Course Offerings

3–7 June (Week 1) | 10–14 June (Week 2)

Anticipated offerings for DHSI 2024 are listed below.

Use the drop down toggles to see more information for each course.

For information about registration options and fees, please visit Registration and Fees.

Important Notes:

– All DHSI 2024 courses are in person and on campus. Courses run daily, Monday to Friday, for the duration of each week, so only one course can be taken each of DHSI’s two weeks.

Foundations offerings at DHSI are foundational in nature, requiring little by way of prerequisite save that those enrolled should have a basic knowledge of computing tools and methods. Other courses are aimed at those who have completed the relevant foundations course(s) at DHSI or otherwise have similar foundational experience with digital humanities tools, methods, and approaches; note that some offerings have specific requisite skills and/or expectations and, in such cases, these are outlined in course description.

– If you are unsure of which course would be best suited to your strengths and interests, please reach out to the DHSI coordinator or the course instructor. Note that some course materials from previous years has been provided for some courses in order to offer a sense of the course only. This year’s course materials will be available elsewhere.

– In order to be eligible for a DHSI scholarship, you must complete the scholarship application and receive your acceptance before registering for a course. (We regret that we are unable to offer tuition reimbursements to participants who register before receiving the results of their scholarship application.)

Week 1 (3–7 June 2024)

#1 [Foundations] Text Encoding Fundamentals and their Application

Constance Crompton and Lee Zickel
Course description

          [This offering is almost full (13 May 2024)]

For those new to the field, this is an introduction to the theory and practice of encoding electronic texts for the humanities. This workshop is designed for individuals who are contemplating embarking on a text-encoding project, or for those who would like to better understand the philosophy, theory, and practicalities of encoding in XML (Extensible Markup Language) using the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) Guidelines. No prior experience with XML is assumed, but the course will move quickly through the basics. During the course we will provide online space for the practical application of project planning and technical knowledge acquired throughout the week.

Related Materials: earlier syllabus and supporting materials (large document); instructor biographies

This is a hands-on course. Consider this offering in complement with, and / or to be built on by: Advanced TEI Concepts / TEI Customization; Code the X-Files using the XML Family of Languages; Digital Documentation and Imaging for Humanists; Conceptualising and Creating a Digital Documentary Edition; A Collaborative Approach to XSLT; Geographical Information Systems in the Digital Humanities; Making Connections: The Semantic Web for Humanities Scholars; Designing Digital Publications and more!

#2 [Foundations] Introduction to Computation for Literary Studies

Randa El Khatib and David Joseph Wrisley
Course description

          [This offering is full (9 February 2024)]

This course demystifies, and offers a survey of, the computational tools and techniques being used for literary studies. Aimed at novice and DH-curious scholars and practitioners, participants gain familiarity with fundamental concepts and methods so that they can better appreciate the potential of computer-assisted critical techniques. Classes are divided between discussions of key theoretical considerations and practical instruction in a selection of tools. Participants are exposed to macro-analytical techniques like most frequent word analysis, collocation, stylometry, topic modelling, digital mapping, and network analysis, gaining experience with environments like Voyant, R, Carto, Palladio, and Gephi. The course also details best practices relating to the preparation and management of digital corpora. Having completed this course, participants will have a better understanding of how computational methods can be used to produce quantitative data for use in the support of literary studies. More advanced expertise can subsequently be developed at any one of a number of DHSI offerings dedicated to particular methods.

Related Materials: earlier syllabus and supporting materials (large document)instructor biographies

This course combines lecture, seminar, and hands-on activities. Consider this offering in complement with, and / or to be built on by: Out-of-the-Box Text Analysis for the Digital Humanities; Stylometry with R: Computer-Assisted Analysis of Literary Texts; Fundamentals of Programming/Coding for Human(s|ists); Understanding Topic Modeling; Data Mining For Digital Humanists; and more!

#3 [Foundations] Race, Social Justice and DH: Applied Theories and Methods

Dorothy Kim, Ángel David Nieves, and Jordan Clapper
Course description

          [This offering is full (4 March 2024)]

Over the past five years we have seen a proliferation of academic job advertisements, publications, and discussions demonstrating ways in which race and social justice can be engaged in digital humanities scholarship. Interest by students and local communities in technological advancements through Web 2.0, social media, and mobile phones are permitting new forms of research and practice. #transformDH, #DHpoco, #femDH, and #BlackLivesMatter have helped to challenge the all-white discourse, often dominated by scholars in the disciplines of English and history, that is too often found in digital humanities. What happens to students in digital humanities methods classes who bring non-traditional bodies into this world? There have been discussions how to insure that syllabi and materials for digital humanities classes are inclusive – specifically, how an introductory DH methods class keeps race, social justice, and inclusivity as cornerstones in their pedagogy. The traditional divides witnessed in the tech world will only be replicated in the world of both undergraduate and graduate DH courses without attention to race, social justice, etc. This week-long class will show how, through an interdisciplinary intersectional and CRT framework, both race and social justice can be central to any DH teaching, pedagogy, and practice. The course will pay special attention to queer theory, critical ethnic studies, postcolonial theory, WOC/Black feminism, Indigenous studies, and disability studies as they currently help to reshape digital humanities teaching and methods across our university/college classrooms.

Related Materials: earlier syllabus and supporting materials (large document); instructor biographies

This course combines lecture, seminar, and hands-on activities. Consider this offering to build on: Fundamentals of Coding / Programming for Human(s|ists); Web Development / Project Prototyping for Beginners with Ruby on Rails. Consider this offering in complement with and / or to be built on by: Physical Computing and Desktop Fabrication; Digital Humanities with a Global Outlook; Digital Indigeneity; Intersectional Feminist Digital Humanities: Theoretical, Social, and Material Engagements; Queer Digital Humanities; Surveillance and the Critical Digital Humanities; Anti-Colonial DH Pedagogy; and more.

#4 [Foundations] Intersectional Feminist Digital Humanities: Theoretical, Social, and Material Engagements

Elizabeth Losh and Ravynn Stringfield
Course description

          [Please look for this offering in the future!]

Although there is a deep history of feminist engagement with technology, projects like FemTechNet argue that such history is often hidden and feminist thinkers are frequently siloed. In order to address this, the seminar will offer a set of background readings to help make visible the history of feminist engagement with technology, as well as facilitate small-scale exploratory collaboration during the seminar. Our reading selections bring a variety of feminist technology critiques in Media Studies, Human-Computer Interaction, Science and Technology Studies, and related fields into conversation with work in Digital Humanities. Each session is organized by a keyword – a term that is central to feminist theoretical and practical engagements with technology – and will begin with a discussion of that term in light of our readings. The remainder of each session will be spent learning about and tinkering with Processing, a programming tool that will allow participants to engage in their own critical making processes.

Pushing against instrumentalist assumptions regarding the value and efficacy of certain digital tools, we will be asking participants to think hard about the affordances and constraints of digital technologies. While we will be engaging with a wide range of tools/systems in our readings and discussions, we anticipate that the more hands-on engagement with Processing will help participants think about operations of interface, input, output, and mediation. In addition to the expanded theoretical framework, participants can expect to come away with a new set of pedagogical models using Processing that they can adapt and use for teaching at their own institutions.

Related Materials: earlier syllabus and supporting materials; instructor biographies

This course combines lecture, seminar, and hands-on activities. Consider this offering to build on: Fundamentals of Coding / Programming for Human(s|ists); Web Development / Project Prototyping for Beginners with Ruby on Rails. Consider this offering in complement with and / or to be built on by: Physical Computing and Desktop Fabrication; Digital Humanities with a Global Outlook; Digital Indigeneity; and more.

