HIST*4170
Exploring Digital
Humanities
5 January 2015
Today’s Agenda
• Introductions
• Who are we?
• What’s this course about?
Me
• Contact information:
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My office: Mackinnon 2014
Office Hours: Wednesdays 10:00-12:00, and any other time
519-824-4120 x 52279
jaross@uoguelph.ca
• Research focus: North American business and sport
• Postdoctoral fellow in the Historical Data Research Unit
• Census project 1871-1911
• “Big Data”
• Learning about:
• Methods
• Audience
• Products
Course Description I
• This course is designed to introduce students to new and
inter-disciplinary digital humanities approaches,
methodologies, and tools, and to explore applications to text,
image, map, and other media sources.
• It will appeal to students in literature, history, fine arts, and
music who want an introduction to state-of-the-art digital
humanities research.
• There will be flexibility to accommodate the specific
disciplines and interests of the students.
Course Description II
• The class will be held once or twice a week and will feature
instructor and expert presentations, demonstrations, and
discussion.
• Students will complete weekly readings and assignments, and
a major project that that applies digital humanities tools.
• Participation will be evaluated through reflective blog posting,
in-class discussion, and peer review.
Learning outcomes
• Increase digital literacy skills, and be able to comprehend and
use appropriate language of digital humanities research in
their own and related humanities disciplines
• Understand and be able to analyze the advantages of different
methodologies of digital humanities inquiry
• Learn to collect, manage, and manipulate digital data from
various sources
• Be able to formulate, direct, and complete a digital humanities
project , and explain its significance to academic and lay
audiences
Evaluation
• Participation, Blog and Assignments (60%)
• In-class and outside class (blog) preparation and participation
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Research, reading
Questions, contributions
Reflection, commentary
Peer helping/collaboration
• Weekly assignments (5)
• Project (40%)
• Capstone project: “intensive, active learning project, requiring
significant effort in the planning and implementation, as well as
preparation of a substantial final work product”
• A Project Plan (1500 words) due February 26th
• A proposal presentation and a final presentation, dates TBD
• Final projects and reports are due April 16.
Your (We)blog
• Your blog will serve as:
• A thinking and writing stimulator
• A participation product showing preparation for class, and
processing of class information
• Assignment delivery, and repository
• Project log
• Peer review and peer help mechanism
• Set up your blog:
• Any free site is fine: Blogger, or WordPress… (Don’t pay!)
• It must be a 4170-exclusive blog
• Your real name must appear in an obvious place, and maybe a
picture (not required)
• Feel free to add blogs pertaining to your research interests
• Send me the link
The Keys to Doing Well
• Focus is on active learning
• Find ideas, learn them, apply them (use blog as a record)
• Requires:
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Engagement
Self-directed learning
Collaboration
Pushing yourself into unfamiliar territory
Time commitment
• Each class:
• Prepare, Participate, Process
• Don’t let me hold you back…
Course Resources
• The hist4170 course site is at:
http://jandrewross.ca/hist4170.php
• Functions as a noticeboard, the central repository for weekly
readings, updates and links to assignments and other student
blogs. Make it your first stop!
• See example of student blog: anjehist4170.blogspot.ca
• Your blogs
• Set one up, and send me the link to be included on main blog
• Blogger, WordPress, et al.
• Courselink
• For marks, and maybe other things we want to keep in-house
• The WWW in all its glory….
• Schedule TBD – dates for special guests are in flux
You…
• Are undergraduates with several years of research and
thinking about humanities topics
• Are you ready to explore them in the digital world?
• Time to interview each other for 10 minutes…
• Questions to discuss:
• What technology have you most often used to learn, produce,
and share knowledge?
• Which have the university introduced you to?
• What is your technological skill level?
• Which topics in your field excite you the most? Are there any
related DH projects?
• (What are your career goals and how might this course serve
them?)
A poll
• How many actively use:
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Twitter?
Facebook?
Tumblr?
Reddit?
MySpace?
The Deep Web?
• Experience with:
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Blogging?
Software coding?
Image editing?
Wiki editing?
For Next Time
• Engage these resources:
• Read A Companion to Digital Humanities, ed. Susan Schreibman,
Ray Siemens, John Unsworth. Oxford: Blackwell, 2004.
• Read Chapter 1 (Hockey), plus another Part 1 chapter on a specific
discipline (e.g. chapter 5)
• Explore tools with Bill Turkel’s “Going Digital”
• oriented to history, but can be applied to other disciplines
Introduction to
Digital Humanities
7 January 2015
Agenda
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Brief introduction to Digital Humanities
Discussion of readings
Project Parameters
Blog Assignment #1
Introduction to DH
• (What are the humanities?)
• Definitions?
• “Digital humanities is a diverse and still-emerging field that
encompasses the practice of humanities research in and through
information technology, and the exploration of how the
humanities may evolve through their engagement with
technology, media, and computational methods.” (Digital
Humanities Quarterly)
• Humanities Computing
• A literary bias?
But first…
• Are we OK with Mondays only (and occasional Wednesdays)?
Purpose of DH
• Spiro (2011)
• To provide access to cultural information
• Enable manipulation of that information
• Manage, mashup, mine, map, model…
• Transform scholarly communication
• Enhance learning and teaching
• Make a public impact
Components of DH
• Svensson’s components (Svensson 2009)
• Tools
• Databases, data visualization (GIS)
• As Object of Study
• Social media, behavioural changes
• A Mode of Production
• Digital publishing, multimedia
• Collaboration is central
• Collective approach to research, and tool creation
• An ethics of open-ness
• Data, products
Hockey chapter
• What kind of projects
comprised Humanities
computing?
• Orlando Project
• Text Encoding Initiative
(TEI)
Other chapters
• Thomas (ch5)
• Do digital methods, software, numbers, “work” well for history?
• “Hypertext history”
• Is “computing technology… the handmaiden of postmodernism,…
a witless accomplice in the collapse of narrative, [or] the silent
killer of history's obligation to truth and objectivity”?
• Are we seeing a “digital turn”?
• “born digital”
• “Dynamic essays” (The Differences Slavery Made)
• HGIS
Turkel’s “Going Digital”
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“cost” differences
So much to read…
Did you learn any new search strategies?
Zotero
The Project
• Start thinking about it, and consider:
• What have you done at Guelph, and what would you like to reformat or explore further?
• What skills might you want to develop?
• What product do you want to create?
• Career relevance and fun
• Think about projects that combine Svensson’s components
• Six weeks to gather ideas…
• Also:
• Group projects are possible, with clearly delineated individual
tasks
• And there is also default project oriented around The Scottish
Chapbooks project (more on that at a later date)
Assignment #1
• Please blog on the question:
• “How have my studies at Guelph been affected by digital tools
and approaches, and what future possibilities do I see for my
career and research?”
• Feel free to refer to readings and also explore DH projects on the
WWW
• ca. 400-600 words, due before class on January 12th
• Send me the link to your blog if you have not yet done so…
Blog Evaluation
• Unless otherwise specified, your overarching blog theme should be:
“What did I learn? What insights can I share?”
• You must have at least one blog post a week
• Including reading week, and the week after the last project
presentations (c. Apr 9)
• Contributions will be evaluated every week on Monday morning.
• Even if there is no specific blog assignment for the week, you should
blog. Possible topics:
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Your ideas for your own project, and later, project log updates
What other students are doing (blogging or presenting in class)
The guest presentations
Online discoveries:
• E.g. Experiments with DH tools; ideas about DH theory and applications
• Improvements (widgets etc.) made to your blog
• …?
Questions?