will provide a general introduction to digital humanities through a combination of reading, discussion, and hands-on digital making. We will begin with digital publication and digitization (multi-modal scholarship, digital collections, creative coding, immersive/3D models, and more) by discussing examples and building our own small-scale projects. We will ask: how can understanding and situating the digital infrastructures we inhabit every day help us imagine new ones? Then we will turn towards humanities data: how are cultural objects represented digitally, and how can computational analysis methods provide insights? What are the limitations and possibilities of these data-centered approaches? Assignments will include visual essays, simple websites, and data visualization; students will learn to work in command line, Python, and HTML, among other digital skills.

Learning goals

Through this course, you will:

Materials

Assignments

Your grade will be assessed from a combination of short assignments – demonstrating several genres of digital humanities scholarship – as well as your participation in the class and a final research project or portfolio showing your growth over the semester.

Assignment Worth Due Notes
Participation 20% – Includes attendance, discussion participation, and weekly short responses
Project review 10% 1/31 A short analysis and review of a Digital Humanities project
Website 10% 2/14 A simple static website
Data story 15% 3/28 A data visualization with context
Visual essay 15% 4/18 A mini-exhibit featuring primary sources and commentary
Final project or portfolio 30% 5/7 Option A: a published digital humanities project on a topic or format of your choice. Option B: a portfolio site collecting revised assignments and responses, including a self-assessment.

Attendance & participation

You will be expected to come prepared to every session and participate actively in class discussion. Each person is allowed one absence, no questions asked, but you are expected to make up any work that you missed. If you need to miss additional classes, please reach out to me as soon as possible ahead of time. Repeated absences may affect your participation grade.

Responses

Weekly reflections on the readings or related activities will be posted to Moodle Forum by Monday 11:59 PM and should be approximately 200-300 words. Each student should submit a minimum of 10 responses throughout the semester. In most cases there will be a specific prompt; otherwise, do your best to show how you have engaged with the readings, ask questions, and share ideas and reflections. I view these as an opportunity to participate in and shape the class discussion, so if you are someone who is less prone to speak in class, you are encouraged to engage more frequently in this space.

Policies

Late work

Responses will not be accepted late because their purpose is to stimulate discussion for Tuesday’s class. For other assignments, each student gets an extension on a single assignment. Let me know when you are taking it. Otherwise, Late work will not be accepted.

Accessibility

Bryn Mawr College is committed to providing equal access to students with a documented disability. Students needing academic accommodations for a disability must first speak with Access Services. Students can email accessservices@brynmawr.edu to request an appointment to begin this confidential process. If eligible for accommodations as per Access Services, students should schedule an appointment with the professor as early in the semester as possible to share their verification form and make appropriate arrangements. Please note that accommodations are not retroactive and require advance notice to implement. More information can be obtained at the Access Services website. (http://www.brynmawr.edu/access-services/)

Any student who has a disability-related need to record this class must first be found eligible to do so by Access Services and must share this eligibility with me, the instructor. Class members need to be aware that this class may be recorded.

Religious holidays

Please contact me if you need accommodations related to a religious holiday.

Generative AI

There will be situations within this course where you will be asked to use AI tools to explore how they can be used. Otherwise, I discourage the use of generative AI tools because of ethical, environmental, and pedagogical reasons. Writing assignments should be your original work, not generated by AI. I do not recommend using AI for research because it produces inaccurate information. Use of AI for coding, data processing, and other forms of automation depends on the context and purpose of the assignment: if learning the skill is central to the assignment, AI coding tools should not be used. Otherwise, you may use them as long as you check their output for accuracy and describe how you used them in your submitted work. If you have questions about a particular use case, please feel free to ask.

Content warning

We live in a world that has been and still is shaped by structural inequalities, oppression, and exclusion. It is my belief that study of the humanities must reckon with these conditions and with their cultural traces responsibly and with care; therefore we will consider difficult material. Please consider that your own emotional and intellectual responses to these questions may not be shared by others; enter them humbly.

Schedule

See full schedule with readings or navigate to the page for each week