#5 [Foundations] DH for Chairs and Deans

Harold Short, John Unsworth, Bethany Nowviskie, and Ray Siemens
Course description

          [This offering is one third full (13 May 2024)]

Intended for university administrators who seek an understanding of the Digital Humanities that is both broad and deep, this offering establishes a cohort that [1] meets as a group for three dedicated sessions before the first day of DHSI (on the Sunday beforehand) and several dedicated session midweek to survey and discuss pragmatic DH basics and chief administrative issues related to supporting DH and those who practice it at their institution, [2] allows those enrolled to audit (as non-participatory observers, able to go from class to class) any and all of the DHSI courses, and [3] individually engages in consultation and targeted discussion with the instructors, who are the first three chairs of the international Alliance of Digital Humanities Organisations (ADHO), speakers and consultants contributing to the course, and others in the group outside of course time during the institute.

Related Materials: earlier syllabus and supporting materials (large document)instructor biographies

This is a seminar style / audit-oriented course. Consider this offering in complement with, and / or to be built on by: Scholarscapes, Augmented Dissemination via Digital Methods; Models for DH at Liberal Arts Colleges (& 4 Yr Institutions); Out-of-the-Box Text Analysis for the Digital Humanities; Digital Pedagogy Integration in the Curriculum; Crowdsourcing as a Tool for Research and Public Engagement; Online Collaborative Scholarship: Principles and Practices (A CWRCShop); Professionalizing the Early Career Digital Humanist: Strategies and Skills; and more!

#6 Podcasting from Scratch

Robin Davies
Course description

          [This offering is two thirds full (13 May 2024)]

This course for beginners will explore the how and why of podcasting. We’ll consider the benefits of the medium, and learn how to plan, record, edit and publish audio content. Expect to do some listening and reading outside of class time, and have your favourite audio and text editors ready.

Related Materials: Instructor biographies

This is a hands-on course. Consider this offering in complement with, and / or to be built on by: Conceptualising & Creating a Digital Documentary Edition; Understanding the Pre-Digital Book; Online Collaborative Scholarship: Principles and Practices (A CWRCShop); Sound and Digital Humanities; Digital Documentation and Imaging for Humanists; Open Source OCR Tools for Early Modern Printed Documents; and more!

#7 Introduction to Project Planning and Management for DH: Issues and Approaches

Lynne Siemens
Course description

          [This offering is almost full (13 May 2024)]

This course will cover the basics of project management from project definition to project review upon completion. Topics such as budget setting and controls, risk management, critical path scheduling, software tools, and related Internet resources will also be discussed. Material will be covered through lectures, discussions, case studies, and presentations. By the end of the course, participants will be able to implement the course concepts and tools in their projects.

Related Materials: earlier syllabus and supporting materials (large document); instructor biographies

This course has lecture, seminar, and hands-on components. Consider this offering in complement with, and / or to be built on by most other DHSI courses that focus on the pragmatics of planning elements of research, including Agile Project Management.

#8 Databases for Humanists

Harvey Quamen and Jon Bath
Course description

          [This offering is full (26 February 2024)]

Digital Humanities projects use more and more data every year. It’s no wonder — the rise of “big data” and “data science” are transforming how we humanists do our research. Databases are becoming increasingly important foundations for data analysis and data visualizations of all kinds. This course is about building and using databases, whether that means a small personal project like creating a reading list or managing large projects like wrangling unwieldy research materials, performing data science metrics, or analyzing social networks. We’ll see that databases are really about much more than just “looking things up.” Database query languages allow us to find patterns in our data, to see how things change across time, and to discover anomalies that may lead to new research questions. Over the course of the week, we’ll install the free database, MySQL, on everyone’s computer and we will learn the basics of designing, creating, and querying relational databases. No prior programming experience is necessary.

Related Materials: earlier syllabus and supporting materials; instructor biographies

This course combines lecture, discussion, and hands-on activities. Consider this offering in complement with: Fundamentals of Programming/Coding for Human(s|ists); Visualizing Information: Where Data Meets Design; Introduction to Computation for Literary Criticism; and more.

#9 Designing Digital Publications

Mary Borgo Ton and Dan Tracy
Course description

          [This offering is full (25 March 2024)]

This course will focus on strategies for designing, building, and publishing long-form scholarship in fully digital formats. As we consider commonly-used platforms like Pressbooks, Omeka, and Scalar, we will discuss flexible writing workflows and best practices for developing a multimodal expressions of your research, regardless of medium. Our discussions will be guided by an audience-centered approach to project design, and the course will offer participants ample opportunities to reflect on their own research, professional goals, and audiences as they make choices about the content and layout of their own projects. This course is ideal for graduate students who are contemplating a born-digital dissertation, scholars who are working heavily with multimedia, and those who are curious to explore alternatives to print-based scholarship.

This course balances lectures with hands-on activities. This offering harmonizes with courses on project planning and management, open access and open social scholarship, digital storytelling, and digital editions. We are particularly eager to support projects that grow from DHSI courses on race, social justice, intersectional feminist and queer digital humanities.

Related Materials: earlier syllabus and supporting materials; instructor biographies

#10 Engaging Play

Sean Smith and Jeff Lawler
Course description

          [This offering is two thirds full (13 May 2024)]

This class provides students with hands on experience with games and their uses in the humanities classroom. The focus of our course is to learn how games are structured, how they function and how they can become an integral part of a humanities curriculum. Participants will learn to use Twine and incorporate game narratives into their own classes. Taught by Jeffrey Lawler and Sean Smith, co-directors of the Center for the History of Video Games, Technology and Critical Play, the course covers a variety of topics such as game theory and questions that games, including tabletops and video games, raise within humanities disciplines.

Related Materials: earlier syllabus and supporting materials; instructor biographies

This course combines lecture, seminar, and hands-on activities. Consider this offering a compliment to Games for Digital Humanists and build on Using Digital Games as Critical Methods of Intervention, Advocacy, and Activism in Humanities Scholarship. Here we take a disciplinary specific approach to video games and offer practical ways of implementing them in lower division survey courses and upper division research seminars. Participants will leave class with a model assignment, prototype Twine game, and practical advice for implementing the project in upper or lower division history curriculum.

#11 Critical Making, or Slow Scholarship in the Age of AI

Jason Helms and Anastasia Salter
Course description

          [This offering is full (9 February 2024)]

In this team-taught workshop, we invite scholars to join us in exploring the potential of critical making to transform their scholarship and perhaps their pedagogy: to make it playful, experiential, public, interactive, and weird. Daniel Chamberlain defines work grounded in this way as critical making, a practice which “extends beyond critique into artistry: in making, design and function are not separate. The message (or story) of a work is intertwined throughout its making.” This places the emphasis not on learning tools for their own sake, but on thinking through the relationship of our tools (and our code) with our disciplines and scholarship. This type of thinking through and critiquing our digital tools is even more necessary in a moment when the MLA-CCCC Joint Task Force on Writing and AI has called for “critical AI literacy.” A critical maker reflects on the tool itself and rejects, supplements, extends, and critiques it as part of the process of making: this practice develops the literacy we can bring to our changing platforms and the interventions of generative AI in making. Accordingly, participants in this workshop will explore a variety of ways to make both physical and computational things (and physical-computational things) as well as ways to critically examine the assumptions built into technologies, how to make more inclusive technologies, and how to use making as mode of research. Centering the humanities within this slow process of critical making provides depth and richness in the interpretation and analysis of technologies that is not available from other approaches. During the week-long workshop, we will draw on lenses such as software and platform studies to better understand our changing tools (AI-driven and otherwise) as we craft comics, interactive fiction, bots, online experiences, and more.

Related Materials: earlier syllabus and supporting materials; instructor biographies

This course combines lecture, seminar, and hands-on activities. Consider this offering to build on most other DHSI offerings.

