DH101: Introduction to Digital Humanities
Instructor: Katie Knowles
Contact Information: knowle50 at msu.edu
Office Hours: by appointment
Table of Contents
Course Description
In this course, students will develop a basic understanding of digital humanities (DH) tools and methods. Students will not only be asked to investigate the foundations of digital humanities as a field, but also begin to develop practical skills in utilizing digital tools related to web development, archiving, editing, data mining, network analysis, and mapping. Students will be asked to develop a project tied to their own discipline using one or more of these tools or methods.
Course Goals
- Students will be able to define the digital humanities and outline the main methodologies of the discipline.
- Students will learn how to navigate a variety of digital humanities tools and software to produce digital projects.
- Students will be able to articulate how the digital humanities is applicable to their own subject area and identify how DH is used in their field.
- Students will complete a digital project on a humanities topic of their choosing using tools related to archiving, editing, data mining, network analysis, or mapping.
Course Format
This course is a hybrid course. The majority of course content will be distributed online, but we will meet as a group once weekly in order to discuss course activities and troubleshoot or workshop digital projects.
Required Materials
To work within the framework of DH’s attempt to make digital content, tools, and other resources widely available for everyone, materials for this course will be open source or available through the library.
Policies
Absences
As this course meets only once weekly, it is crucial that you are present when we meet. You have two free absences. The third and fourth absence will result in a penalty grade. With your fifth absence, you will have missed one third of our meetings and will fail the course.
Accommodations
Michigan State University is committed to providing equal opportunity for participation in all programs, services and activities. Requests for accommodations by persons with disabilities may be made by contacting the Resource Center for Persons with Disabilities at 517-884-RCPD or on the web at rcpd.msu.edu. Once your eligibility for an accommodation has been determined, you will be issued a verified individual services accommodation (“VISA”) form. VISA forms are not retroactive—you must provide me with this document before any accommodations are required.
Late Work
Late work of any kind will not be accepted. If you have concerns that you will not be able to complete your classwork by the deadline, please contact me in advance of its due date.
Plagiarism
Plagiarism of any kind will not be tolerated in this course and is grounds for failure. Plagiarism is the use of another person’s words or ideas without acknowledgement (this includes paraphrasing!). Additionally, you may not submit your own work from previous classes—self-plagiarism gives you an unfair academic advantage over the rest of the class. If you have any questions or concerns about plagiarism, please meet with me so we can work through them.
Assignments
Blog posts (20%)
At the beginning of the semester, you will be asked to sign up to write three blog posts throughout the semester based on the various tools will we be using. These posts should be about one double spaced page and address what you tried to do with the digital tool, what worked, what was difficult, and how this tool might be useful in your field (for your own ideas, or in ways it has been useful in existing projects).
Weekly assignments and participation (25%)
A large part of learning to use digital humanities tools is tinkering. Therefore, you will not be graded on your ability to create a complete, cohesive work with the assigned digital tool each week. However, you are expected to explore these digital tools and participate in our in-class workshopping each week. Additionally, before the class meeting, you will be expected to interact with your assigned discussion group to troubleshoot and try out your ideas related to the tools and concepts outside of our class meetings.
Project proposal (15%)
For your midterm assignment, you will be asked to complete a brief project proposal consisting of a paragraph description of what topic you would like to cover and what tool you hope to use accompanied by a ten entry annotated bibliography covering the various projects and key DH articles in your field. This bibliography can be in whatever citation style is used in your major, but it must be consistent. This will form the basis for your final project.
Presentation (15%)
You will present on what you are doing for your final project in one of the final three class meetings. Think of this as almost a workshop–your classmates will hopefully provide you with useful feedback. Presentations will be about ten minutes long, and at the very least you will have a wireframe for your project at this point.
Project (25%)
Your final project will be centered around a digital tool you came across throughout the course of this class. You will use this tool to develop a project tied to your major field of study. Additionally, you will write a two- to three-page reflection on the process of building your digital project.
