Sample Syllabi: Digital Humanities
DIGITAL HUMANITIES
A. COURSE DESCRIPTION
This course provides an introduction to digital media and its impact on the humanities. Students will be introduced to issues
such as intellectual property, collaborative work, and building an audience for public history projects. Students will build technological skills by using blog, curatorial, and documentary tools. We will collaboratively design a digital exhibit around the collection of a community partner for a general audience.
B. ASSIGNMENTS
- 10% Attendance and Participation
- 20% Digital Source Review: During Week 4, chose three public history sites to review. Create an assessment rubric to measure the effectiveness of each site and submit a 3-5 page paper describing how you chose your measurements, the organization of each site, and its effectiveness. See the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media for resources, http://chnm.gmu.edu/teaching-and-learning/.
- 20% Personal Blog and Comments: Each week, you will post a short blog
reflecting on your choice of the week’s a) reading, b) assignment, or c) a
current topic related to the digital humanities. In your last blog post,
reflect on the use of blogging for humanities work. You are also
responsible for following your classmates’ blogs and commenting or linking
to their posts.
- 30% Final Site: During this course, we will collectively curate a webpage based on either a university collection or a community partner’s holdings. Examples include a an online
exhibit of images with metadata, a podcast, map, or short documentary video using the collection. You will present your exhibit for feedback from your classmates, a campus librarian, and our archival partner. In a short reflection paper (1-2 pgs), you will outline the feedback you received and how you addressed suggestions.
C. REQUIRED TEXTS
Course Reader
Bauerlein, Mark (ed.). The Digital Divide: Arguments for and Against Facebook, Google, Texting, and the Age of Social Networking. Tarcher, 2011.
Cohen, David and Rosenzweig. Digital History: A Guide to Gathering, Preserving, and Presenting the Past on the Web. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005. EBook available at http://chnm.gmu.edu/digitalhistory/book.php.
Turkle, Sherry. Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other. Basic Books, 2012.
Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. NYU Press, 2008.
Knowles, Anne Kelly. Placing History: How Maps, Spatial Data, and GIS are Changing Historical Scholarship. ESRI Press, 2008.
D. READING SCHEDULE
WEEK ONE. INTRODUCTION
Introductions, course overview, wiki page set-up.
Grove, Tim. “New Media and the Challenges for
Public History.” Perspectives on History. May 2009. http://www.historians.org/perspectives/issues/2009/0905/0905for4.cfm
Kirschenbaum, Matthew G. “What is Digital
Humanities and What’s It Doing in English Departments?” ADE Bulletin,
Number 150, 2010. 1-7.
Cohen, Daniel et al. “Interchange: The
Promise of Digital History.” Journal of American History. Vol. 95 No. 2.
September 2008.
Case Studies: George Mason’s Center
for History and New Media, and the University of Virginia’s Virginia Center for Digital
History
WEEK TWO. CONVERGENCE CULTURE
Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. NYU Press,
2008.
WEEK THREE. “CAN WE USE WIKIPEDIA?”
Corley, Julie. “Can the Web Really Do It All? Perceptions of Historical Research on the Internet.” The Public Historian, Vol. 20, No. 1 (Winter, 1998), 49-57.
Drucker, Johanna. “Humanities Approaches to
Graphical Display.” Digital Humanities Quarterly. Volume 5, Number 1,
2011.
Kirk, Elizabeth. "Evaluating Information Found on the Internet.” John Hopkins University, 1996. http://guides.library.jhu.edu/print_content.php?pid=198142&sid=1657518&mode=g
Pariser, Eli. Beware Online “Filter Bubbles.” TED Talk. March 2011. http://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles.html
WEEK FOUR. DIGITAL STORYTELLING
Cohen, David and Rosenzweig. Digital History: A Guide to Gathering, Preserving, and Presenting the Past on the Web. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005. EBook available at http://chnm.gmu.edu/digitalhistory/book.php.
WEEK FIVE. REPRESENTATION AND CURATION
Knowles, Anne Kelly. Placing History: How Maps, Spatial Data, and GIS are Changing Historical Scholarship. ESRI Press, 2008.
WEEK SIX. WEB PUBLISHING
Cummings, Alex Sayf and Jarrett, Jonathan. “Only Typing? Informal Writing, Blogging, and
the Academy.” Writing History in the Digital Age. Spring 2012,
Cohen, D. (2008, February 20). Introducing Omeka. Dan Cohen's Digital Humanities Blog.
Retrieved September 22, 2009, from http://www.dancohen.org/2008/02/20/introducing-omeka/.
Kucsma, Jason, Reiss, Kevin, and Sidman, Angela. “Using Omeka to Build Digital Collections: The METRO Case Study.” D-Lib Magazine: The Magazine of Digital Library Research. Volume 16, Number 3/4. March/ April 2010.
Review: http://omeka.org/codex/Documentation
Case Study: OMEKA http://omeka.org/showcase/
WEEK SEVEN. METADATA AND ORAL HISTORY
2012.
“Metadata Dictionary.” Bracero Oral History Project. Center for History and New Media,
2012. http://braceroarchive.org/resources. View video tutorials.
Case Study: Bracero Oral History Project.
WEEK EIGHT. INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY AND COPYRIGHT
Boyle, James and Jenkins, Jennifer. “Tales from the Public Domain: Bound By Law?” Center for the Study of the Public Domain. Duke University.
Howard, Jennifer. “What you Don’t Know About Copyrights, but Should.” Chronicle of Higher Education. May 29, 2011.
Case Study: Creative Commons, Sound Cloud, Zotero
WEEK NINE. SOCIAL NETWORKING
Bauerlein, Mark (ed.). The Digital Divide: Arguments for and Against Facebook, Google, Texting, and the Age of Social Networking. Tarcher, 2011.
Whitson, Roger T. “The Ins and Outs of a Professional Academic Website.” Blog post February 7, 2012.
Case Study: What is your web presence? Personal Academic Website
WEEK TEN. BUILDING AN AUDIENCE WITH MEDIA
Case Study: Building a Trailer, Twitter, and Facebook
WEEK ELEVEN. COLLABORATION
Carpio, Genevieve, Luk, Sharon and Bush, Adam. “Building People’s Histories: Graduate Student Teaching and Undergraduate Education.” Journal of American History. Forthcoming March 2013.
Bunker, Geri and Zick, Greg. “Collaboration as a Key to Digital Library Development: High Performance Image Management at the University of Washington.” D-Lib Magazine: The Magazine of Digital Library Research. Volume 5 Issue 3. March 1999.
Spiro, Lisa. “This is Why We Fight? Defining the Values of the Digital Humanities.” Debates in the Digital Humanities. 2012. 16-35
WEEK TWELVE. WORKSHOP AND TROUBLE SHOOTING
Collections, 2010.
Case Study: Your site! Today you will have time to workshop your portion of our shared site.
Bring your materials, questions, and tips.
WEEK THIRTEEN. PRESENTATIONS
WEEK FOURTEEN. CONCLUSIONS
WEEK FIFTEEN