#12 Open-Assembly Teaching, Making, and Publishing: COVE Editions and Studio

Rebecca Nesvet and Laura Rotunno
Course description

          [This offering is half full (13 May 2024)]

This course will introduce the open-assembly teaching and making tools at the nonprofit COVE (Collaborative Organization for Virtual Education), which anyone, anywhere can use without having to learn to code. COVE is a scholar-driven, open-access platform that publishes both peer-reviewed material and active-learning or “flipped classroom” student projects built with our web-based online tools. COVE operates as a two-fold platform: Studio, where instructors can create anthologies of primary works that can then be made available for multimedia student annotation, and Editions, which hosts published and private editions, galleries, maps, and timelines, and facilitates peer review. DHSI students will learn the COVE toolset and principle of “open assembly,” or free, transformative remixing of texts, items, and archives. They will build an anthology (in COVE Studio) and begin an Edition, Map, Gallery, or Timeline (in COVE Editions) that they can easily complete afterwards. They will then share these projects with the DHSI community.

Related Materials: Instructor biographies

This course combines lecture, seminar, and hands-on activities. Consider this offering in complement with Designing Digital Publications, Critical Making as Scholarship, and Conceptualizing and Creating a Digital Edition.

#13 Digital Pedagogy and the Book: Tools, Methods, and Projects

Andie Silva
Course description

          [This offering is two thirds full (13 May 2024)]

This course will help faculty, staff, and instructional technologists conceptualize, design, and explore platforms for courses teaching book history and editorial practices. The course will provide readings on the history of the book and the book after the digital turn, and together we will discuss ways to immerse students in archival, editorial, and analytical practices regardless of their access to material books in special collections. Throughout the week, we will explore digital tools and platforms and consider how to best adapt them for the study of book history. We will collaborate on designing and scaffolding assignments, consider methods for assessment, and collectively build a repository of resources, links, and prompts. At the end of the week, participants will leave with a fully designed course unit and a better understanding of how to incorporate digital tools within their book history lessons and courses. 

Related Materials: earlier syllabus and supporting materials; instructor biographies

This course combines lecture, seminar, and hands-on activities. Consider this offering in complement with, and/or to be built on by: Digital Pedagogy Integration in the Curriculum; Understanding The Predigital Book: Technologies of Inscription; Using Digital Games as Critical Methods of Intervention, Advocacy, and Activism in Humanities Scholarship; Feminist Digital Humanities: Theoretical, Social, and Material Engagements; Critical Pedagogy and Digital Praxis in the Humanities.

#14 Introduction to IIIF: Sharing, Consuming, and Annotating the World’s Images

Jeffrey Witt and Niqui O’Neill
Course description

          [This offering is one third full (13 May 2024)]

Access to image-based resources and AV are fundamental to research, scholarship and the transmission of cultural knowledge. Digital images are a container for much of the information content in the Web-based delivery of images, books, newspapers, manuscripts, maps, scrolls, single sheet collections, and archival materials. Yet much of the Internet’s resources are locked up in silos, with access restricted to bespoke, locally built applications. A growing community of the world’s leading research libraries and content repositories are engaged in an effort to collaboratively produce an interoperable technology and community framework for image delivery. IIIF (the International Image Interoperability Framework) has the following goals:

  • To give scholars an unprecedented level of uniform and rich access to image-based and AV resources hosted around the world,
  • To define a set of common application programming interfaces that support interoperability between image and AV repositories,
  • To develop, cultivate and document shared technologies, such as image servers and web clients, that provide a world-class user experience in viewing, comparing, manipulating and annotating content.” (http://iiif.io).

This course will introduce students to the basic concepts and technologies that make IIIF possible, allowing for guided, hands-on experience in installing servers and clients that support IIIF, and utilizing the advanced functionality that IIIF provides for interpretive research, such as annotation.

Related Materials: earlier syllabus and supporting materials; instructor biographies

This is a hands-on course. Consider this offering in complement with, and / or to be built on by: Advanced TEI Concepts / TEI Customization; Digital Documentation and Imaging for Humanists; Conceptualising and Creating a Digital Documentary Edition; A Collaborative Approach to XSLT; Geographical Information Systems in the Digital Humanities; and more!

#15 Queer(ing) DH

Jason Boyd and Edmond Chang
Course description

          [This offering is almost full (13 May 2024)]

Queerness and the digital humanities share a common ethos: a desire to make meaning in new ways. Indeed, the intersection of DH and queerness is a site of rich potential that can inspire (and challenge) us to think differently about DH, its methods, its purpose, and its politics. This is true whether we are building a DH project or writing DH critique.

This course draws from readings, discussions, interactive exercises, visits by guest speakers, and short, collaborative hands-on making projects to explore a variety of questions about queerness and DH. What does DH bring to queer studies? What does queer studies bring to DH? How might a queer DH project serve social justice? How can we develop DH projects that are queer in their design? What might it mean to queer DH itself? How can we understand DH as already queer? This course values self-reflection, intersectional perspectives, and cultural critique. It addresses the challenges and frictions facing those who do queer DH work. What are the obstacles for queer DH within larger structures of academia and funding? Is there a tension between the push for skill-building within DH and queer studies’ critiques of neoliberalism? When do the norms of DH themselves run counter to the values of queerness?

Our readings will address topics that fall under the wide umbrella of the “digital humanities,” including (but not limited to) data visualization, classification systems, programming languages, video games, mapping and geography, online archives, and tangible computing. We will also engage with queer communities at and around the University of Victoria by visiting the Trans Archive. As instructors, we bring to this course an understanding that LGBT/queer people, identities, and histories are multiple and complex. We strive to foster thinking about queerness and DH that engages meaningfully with intersecting issues of race, class, disability, nationality, religion, and indigenous rights.

Related Materials: earlier syllabus and supporting materials (large document)course overview (video); instructor biographies

This course includes lecture, seminar, demo, and hands-on components. Consider this offering in complement with, and / or to be built on by: Intersectional Feminist Digital Humanities: Theoretical, Social, and Material Engagements; Race, Social Justice, and DH: Applied Theories and Methods; Critical Pedagogy and Digital Praxis in the Humanities; Spatial DH: Unsettling Cultural Territories Online; Anti-Colonial DH Pedagogy; and more!

#16 Surveillance and the Critical Digital Humanities

Christina Boyles and Andrew Boyles Peterson
Course description

          [Please look for this offering in the future!]

This course uses an anti-colonial framework to analyze the ethics surrounding physical and digital surveillance methods, including the use of algorithms, biometrics, social media, and physical data. We will examine the ways in which communities experience surveillance differently, based on factors such as race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and socioeconomic status. To do so, we will read the work of leading scholars like Simone Browne and Safiya Noble, conduct self-assessments to determine our own participation in surveillance culture, and discuss strategies to limit surveillance in the university classroom.

Related Materials: earlier syllabus and supporting materials; instructor biographies

This course has both seminar and hands-on components. Consider this offering to build on Critical Pedagogy and Digital Praxis; Intersectional Feminist Digital Humanities: Theoretical, Social, and Material Engagements; Race, Social Justice, and DH: Applied Theories and Methods; Anti-Colonial DH Pedagogy; De-Colonizing Cultural Territories Online: Spatial DH Through Web Analytics and Mapping; Digital Humanities Pedagogy: Integration into the Curriculum; Palpability and Wearable Computing, Games for Digital Humanists; and more!

#17 Natural Language Processing with Python

Aaron Mauro
Course description

          [This offering is full (12 February 2024)]

This course will introduce you to many techniques available to process, analyze, and visualize textual data with Python. You will learn the fundamental theories and methods used in Natural Language Processing (NLP) by writing code. We will begin with a swift introduction to Python syntax and Jupyter Notebooks, learning what we need to know to be effective in the course. We will emphasize Python’s built-in capabilities for handling text as we transition into using many of the most popular Python packages for NLP, including the Natural Language ToolKit (NLTK). The NLTK is a large library of tools and resources that will allow us to conduct part-of-speech tagging, sentiment analysis, entity recognition, and text classification. Because of its extensive documentation, NLTK remains an ideal choice for researchers interested in showing proof of work through citation and reproducibility. We will use other packages for Machine Learning (ML) tasks, such as Gensim for topic modeling and Stanza for multi-language capabilities and access to contemporary ML language models. We will learn to visualize our findings beautifully with packages such as Networkx, Seaborn, and Bokeh. Experience with Python is not strictly required for participation in the class, but a general understanding of programming methods and terms will be an asset. This class will help you think about humanities problems through computation. By the end of our time together, you will understand the kinds of questions we can answer with NLP methods and be ready to implement them in code.

