Syllabus & Course Readings
ILS 657 Fall 2015
Instructor: Dr. Tassie Gniady,
Cyberinfrastructure for Digital Humanities Manager, Research Technologies, UITS
ctgniady@iu.edu
Office Hours: Thursdays, 10:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m., Scholars Commons
Course Description: Digital Humanities has been at the center of a lot of press lately: humanities disciplines see it opening new ways to study their subjects; libraries are able to make preservation, access, and delivery decisions with a suite of new tools available to them; the general public is able to see more of the work that goes on in institutions as projects are made available on the web. However, this new style of scholarship and democratization of access is not without its conflicts: there has been pushback from feminists and POC—who see DH as inheriting the values of a world of hard and software that is traditionally male, traditionally white, and traditionally hierarchal—and even traditional scholars—who see themselves as being “forced” to use computing in their work. In this course we will study the origins of Digital Humanities, some of the issues surrounding it, and ultimately how to do responsible, exciting work in the field.
Computer/Software Usage: While most assignments may be completed on the Macs in the lab, there are times when having access to a PC upon which you have admin privileges will make your life much easier. Similarly, there are software packages you may be required to install or familiarize yourself with ahead of class. Classes for which this is true will be marked with an asterisk.
Canvas: The syllabus, class assignments, and announcements, will be made available in Canvas [canvas.iu.edu]. Updates to the class schedule or assignments will always be announced in class and posted in Canvas.
Scalar: Together, we will be constructing a course book in Scalar (http://scalar.usc.edu/). The version we will be using is in beta-testing, so we will learn about helping another group launch and debug in real time.
Assignments:
Assignment | Points (out of 1000) | Due Date |
Social Media Reporting | 100 | List of those you are following, September 9; Report, November 12 |
Data Set Description + Phase 1 | 50 | September 17 |
Data Set Phase 2 | 50 | October 6 |
Scalar Contributions | 200 | Ongoing |
Final Project Proposal | 100 | October 21 |
Wikipedia Edit-a-thon | 100 | October 19 |
Final Project | 400 | December 10 |
Data Set
We will have lab assignments most weeks. To facilitate these exercises and to give you raw material for final projects, you will assemble a dataset focused on a particular topic. We will be working with the Humanities Information course, and you will be paired with a student from that class who will become your Humanities Librarian consultant. S/he will help you to find materials for your dataset.
Below are the minimum requirements:
- A digital text corpus of at least 400,00-500,000 words (submit as .txt or XML files). You may build a collection of novels, poems, historical documents, social media feeds, song lyrics, etc. Some sources to mine include:
- An image collection of at least 25 digital images
- A spreadsheet with 50 rows with columns for “event,” “date,” "location," and geographic coordinates (lat, long).
You may supplement these minimum requirements with other data: audio, video, etc.
For example, a dataset might consist of the works of Mary Wollstonecraft, who wrote about women’s rights, the French revolution, travel, conduct, and other myriad topics. You might focus on the travel narrative and images in the dataset might include paintings and illustrations of the places mentioned. The spreadsheet would then focus on the dates/places/events in the narrative. Your Humanities Librarian Consultant will also be doing assignments based on this material, so use this resource to its fullest extent!
Description
During the third week of class (September 10) you will begin to write a page in our Scalar book that:
- provides an overview of the topic of your dataset
Phase 1 of your dataset will be due on September 17. Phase 1 includes:
- a text upon which you want to focus
- 10 geographic locations related to the text for use in our mapping class meeting
- *10 images that go along with those geographic locations (remember they must in the public domain) (NB: ideal, but not necessary)
Phase 2
By October 6 you will add language to the Scalar page that
- explains your rationale for assembling the materials
- discusses what you have already learned about the data through the process of finding and gathering materials with your Humanities Librarian Consultant
- discusses the sources of your materials
- a Canvas submission that will include a link to a zip or tar archive of the data (which should be distributed in non-proprietary formats (e.g. plain text, XML, TIFF, PNG, CSV, etc.).
Social Media Reporting
Much of the scholarly discourse in the digital humanities occurs in social media sites and people via outlets such as blogs and Twitter. As part of our course, you are asked to follow and report on some of these conversations. Over the course of the semester you must follow at least three active blogs (one or more posts per month) and four active Twitter feeds (multiple tweets per day).
