DH100: Introduction to Digital Humanities

Tuesday/Thursday 9:25am – 10:40am
Ebenezer D. Bassett Hall room 301

Brian S. Matzke
Office: Elihu Burritt Library room 20903
Office Hours: Mondays 10:00am – noon
Email: bmatzke@ccsu.edu

UNIT 1: HUMANITIES AND DIGITAL MEDIA
Week 1: Introductions
8/27 Introductions
8/29 What is a research question?
——– Before class, read: Amanda Shendruk, “Analyzing the Gender Representation of 34,476 Comic Book Characters”
Week 2: Digital publishing
9/3 Digital rhetoric
——– Before class, read: Anne Francis Wysocki, “The Multiple Media of Texts”
9/5 Setting up your website
——– Before class, complete the first part of this week’s assignment. You can complete more of it if you would like, but you will also have time to work on it in class.
Blog post (due by midnight on 9/9): Three possible research questions
Assignment (due by midnight on 9/9): Set up website
Week 3: How to read an academic paper, project proposals
9/10 How to read an academic paper
——– Before class, read: Tara Menon, “Keeping Count: Direct Speech in the Nineteenth-Century British Novel”
9/12 One on one meetings to discuss research questions
Blog post (due by midnight on 9/15): Analysis of an academic paper
Assignment (due by midnight on 9/16): Profile of a digital humanities project
Week 4: Digital libraries
9/17 HathiTrust, Internet Archive, Digital Public Library of America, and Project Gutenberg/GutenTag
9/19 Finding sources
Blog post (due by midnight on 9/22): Your research process
Assignment (due by midnight on 9/23): Post an artifact to your website
UNIT 2: METADATA
Week 5: How to read and use descriptive metadata
Week 6: DH ethics
10/1 Weapons of Math Destruction; Algorithms of Oppression
10/3 Copyright
Blog post (due by midnight on 10/6): Biases in algorithms and research
Assignment (due by midnight on 10/7): Copyright and your research project
Week 7: Text markup
10/8 XML and TEI
10/10 Working with TEI Boilerplate
Blog post (due by midnight on 10/13): Working with TEI
Assignment (due by midnight on 10/14): Add TEI markup of a document to your site
UNIT 3: TEXT AND VIDEO
Week 8: Developing your research project
10/15 User Experience Testing
10/17 Secondary Research
Blog post (due by midnight on 10/20): Summary of a scholarly article
Assignment (due by midnight on 10/21): Post your third artifact to your site
Week 9: Video markup
10/22 Indexing audio and video materials
10/24 The Oral History Metadata Synchronizer
Blog post (due by midnight on 10/27): Description of your video artifact
Assignment (due by midnight on 10/28): Create a timestamped index of a video and add it to your site
Week 10: Word frequencies
UNIT 4: DATA VISUALIZATION
Week 11: Timelines and maps
11/5 TimeMapper, StoryMap, Timeline, Juxtapose
11/7 Working on timelines or maps in class
Blog post (due by midnight on 11/10): Partial draft/outline of your final paper
Assignment (due by midnight on 11/11): Post a second visualization to your site
Week 12: Graphs, histograms, and scatterplots
11/12 How to read and write graphs, histograms, and scatterplots
11/14 Creating graphs, histograms, and charts in Excel
Blog post (due by midnight on 11/17): Complete rough draft of your final paper
Assignment (due by midnight on 11/18): Post a third visualization to your site
Week 13: Trees, networks, flowcharts, sankeys, etc.
11/19 Visit from Professor Kathy Hermes
——– Before class, check out two of Professor Hermes’ projects: Digital Farmington and Uncovering their History. Also check out the tool that Professor Hermes and others created as part of the “Uncovering their History” project: Relationship Tree
11/21 Lucidchart and SankeyMATIC
Blog post (due by midnight on 11/24): Profile a data visualization
Assignment (due by midnight on 11/25): Post a fourth visualization to your site
Thanksgiving Week
11/26 Catching up/working on final paper
——– As you work on your peer critiques, read this very short essay: “Workshop is Not for You”
11/28 Thanksgiving – no class
Peer critiques (due by midnight on 12/1): Guidelines for Writing a Peer Review
Week 14: Final project presentations
12/3 Presentations
12/5 Presentations
The final paper and final version of your website are both due on 12/10.