Related Materials: earlier syllabus and supporting materials (large document); instructor biographies

This is a hands-on course with some lecture components. Consider this offering to be built on by and/or in complement with Fundamentals of Programming/Coding for Human(s|ists), Wrangling Big Data for DH, Out-of-the-Box Text Analysis for the Digital Humanities, Text Processing – Techniques & Traditions, Visualizing Information: Where Data Meets Design, Web APIs with Python, Parsing and Writing XML with Python, and more!

#18 Social Knowledge Creation / Construction

Graham Jensen, Ray Siemens, Gabriel Hankins, Alyssa Arbuckle, Matt Huculak, Sarah-Nelle Jackson, and Amanda Madden
Course description

          [Please look for this offering in the future!]

This course explores historical and contemporary theories of knowledge construction and conveyance in an interdisciplinary context, balancing earlier thought and theory, via readings related to pertinent traditions, with direct engagement of current applications and active experimentation in the area, including via contribution to a live wikibook on the subject. Topics include: ways of knowing; inter/disciplinary and methodological foundations; digital scholarship; social knowledge production; knowledge construction and constriction; social media communities and collaboration; knowledge space design; gamification; tools and techniques.

This offering is co-sponsored by the Implementing New Knowledge Environments partnership inke.ca.

Related Materials: instructor biographies

Consider this offering to build on most other DHSI offerings that have a focus on open scholarship, such as [Foundations] Open Access and Open Social Scholarship; Open Knowledge in Wikipedia and Beyond: Possibilities and Responsibilities; Open-Assembly Teaching, Making, and Publishing: COVE Editions and Studio; Podcasting from Scratch; eTextBook Publishing and Open Educational Resources; and more.

#19 Linked Open Data and the Semantic Web

James Smith
Course description

          [Please look for this offering in the future!]

This course explores how opening access to data changes the digital humanities project. We will cover the reasons for publishing open data, how we can create open data, and how we can work with open data. We will see how linked open data allows us to share data and incorporate data from other projects. We will learn about data models, data formats, and software tools for working with linked open data. We’ve designed the course to give you the tools you need to incorporate linked data into your projects, whether you’re a software engineer, a project manager, or a subject matter expert.

Related Materials: earlier syllabus and supporting materials (large document); instructor biographies

This course combines lecture and hands-on activities. Consider this offering in relation to the following. Predecessors: Making Choices About Your Data; Race, Social Justice, and DH: Applied Theories and Methods (good for evaluating the vocabularies that we find); Feminist Digital Humanities: Theoretical, Social, and Material Engagements (good for evaluating vocabularies that we find); Queer Digital Humanities: Intersections, Interrogations, Iterations (good for evaluating vocabularies that we find); Databases for Digital Humanists; Fundamentals of Programming/Coding for Human(s|ists). Successors: Introduction to Network Analysis in the Digital Humanities; Ethical Data Visualization: Taming Treacherous Data; Web APIs with Python; Information Security for Digital Researchers; Introduction to IIIF: Sharing, Consuming, and Annotating the World’s Images. Peers: Open Access and Open Social Scholarship; Endings: How to end (and archive) your digital project; XPath for Processing XML and Managing Projects; Agile Project Management. And more!

#20 Out of the Box Text Analysis

Maciej Eder
Course description

          [This offering is almost full (13 May 2024)]

This class will focus on using digital tools to enhance and deepen traditional ways of reading and analyzing texts. We will explore ways of answering questions about authorship, textual, chronological, and authorial style, genre, and meaning. The first sessions will introduce some freely-available tools and some widely available general software, and will address the issues of planning a project, and finding/creating and preparing the texts for analysis. We will begin with some prepared groups of texts for guided investigation as a group, so that we can concentrate on general problems, issues, and opportunities. Because my own background is in literature, the emphasis will be on literary texts. In later sessions, participants will be able to use these tools (and perhaps others, depending on their interests) to explore texts of their own choosing, or to examine some already-prepared sets of texts in greater detail and depth. The backgrounds and experiences of the participants will undoubtedly differ; therefore, we will aim for an intensely collegial and collaborative atmosphere, so as to capitalize on these differences.

Most of the tools and methods work across different languages, though there may be some problems with transliterated and accented languages, and there is a good deal of variation in how effective different techniques are for different languages. Most also require a substantial amount of text–either one long text or at least several texts of 1000 words or more. On the other hand, this class will focus on relatively detailed and intensive analysis, and is not appropriate for those who are interested in working with huge data sets or very large numbers of very long texts. For the purposes and methods of this class, a set of 100 novels should be considered a very large amount of data.

We will be meeting in a computer lab where all the software used will be available, though most of it can easily be installed and run on students’ own computers, if they want to. Much of the work will be done in Stylo and in tools that operate in Microsoft Excel. Potential participants whose own computers are Macs and/or who have specific (groups of) texts or kinds of problems in mind that they would like to work on in the class can contact the instructor to discuss any potential difficulties or challenges.

Related Materials: earlier syllabus and supporting materials (large document); instructor biographies

This is a hands-on course. Consider this offering to build on, or be built on by: Stylometry with R: Computer-Assisted Analysis of Literary Texts; Extracting Cultural Networks from Thematic Research Collections; or Wrangling Big Data for DH. Consider this offering in complement with Fundamentals of Programming/Coding for Human(s|ists); Text Analysis with Python and the Natural Language ToolKit; Geographical Information Systems in the Digital Humanities; Understanding the Pre-Digital Book; XPath for Processing XML and Managing Projects; and more!

#21 Critical Pedagogy and Digital Praxis in the Humanities

Chris Friend
Course description

          [This offering is almost full (13 May 2024)]

This course will focus on building community in collaborative digital learning environments and will interrogate notions of outcomes, best practices, and instructional design. Our work together will be productive, grounded in praxis, and driven by learner experiences.

Digital Humanities, with its deep reliance on technological tools, is replete with courses about those tools. This course offers an alternative: It is an exploration of pedagogy, challenging teachers to re-think how they approach their classes and interact with their students. We will discuss critical pedagogy and the importance of letting students define, control, and take responsibility for, their learning environment. This course will also serve as a playground, letting participants experiment with critical digital pedagogy in a class-created open-access online course that we co-design, build, deploy, promote, and assess, all within the one-week seminar. Participants will leave with a better understanding of their approaches to teaching and how critical digital pedagogy applies to DH courses.

Related Materials: earlier syllabus and supporting materials (large document); instructor biographies

This course combines lecture, seminar, and hands-on activities. Consider this offering in complement with, and / or to be built on by: Digital Pedagogy Integration in the Curriculum; Models for DH at Liberal Arts Colleges (& 4 Yr Institutions); Intersectional Feminist Digital Humanities: Theoretical, Social, and Material Engagements; Professionalizing the Early Career Digital Humanist: Strategies and Skills; Anti-Colonial DH Pedagogy; and more!

Week 2 (10–14 June 2024)

#22 [Foundations] Introduction to Digital Approaches in Music Research

Timothy Duguid
Course description

          [This offering is almost full (13 May 2024)]

This course introduces current practices in encoding, analysing and presenting music information. It will begin by introducing the philosophy, theory, and practicalities behind encoding symbolic music notation and will then explore pathways for analyzing and publishing that encoded data. Participants should have a basic knowledge of how to read music, but no prior experience with coding or XML is assumed.

