Proposed Grad Course for 2013-2014: Practicing the Digital Humanities (Draft)

This is the first of two graduate courses I’m proposing for 2013-2014 at WSU. I took many of the readings from Paul Fyfe’s superb Introduction to the Digital Humanities Course at FSU, added some readings on digital labor proposed by Miriam Posner, and tried to splice in some stuff from Bethany Nowviskie’s Praxis Program, while adding some of my own stuff. The result is Frankensteinian, to say the least. Any comments/suggestions/criticisms are welcome.

Practicing the Digital Humanities

This course serves as an introduction to the debates, tools, and techniques of surrounding the digital humanities. The digital humanities enhance the production and sharing of scholarly research. Distant reading techniques translate millions of books into usable data for analysis. Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and SIMILE timelines map historical phenomena. Network visualization software demonstrates entirely new relationships between novels and historical figures. Digital technology is transforming how scholarship occurs, but it is also questioning traditional roles held by teachers, students, University professionals, and members of the public. During the semester, we will explore the possibilities and controversies of the digital humanities by applying them to a semester-long digital project, hopefully in collaboration with digital resources in the library. After we identify a project, and craft a project charter, we will learn simple programming with XML and CSS, carefully plan and manage our project, and research the tools online that will help us complete our project. Given the ever-changing nature of digital humanities conversations online, readings are subject to change and students will be expected to keep up with DH discussions on blogs (DH Now and on Twitter), and engage in DH conversations with their own blogs.

**It is my hope that this course will have an interdisciplinary student population: some from English, from History, and from other humanities-based graduate programs on campus.

Required Books

• Kathleen Fitzpatrick. Planned Obsolescence: Publishing, Technology, and the Future of the Academy. NYU Press, 2011.
• Allexander Galloway, Protocol: How Control Exists After Decentralization. MIT Press, 2006.
• Matthew Kirschenbaum, Mechanisms: New Media and the Forensic Imagination. MIT Press, 2008.
• Jerome J. McGann, Radiant Textuality: Literature After the World Wide Web. Palgrave, 2001.
• Franco Moretti, Graphs, Maps, Trees. Verso, 2005.
• Robin Williams. The Non-Designers Design Book. Peachpit Press, 2008.
• Ethan Marcotte, Responsive Web Design. eBook.

Course Objectives

• Investigate the influence of digital technology in the past and the future of humanities scholarship.
• Determine the use of theoretical discourse in the digital humanities, and how that theoretical discourse should operate.
• Understand the infrastructure of the web, along with how hardware and software works.
• Learn how to collaborate effectively with your colleages, manage projects, and develop a sense of what’s known as digital literacy.

Week 1: Histories

1. Susan Hockey. “The History of Humanities Computing.” Companion to Digital Humanities. edited by Susan Schreibman, Ray Siemens, and John Unsworth. Blackwell, 2004
2. Matthew Kirschenbaum. “What Is Digital Humanities and What’s It Doing in English Departments?” ADE Bulletin 150, 2010.
3. Micah Vandegrift. “What is Digital Humanities and What’s It Doing in Library?“ In the Library With the Lead Pipe. June 27, 2012.

Week 2: Collaboration

1. Stan Ruecker and Milena Radzikowska. “The Iterative Design of a Project Charter for Interdisciplinary Research.” Proceedings of the 7th ACM conference on Designing interactive systems - DIS ‘08, 288-94, 2008.
2. Claire Warwick, Isabel Galina, Melissa Terras, Paul Huntington, and Nikoleta Pappa. “The Master Builders: LAIRAH Research on Good Practice in the Construction of Digital Humanities Projects.” Literary and Linguistic Computing 23.3, 2008. 383-96.
3. Matthew Kirschenbaum, Bethany Nowviskie, Tom Scheinfeldt, and Doug Reside. “Collaborators’ Bill of Rights.” Maryland Institute for Technology and the Humanities, January 2, 2011.

Week 3: Open Access

1. Kathleen Fitzpatrick. Planned Obsolescence: Publishing, Technology, and the Future of the Academy. NYU Press, 2011.
2. Dan Cohen. “The Ivory Tower and the Open Web: Introduction: Burritos, Browsers, and Books [Draft].” Dan Cohen, July 26, 2011.

Week 4: Coding and Computing

1. Dan Cohen, and Roy Rosenzweig. “To Mark Up, Or Not To Mark Up.” Digital History: A Guide to Gathering, Preserving, and Presenting the Past on the Web. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005.
2. Stephen Ramsay. “On Building,” January 11, 2011.
3. William J. Turkel and Alan MacEachern, The Programming Historian. NICHE: Network in Canadian History and Environment (2007-11).

Week 5: Coding and Computing, continued

1. Jerome J. McGann, Radiant Textuality: Literature After the World Wide Web. Palgrave, 2001.
2. William J. Turkel and Alan MacEachern, The Programming Historian. NICHE: Network.
3. Learn Python and Web Fundamentals on Code Academy.

Week 6: Debates

1. Tom Scheinfeldt, “Sunset for Ideology, Sunrise for Methodology?” FoundHistory. May 26, 2010.
2. Alain Liu, “Where is the Cultural Criticism in the Digital Humanities?” AlainLiu. N.D.
3. Natalia Cecire, “When Digital Humanities Was in Vogue.” Journal of the Digital Humanities, 1.1. (Winter 2011).
4. Jean Bauer, “Who Are You Calling UnTheoretical?” Journal of the Digital Humanities, 1.1 (Winter 2011).

Week 8: Scope and Project Management

1. Decision-Matrix. Wikipedia.
2. Scope-Creep. Wikipedia.
3. Miriam Posner, “Doing Digital Scholarship: Creating and Refining a Feature List.” Emory Libraries. October 11, 2011.
4. Andrew Stellman, “Requirements 101: User Stories vs. Use Cases.” Building Better Software. May 3, 2009.
5. The Trac Project.

Week 9: Materiality and Interface

1. Matthew Kirschenbaum, Mechanisms: New Media and the Forensic Imagination. MIT Press, 2008.
2. Allexander Galloway, “The Unworkable Interface.” New Literary History. 39.4 (Autumn 2008): 931-55.
3. Ben Mendelsohn, “Bundled, Buried, and Behind Closed Doors.” Vimeo.

Week 10: Design and Wireframes

1. Robin Williams. The Non-Designers Design Book. Peachpit Press, 2008.
2. Ethan Marcotte, Responsive Web Design. eBook.

Week 11: Networks and Interfaces

1. Allexander Galloway, Protocol: How Control Exists After Decentralization. MIT Press, 2006.

Week 12: Development Week (Readings based upon Project Requirements)
Week 13: Development Week (Readings based upon Project Requirements)
Week 14: Presentation of Digital Project (Symposium?)