Related Materials: earlier syllabus and supporting materials; instructor biographies

This is a hands-on course. Consider this offering in complement with, and / or to be built on by: Advanced TEI Concepts / TEI Customization; Digital Documentation and Imaging for Humanists; Conceptualising and Creating a Digital Documentary Edition; A Collaborative Approach to XSLT; Geographical Information Systems in the Digital Humanities; and more!

#23 [Foundations] Making Choices About Your Data

Paige Morgan and Yvonne Lam
Course description

          [This offering is two thirds full (13 May 2024)]

“I have some stuff that I want to do a DH project with. How do I get started?” Answering this question (and getting started doing DH) involves several related questions about data: What data/materials do you work with? What format are your data/materials in? What does the format of your data allow you to do? How can you transform your data to do different things with it? What are the stakes of the choices that you make? This course guides participants through answering these questions in relation to their own research areas, datasets, and materials. You will start by introducing your classmates to your data — and will spend the week exploring what you can do with that data, and the ways that you might develop it further. What do you gain, or lose, by thinking about your subject matter as data? How do you balance between making your data as useful as possible, while still acknowledging its limitations? This course provides an introduction to different types and formats of data (structured, unstructured, etc.), to the work associated with data (building and using vocabularies, working with data models, normalization, cleaning); and best practices for documenting and sharing that work. We’ll look at a few different platforms & tools that you could work with your data in, and think about the full range of things you might do with your data, from analyzing it to making it available for other people to use.”

Related Materials: earlier syllabus and supporting materials (large document); instructor biographies

This is a hands-on course. Consider this offering in complement with most other DHSI courses.

#24 [Foundations] Fundamentals of Programming for Human(s/ists)

Marie-Hélène Burle, Grace Fishbein, and Meghan Landry
Course description

          [This offering is full (20 February 2024)]

This course is intended for humanities-based researchers with no programming background whatsoever who would like to understand how programs work behind the scenes by writing some simple but useful programs of their own. Over the week the emphasis will be on understanding how computer programmers think so that participants will be able to at least participate in high-level conceptual discussions in the future with more confidence. These general concepts will be reinforced and illustrated with hands-on development of simple programs that can be used to help with text-based research and analysis right away. The language used for most of the course will be Python because of its gentle syntax and powerful extensions. Using the command-line interface and regular expressions will also be emphasized. We will also spend some time taking glimpses at what is happening in the other DHSI courses to understand how reading and writing programming code goes well beyond what we touch on in this class.

This offering is co-sponsored by ACENET.

Related Materials: earlier syllabus and supporting materials (large document); instructor biographies

This is a hands-on course. Consider this offering in complement with, and / or to be built on by: Out-of-the-Box Text Analysis for the Digital Humanities; Geographical Information Systems in the Digital Humanities; Physical Computing and Desktop Fabrication; Data Mining for Digital Humanists; Understanding Topic Modelling; Stylometry with R: Computer-Assisted Analysis of Literary Texts; RDF and Linked Open Data; 3D Modelling for DH and Social Sciences; DH Databases; Creating LAMP Infrastructure for Digital Humanities Projects; XPath for Processing XML and Managing Projects; Information Security for Digital Researchers; and more!

#25 NLP Coding Libraries and Network Analysis for Text Corpora

Chris Tanasescu
Course description

          [This offering is two thirds full (13 May 2024)]

The course offers an effective hands-on intro to natural language processing (NLP), text analysis, and text corpus network visualization and analysis. We will be doing coding in Python and learning how to use (and compare) certain relevant libraries including Scikit-learn, NLTK, FastText, BERT (for mono and multi-lingual NLP), Gensim plus word2vec & doc2vec, SpaCy (plus displaCy), Stanza, BeautifulSoup, Selenium, pytesseract, TextStat, LexicalRichness, and NetworkX. We will apply those packages in automatically web-scraping/collecting and/or OCRing, and then computationally analyzing texts and text corpora, representing the corpora as networks, and thus finding out unexpected if not amazing things about the texts they contain. The knowledge and skills acquired—alongside our in-class applications—will be useful in education and research in NLP, automated text and (mono and multilingual) corpus analysis, network science and graph theory applications, computational literary analysis and criticism, computational linguistics (including tasks such as NER—named entity recognition—and SA, sentiment analysis), and vector space (and topic) modeling for the humanities. On the fifth day (Friday, June 14th), everybody will have the opportunity to participate in the #GraphPoem event that will involve some of the Python scripts developed during the workshop. We will run those and other scripts live (on JupyterHub) on ready-made and individually/collaboratively assembled and expanded corpora, thus feeding into an intermedia performance involving a Twitter bot and a cross-artform live stream.

Related Materials: earlier syllabus and consulting materials; instructor biographies

This is a hands-on course with some lecture components. Consider this offering to be built on by and/or in complement with Fundamentals of Programming/Coding for Human(s|ists), Wrangling Big Data for DH, Out-of-the-Box Text Analysis for the Digital Humanities, Text Processing – Techniques & Traditions, Visualizing Information: Where Data Meets Design, Web APIs with Python, Parsing and Writing XML with Python, and more!

#26 Creating Digital Collections with Minimal Infrastructure: Hands On with CollectionBuilder for Teaching and Exhibits

Olivia Wikle, Evan Williamson, and Devin Becker
Course description

          [This offering is full (2 April 2024)]

This course introduces fundamental web and DH skills using CollectionBuilder, an open source project for building digital collection and exhibit websites driven by metadata and hosted on a lightweight infrastructure. The high cost and IT requirements of digital collection platforms are often a barrier to creating new collections for sharing or teaching humanities research. CollectionBuilder is optimized for non-developers and simple hosting solutions, allowing researchers to take greater ownership over their digital projects and lowering barriers to customization. Scholars in this course will learn CollectionBuilder by engaging in a scaffolded approach with hands-on experience in digital library foundations such as scanning and metadata creation to web development. Building on these skills, students will learn the basics of working with plain text files, CSV data, Markdown, Jekyll, Git, GitHub, and GitHub Pages in order to create and customize their very own digital collection. By the end of this course, students will have gained the knowledge and independence necessary to implement CollectionBuilder in contexts that include creating and disseminating research collections and custom digital exhibits, or teaching digital libraries in the classroom. This is a hands-on course that will cover basics of digitization, metadata, and web programming fundamentals. No programming experience is necessary, although you should have a strong interest to learn! Participants are asked to bring their own computers. All software used in the course is free, open source, and cross platform and will be installed during class time. Optionally, participants are invited to bring along a small collection of physical items to digitize, digital files (images, pdfs, audio) to feature in a digital collection, or metadata exported from an existing collection hosted on CONTENTdm.

This offering is co-sponsored by U Idaho Libraries.

Related Materials: earlier syllabus and supporting materials; instructor biographies

This course combines lecture, seminar, and hands-on activities. This course will complement “[Foundations] Digitisation Fundamentals and their Application,” “Creating LAMP Infrastructure for Digital Humanities Projects,” “[Foundations] Developing a Digital Project (With Omeka),” and can be built on by “The Frontend: Modern JavaScript & CSS Development.”

#27 Digital Storytelling

Richard Snyder
Course description

          [This offering is full (26 February 2024)]

This course explores the combination/collision/collusion of storytelling techne with digital media to prompt storytelling projects as Digital Humanities scholarship, teaching, and creative practices.

The course will begin with an overview of traditional storytelling frameworks, asking how these various approaches to storytelling might be paired with and/or enhanced by a variety of digital media, including web design, video, audio, data-based, and ludic (game) storytelling. We will also discuss project planning/management for digital storytelling projects. Richard will then lead workshops on basic media integration for the web and choice-based storytelling with Twine. Twine is a digital storytelling format that builds on hypertext and includes ludic elements. We’ll discuss non-trivial work required of the user in ergodic media, as well as nonlinearity and multilinearity and some basic principles of game design.

The latter third of the course is reserved for the development and support of students’ specific project ideas and goals.

This course will make use of both Slack and Basecamp. At week’s end, participants are invited to show and discuss with other course participants their digital storytelling project, which may be in the form of a conceptual framework, a working prototype, or more.

This offering is co-sponsored by The Electronic Literature Organization.

Related Materials: earlier syllabus and supporting materials; instructor biographies

This course combines lecture, seminar, and hands-on activities, as well as a self-directed component. Consider this offering in complement with, and / or to be built on by: Introduction to Electronic Literature in DH: Research and Practice; Advanced Criticism and Authoring of Electronic Literature; Games for Digital Humanists; Sound and Digital Humanities; Introduction to Computation for Literary Criticism; and more!

#28 Agile Project Management

James Smith
Course description

          [This offering is two thirds full (13 May 2024)]

Agile project management is about negotiating the completion of a project from beginning to end while remaining flexible. Being patient and delaying decisions until you have to make them, gathering as much information as you can in the meantime, and then taking action with the information you have, always keeping alternatives in mind in case your first plan of action doesn’t pan out. Just as a fighter shifts from foot to foot to be ready to counter a punch, the agile project manager constantly considers shifts to accommodate any changes in the project’s environment. But it’s about more than just negotiating within the rules. It’s about changing the rules of the game to better ensure a successful project.

Related Materials: earlier syllabus and supporting materials; instructor biographies

This course combines lecture, discussion, and hands-on activities. Consider this offering in complement with: Making Choices About Your Data; Developing a Digital Project (With Omeka); Project Management in the Humanities; Conceptualising and Creating a Digital Edition; and more.

#29 Modeling Texts and Maps with Semantic Annotation

Chiara Palladino and Shai Gordin
Course description

          [Please look for this offering in the future!]

In this course, we will give an overview on one of the most important practices in Digital Humanities, the digital mapping of texts, and expand on the use of semantic annotation as a particular method for the collection of unstructured information from literary and visual sources. Participants will experiment with various methods for modeling and visualization of data, such as the use of folksonomic vocabularies, external schemas, Linked Open Data, and network visualization. In the exercise part of the course, participants will be able to look into the various tools, and create mini-projects using Recogito. Then, we will work together in a structured discussion of the results from the practical work, exploring how textual and cartographic information can be represented through different media, and what one can learn about the interpretative process of critical mapping, geographical re-contextualisation, and the modeling of ambiguity in textual research.

Related Materials: earlier syllabus and supporting materials; instructor biographies

This course combines lecture and hands-on activities. Consider this offering in complement with: Geographical Information Systems in the Digital Humanities; Digital Storytelling; Visualizing Information: Where Data Meets Design; Creating LAMP Infrastructure for Digital Humanities Projects; Digital Fictions, Electronic Literature, Literary Gaming; and more!

#30 Code the X-Files using the XML Family of Languages

Elisa Beshero-Bondar and David Birnbaum
Course description

          [This offering is two thirds full (13 May 2024)]

This class teaches you how to navigate and process XML using tools designed for the purpose–XSLT, XQuery, and Schematron. We cover these together as members of the same XML family, sharing a common syntax in XPath. New and experienced coders of XML will benefit alike from this course, whether just beginning a project or seeking to update and refresh skills. Our goals are 1) to share strategies for systematically building archives and databases, and 2) to increase participants’ confidence and fluency in extracting information coded in XML in those archives and databases. XPath is the center of the course, but we will show you how it applies in multiple XML processing contexts so that you learn how these work similarly and how these are used, respectively, to validate documents and to transform them for publication and other reuse. We’ll apply XPath to check for accuracy of text encoding–to write schema rules to manage your coding (or your project team’s coding).

You’ll practice and gain fluency in writing XPath expressions and patterns, including sequence expressions, regular expressions, datatypes, predicates, operators, and functions (from the core library and user-defined). We’ll write XPath to calculate how frequently you’ve marked a certain phenomenon, or locate which names of people are mentioned together in the same chapter, paragraph, sentence, stanza, or annotation. You’ll learn how XPath can help you to build exciting visualizations from XML code (such as to make a chart like a timeline or a network graph). Whether you are an XML beginner or a more experienced coder, you’ll find that strengthened skills in XPath and the XML family will help you with systematic encoding, document processing, and project management.

Related Materials: earlier related course syllabus and supporting materials (large document); instructor biographies

This is a hands-on course. Consider this offering in complement with, and / or to be built on by: Text Encoding Fundamentals and their Application, Out-of-the-Box Text Analysis for the Digital Humanities, Text Processing – Techniques & Traditions, XML Applications for Historical and Literary Research; Parsing and Writing XML with Python; and more! No advanced knowledge of XML processing is necessary but those with interests in document processing who have taken Digital Documentation and Imaging for Humanists; Advanced TEI Concepts / TEI Customization; A Collaborative Approach to XSLT; or Geographical Information Systems in the Digital Humanities will certainly benefit.

#31 Using Digital Games as Critical Methods of Intervention, Advocacy, and Activism in Humanities Scholarship

Jon Saklofske
Course description

          [Please look for this offering in the future!]

Digital games are often studied as texts, as objects of research. However, given that games can function as simulations, models, arguments, and creative collaboratories, game-based inquiry can be used as a method of humanities research, communication, and pedagogy, and can also function as a political intervention into humanities theories and practices. Merging these two approaches, this course explores how simple game environments and tools can be used to encourage builders, players, and publics to pursue broader social, cultural, and interpersonal understandings. Understanding digital games through factors such as computational bias, disruptive and interactive play, ethics, complicity, and user awareness, participants in this course will approach games as methods of critical intervention, advocacy, and activism. In particular, participants will learn ways that game experiences can be used as tools that disrupt and defamiliarize research, reporting, teaching, spaces, objects, purposes, embodiment, and habits of perception and practice. Course outcomes will involve exploring existing examples, discussing realistic design, development, and outcome logistics, critically reflecting on the implications of game-based engagement, and working towards the creation of individual prototypes (which need not be exclusively digital).

Related Materials: earlier syllabus and supporting materials (large document); instructor biographies

This course combines lecture, seminar, and hands-on activities. Consider this offering to build on: Race, Social Justice, and DH; Intersectional Feminist Digital Humanities; Pedagogy of the Digitally Oppressed; Queer Digital Humanities; Accessibility & Digital Environments; Critical Pedagogy and Digital Praxis; Engaging Play/Playing to Engage; Digital Storytelling; Digital Fictions, Electronic Literature, Literary Gaming; and more.

#32 eTextBook Publishing and Open Educational Resources

Olin Bjork and Inba Kehoe
Course description

          [Please look for this offering in the future!]

This hands-on course is for those who want to author or compile an eTextbook or Open Educational Resource (OER) that is multimodal, interactive, and usable on mobile phones and tablets as well as laptops and desktops. Course topics include obtaining and remixing content from OER; integrating and synchronizing multimedia assets; applying principles of accessibility, universal design, and learning science; licensing and copyrighting; choosing the right formats and distribution channels; and using eTextbooks and OER for pedagogical purposes such as student empowerment, engagement, and co-creation.

Related Materials: earlier syllabus and supporting materials; instructor biographies

This course combines presentation, discussion, and hands-on workshops. Consider this offering in complement with, and / or to be built on by: Conceptualising and Creating a Digital Edition; Digital Publishing in the Humanities; Open Access and Open Social Scholarship; and more!

#33 Teaching the Digital Humanities: Without a Budget

Helen Davies and Larry Eames
Course description

          [Please look for this offering in the future!]

This course is designed to help educators at institutions without a DH budget. This specifically considers educators at regional state schools, community colleges and other under-funded institutions and adjuncts, graduate students and other precarious members of our community. It is aimed at supporting those who desire to integrate DH into their classroom without institutional financial backing. This course will provide a brief overview of digital humanities technologies, how they can be integrated into the classroom, and why you would integrate them into a classroom. We will focus specifically on free or very low cost technologies that can be easily integrated into the classroom. The course aims to support classrooms and instructors which had not previously included significant DH content. This discussion will have two parts. One aspect will focus on finding free or low-budget DH solutions. The other part will be a discussion on how to gently ease students into these DH approaches and solutions touching on cross-campus partnerships that add depth to students’ understanding of the practical norms of the field. This part of the discussion will draw in particular on the collaborative experience of a librarian and an assistant professor.

Related Materials: earlier syllabus and supporting materials; instructor biographies

#34 Text Processing – Techniques & Traditions

John Maxwell
Course description

          [This offering is half full (13 May 2024)]

This course provides a practical introduction to the accumulated wealth of text processing tactics and strategies that underpin much digital humanities practice. Methods like text analysis, TEI encoding, programming and scripting all rely on underlying systems, interfaces, and paradigms for dealing with digital text, some of which are many decades old. This course asks: Why are the tools we use the way they are, and why are they not otherwise? Over the week we’ll look at a range of basic tools and toolkits — from the command line and Unix tools through XML and JSON — and explore methods for making text processes more efficient and more convivial. We’ll consider these systems in the context of the cultural histories of computing and publishing technology from which they arise. Participants should bring a laptop and an article or other body of text to work with over the week.

This offering is co-sponsored by Publishing@SFU.

Related Materials: earlier syllabus and supporting materials; instructor biographies

This course combines lecture, seminar, and hands-on activities. Consider this offering in complement with: Online Collaborative Scholarship: Principles and Practices (A CWRCShop); Web Development for Beginners, with Ruby on Rails; Creating LAMP Infrastructure for Digital Humanities Projects; [Foundations] Fundamentals of Programming/Coding for Human(s|ists); Regular Expressions; and more!

#35 DH for Librarians

Leigh Bonds and John Russell
Course description

          [This offering is almost full (13 May 2024)]

This course will focus on the processes and methods of digital humanities and how they intersect with librarianship practice. We will start by considering big picture questions: how have librarians approached “doing DH” and “supporting DH” in libraries, what has the practice of DH librarianship been, and what could the future of DH in libraries be? From there, we will survey different aspects of DH in librarianship in more detail, including assessment and strategic planning, reference and consultation, instruction, project management, and collaborative partnerships. Along the way, we will explore key resources, methods, and tools, as well as threshold concepts, data literacy, and relationships to other parts of academic libraries.

Related Materials:  instructor biographies

This course combines lecture, seminar, and hands-on activities.  Consider this offering to be built on by and/or in complement with other offerings that speak to elements of librarianship practice.

#36 Conceptualizing and Creating a Digital Edition

Katie Blizzard, Christopher Ohge, Victoria Sciancalepore, and Serenity Sutherland
Course description

          [This offering is half full (13 May 2024)]

This course will explore all aspects of conceptualizing, planning for, and creating a digital edition. It provides a basic introduction to the various types of digital editions, the practice of editing in the digital age, and a survey of the many digital tools available to serve project goals. Approaching a digital edition means taking time to think about how end-users will want to work with a particular edition. Beginning with the research and analytical needs of end-users in mind, editors are better able to develop effective editorial strategies that will result in a dynamic, useful, and usable, digital edition. In this course, participants will engage in hands-on learning and group discussions related to project conceptualization, editorial policies and processes, and the selection and use of digital tools that can serve the needs of researchers and other end-users. Participants will bring a few sample materials they are working with. We will use these in a class project – creating a digital edition over the course of the week using skills learned in each session. Our goal is for participants to return to their home institutions ready and able to build upon, enhance, and transform these initial ideas into robust digital editions.

This offering is co-sponsored by the Center for Digital Editing at UVa.

Related Materials: earlier syllabus and supporting materials; instructor biographies

This course combines lecture and hands-on activities. Consider this offering to build on: Digitisation Fundamentals and their Application; Understanding the Pre-Digital Book. Consider this offering in complement with and / or to be built on by: Digital Documentation and Imaging for Humanists; Pragmatic Publishing Workflows; XPath for Processing XML and Managing Projects; and more!

#37 Web APIs with Python

Stephen Zweibel, Patrick Smyth, Filipa Calado, and others
Course description

          [This offering is almost full (13 May 2024)]

This course is aimed at humanities scholars interested in tapping into the data streams and functionality offered by platforms and content providers such as Twitter, Google, and the New York Times. Introduction to APIs will open with the basics of Python, a scripting language widely used in industry and the academy because of its human readability. We will proceed to the fundamentals of working with Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), the most common way to programatically access web-based services and data. Lessons will cover the fundamentals of programming, the workflow of building a small script/app, accessing data from a variety of sources, and reading technical documentation. The course will be useful for those interested in understanding programming concepts, developing applications, and working with data.

Related Materials: earlier syllabus and supporting materials; instructor biographies

This is a hands-on course. Consider this offering in complement with Fundamentals of Programming/Coding for Human(s|ists); CloudPowering DH Research; Practical Software Development for Nontraditional Digital Humanities Developers; Introduction to Data for Digital Humanities Projects; Text Analysis with Python and the Natural Language ToolKit; and more!

#38 Cybersecurity for Humanists

Aaron Mauro
Course description

          [Please look for this offering in the future!]

University researchers are facing increasingly sophisticated security threats. Cyber security attacks against education and research sectors are growing faster than any other sector. Digital Humanities has brought historical and cultural research to a public audience like never before, thanks in large part to the web. Archives and applications are making rarefied cultural objects available almost anywhere on the globe, but they are also now exposed to risks associated with any online activity. This course will introduce attendees to many security best practices and policies by conducting a holistic risk assessment. We will rely on open standards like those produced by Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP), the US National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Cybersecurity Framework (NIST CSF), and the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) Cyber Essentials tool kit. During the course of the week, we will develop a threat model for your project, lab, or centre. We will work to identify ways to limit your project’s attack surface and generate custom research security policies for you and your collaborators. This session will help you develop a security-first research practice that protects the safety of your data, your researchers, and your research subjects. A security-first research practice helps ensure data integrity for your project in a global political climate that can be antagonistic or even hostile to humanities research.

Related Materials: earlier syllabus and supporting materials; instructor biographies

This is a hands-on course with some lecture components. Consider this offering to be built on by and/or in complement with Race, Social Justice, and DH: Applied Theories and Methods, Intersectional Feminist Digital Humanities: Theoretical, Social, and Material Engagements, DH For Department Chairs and Deans, Introduction to Project Planning and Management for DH: Issues and Approaches, Pedagogy of the Digitally Oppressed: Anti-Colonial DH Critiques & Praxis, and more!

#39 Open Knowledge in Wikipedia and Beyond: Possibilities and Responsibilities

Nastasia Herold
Course description

          [Please look for this offering in the future!]

In this course, we will work on the definition of Open Knowledge and its commonalities, differences and relationship to Open Access and Open Data. We look through non-profit projects of Wikimedia and through other academic and non-academic projects, by focusing on technological, collaborative, legal and ethical questions.

Whereas legal and technological restrictions, and collaborative methods are mostly well defined by laws, user guidelines and the current state of the art, social restrictions often seem to be open to interpretation. We will find and discuss guidelines to let ethical questions find access into the guidelines of Open Access projects. There will also be room to discuss your own Open Knowledge projects, based on what we learnt, if you want to share them with the class. This course is aimed at students, academic stuff, non-academic and academic archivists and librarians, community members and anyone else with an interest in ethical, legal, collaborative and technological questions about Open Knowledge.

Related Materials: earlier syllabus and supporting materials; instructor biographies

This course combines lecture, seminar, and hands-on activities. Consider this offering to build on most other DHSI offerings that have a focus on open knowledge, such as Open-Assembly Teaching, Making, and Publishing: COVE Editions and Studio, Social Knowledge Creation / Construction, and beyond.

#40 Making Connections: The Semantic Web for Humanities Scholars

Susan Brown, Kim Martin, and Diane Jakacki
Course description

          [Please look for this offering in the future!]

This course will offer an intensive, hands-on starting point for mobilizing your data in the form of Linked Open Data (LOD) to contribute to the Semantic Web using the suite of tools supported or hosted by Linked Infrastructure for Networked Cultural Scholarship (LINCS). This workshop offers a series of modules that will introduce participants to working with LOD, from workflows for data cleaning, creation, and publication to interacting with LOD through various interfaces for browsing, querying, and visualization. A conceptual overview of LOD will be followed by a combination of shared and modular sessions focused on various aspects of the creation and use of semantic web data. The modular sessions will allow participants to focus on areas of interest or need, including ones related specifically to creating LOD from structured data (spreadsheets/databases), XML including TEI, or natural language, each led by members of the LINCS team.

Those interested in gaining a sense of the pragmatics and workflows associated with creating LOD, those using LINCS tools independently, and those contemplating publishing through LINCS, will benefit from this workshop. Participants are invited to bring content they are interested in mobilizing in the form of an essay, article, primary text for editing; XML (e.g. TEI or MODS); or a spreadsheet or CSV file, but sample data will be provided for those without their own datasets. Attention will be given throughout to scholarly perspectives on Linked Open Data and the challenges and opportunities it poses for humanities scholars as far as modeling, context, nuance, and honouring difference and specificity are concerned. Watch out for a short survey about your interests and data in advance of the workshops.

Topics include: LOD fundamentals, projects, and tools; ontologies and vocabularies; data preparation, cleanup, and reconciliation; getting going with the SPARQL query language; exploring, refining, and creating data; moving LOD between tools; structured data conversion; leveraging TEI to create LOD; and NLP tools for data linking.

Recommended: prior introduction to Linked Open Data and the Semantic Web, either through the Week 1 course or through working through training materials on the LINCS site: https://lincsproject.ca/docs/get-started/linked-open-data-basics.

Related Materials: instructor biographies

This course combines lecture, seminar, and hands-on formats. Consider this offering in relation to the following. Predecessors: Linked Open Data and the Semantic Web; Making Choices About Your Data; Race, Social Justice, and DH: Applied Theories and Methods (good for evaluating the vocabularies that we find); Feminist Digital Humanities: Theoretical, Social, and Material Engagements (good for evaluating vocabularies that we find); Queer Digital Humanities: Intersections, Interrogations, Iterations (good for evaluating vocabularies that we find); Databases for Digital Humanists; Fundamentals of Programming/Coding for Human(s|ists). Successors: Introduction to Network Analysis in the Digital Humanities; Ethical Data Visualization: Taming Treacherous Data; Web APIs with Python; Information Security for Digital Researchers; Introduction to IIIF: Sharing, Consuming, and Annotating the World’s Images. Peers: Open Access and Open Social Scholarship; Endings: How to end (and archive) your digital project; XPath for Processing XML and Managing Projects; Agile Project Management. And more!

#41 DIY Computational Text Analysis with R

Joanna Byszuk and Jeremi Ochab
Course description

          [This offering is two thirds full (13 May 2024)]

This is an intermediate-level course in computational text analysis, building on our experience of teaching stylometry, i.e. the analysis of countable linguistic features of texts. While stylometry has been usually associated with authorship attribution, the same methods are successfully applied to more general text analysis, and, recently, even analysis of other modes such as music and image. The statistics of even such simple features as word, word n-gram or character n-gram frequencies are not only a highly precise tool for identifying authorship but can reveal patterns of similarity and difference between groups of works, individual works or specific voices within them, such as idiolects of characters in novels, between works by one author or various authors or translators, finally between works differing in terms of chronology, genre or narrative styles, etc. The results of computational text analysis can be compared and confronted with the findings of traditional studies, opening a new set of questions about style and its transfer, as well as the nature of particular features and language.

Our course focuses more on methods than tools, aiming to help participants build the knowledge and skills required to identify the problem, define relevant research questions and apply the right method, and finally, to design and complete their own experiments from corpus building to interpretation of results. Participants will learn how to use major modern stylometric methods in a reliable and reproducible manner, from simple keyword extraction and feature selection and analysis to supervised and unsupervised machine learning based on text features, followed by visualization techniques ranging from PCA and dendrograms to networks. The software used can easily be installed and run on participants’ own computers. Participants will learn how to use R package ‘stylo’ developed by our research group, and how to go beyond the graphical user interface by running snippets of code we prepared. While we do not expect the participants to have strong programming skills, having a basic understanding of running and reading code can improve the course experience and allow the participants to benefit more from the course. We will provide text corpora to use for training purposes but also encourage participants to bring their own data and research problems to work on during the course.

This offering is co-sponsored by the Jagiellonian University’s Flagship Project “Digital Humanities Lab”.

Related Materials: earlier syllabus and supporting materials; instructor biographies

This course combines lectures and hands-on activities. Consider this offering to build on: Introduction to Computation for Literary Studies; Fundamentals of Programming for Human(s|ists); Out-of-the-Box Text Analysis for the Digital Humanities. Consider this offering in complement with and / or to be built on by: Databases for Humanists; Natural Language Processing with Python; NLP Coding Libraries and Network Analysis for Text Corpora; Code the X-Files using the XML Family of Languages; Text Processing – Techniques & Traditions; Deep Learning for Humanists; and more!

#42 Pedagogy of the Digitally Oppressed: Anti-Colonial DH Critiques & Praxis

Ashley Caranto Morford, Arun Jacob, and Kush Patel
Course description

          [This offering is half full (13 May 2024)]

What is our ethical imperative as teachers and scholars in the digital and public humanities? How might we identify and address the colonial histories, legacies, and discursive practices pervading the contemporary technoscape and our departmental curricula? How might we hone our individual and collective capacities to sustain communities of care and transform oppressive structures of knowledge-making in the neoliberal academy? Through engaging with and reflecting on these critical questions, this weeklong course invites scholars, creative practitioners, and off-campus community members to develop collective strategies for refusing the damaging colonialities of teaching, learning, and research practices. As co-participants, we will foreground an ethic of care and community building in identifying tactics that we can share and act upon to challenge and transform colonial ideologies and systems embedded within the increasingly interdisciplinary practices of digital humanities. Building upon Paulo Freire’s writings on the pedagogy of the oppressed and aligning with Global South, Indigenous, Black, and women of colour feminist, queer, and crip justice work, we will imagine and continue the ongoing process of bringing into being the anti-colonial possibilities of classroom teaching for a bolder and more affirming environment for digital humanists inside and outside the academy.

Related Materials: earlier syllabus and supporting materials; instructor biographies

This course has both seminar and hands-on components. Consider this offering to build on these other DHSI offerings: Race, Social Justice, and DH; Intersectional Feminist Digital Humanities; De-Colonizing Cultural Territories Online: Spatial DH Through Web Analytics and Mapping; Queer Digital Humanities; Surveillance and the Critical Digital Humanities; and more!

#43 Deep Learning for Humanists

Hoyeol Kim
Course description

          [Please look for this offering in the future!]

This hands-on course will introduce neural networks, image preprocessing, and deep learning models for those who wish to explore deep learning for the digital humanities. This course will first focus on learning activation functions, loss functions, and gradient descent, then explore image processing and deep learning models. After that, we will train GANs (Generative Adversarial Networks) and cGANs (conditional Generative Adversarial Networks) models to colorize black-and-white images. Throughout this course, participants will be able to create their own datasets for deep learning then run deep learning models with them.

Related Materials: earlier syllabus and supporting materials; instructor biographies

This course combines lecture, seminar, and hands-on activities.  Consider this offering to be built on by and/or in complement with other offerings that speak to related areas such as Databases for Humanists, Critical Making as Scholarship, Natural Language Processing with Python, Linked Open Data and the Semantic Web, Modeling Texts and Maps with Semantic Annotation, Making Connections: The Semantic Web for Humanities Scholars, and others.