By the end of class on September 10th, you should have posted a list (with names and links) of the 3 blogs and 4 Twitter feeds you are following this semester, along with remarks about how/why you chose this group (it needs to be mixed: not all one gender, not all people at large universities, people from various ethnic backgrounds--ask for suggestions!). You will create a page in our class Scalar book and post this material there. If you would It would be best to show up with a rough draft of your post written in the word processing application of your choice.
Later in the semester you will post a 750-1000 word discussion in our Scalar book about what you've learned from following these social media outlets and how they have influenced your thinking about the topics of our course.
Wikipedia Edit-a-thon
You will choose an article that dovetails with the subject of your final project. I will help you with the visual editor, but there will be a video to watch ahead of time about why getting more people from different backgrounds involved in Wikipedia matters. We will have a collaborative edit-a-thon the week of October 19th with the Humanities Information course.
Final Project
As part of this course you will develop a digital humanities project. Throughout the semester we will see many examples of the different types of projects done in digital humanities. Some possibilities include:
- A digital edition of a shorter text or collection of short texts.
- A visualization of humanities texts or data.
- A computational analysis of humanities texts or data.
- An interpretive and analytical temporal and/or spatial exhibit.
- An online thematic research collection, which might combine many of the above elements.
Schedule
August 27 (Week 1): Introductions (Scalar)
- Course Overview, Assignments & Activities, Final Project
- Introduction to Scalar
- The Knotted Line
- FemTechNet Critical Race and Ethnic Studies Pedagogy Workshop
September 3 (Week 2): What is DH, what is its history?
- Kirschenbaum, Matthew. G. (2010). “What is digital humanities and what’s it doing in English departments?” ADE Bulletin 150, 55–61. Retrieved from http://bit.ly/WK6Qos
- Terras, Melissa. (2012). “Infographic: Quantifying Digital Humanities.” Retrieved from http://melissaterras.blogspot.com/2012/01/infographic-quanitifying-digital.html
- Liu, Alan. 2013. “From Reading to Social Computing.” Literary Studies in the Digital Age: An Evolving Anthology. Retrieved from https://dlsanthology.commons.mla.org/from-reading-to-social-computing/.
- Gold, Matthew. 2015. “Facts, Patterns, Methods, Meaning: Public Knowledge Building in the Digital Humanities.” Retrieved from http://blog.mkgold.net/2015/04/20/facts-patterns-methods-meaning-public-knowledge-building-in-the-digital-humanities/.
September 10 (Week 3): Perspectives (Wikipedia)
- Posner, Miriam. 2015 What’s next: the radical unrealized potential of digital humanities.” Keynote at the Keystone Digital Humanities Conference. Retrieved from http://miriamposner.com/blog/whats-next-the-radical-unrealized-potential-of-digital-humanities/. (Chelsea)
- LA la la
- Ramsay, Stephen. “Who’s In and Who’s Out.” (David) Also, “On Building.” (Abby) Read both posts and comments. Retrieved from http://stephenramsay.us/text/2011/01/08/whos-in-and-whos-out/ and http://stephenramsay.us/text/2011/01/11/on-building/.
- Fish, Stanley. “The Digital Humanities and the Transcending of Mortality”. (Erin)
- Wadewitz, Adrianne. 2013. “Wikipedia’s gender gap and the complicated reality of systemic gender bias.” Retrieved from https://www.hastac.org/blogs/wadewitz/2013/07/26/wikipedias-gender-gap-and-complicated-reality-systemic-gender-bias. (Erica)
September 17 (Week 4): Digital Humanities and Libraries (Omeka)
Guest Speaker: Adam Hochstetter
- Posner, Miriam. 2012. What are some challenges to doing DH in the library? Retrieved from http://miriamposner.com/blog/what-are-some-challenges-to-doing-dh-in-the-library/. Read both the post and the comments.
- Vandergrift, Micah. What is Digital Humanities and What’s it Doing in the Library? Retrieved from http://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2012/dhandthelib/.
- French, Amanda. 2013. “Introduction to Omeka—Lesson Plan.” Retrieved from: http://amandafrench.net/2013/11/12/introduction-to-omeka-lesson-plan/
September 24 (Week 5): Humanities Mapping
Guest Speaker: Theresa Quill
Please be sure to bring your spreadsheet of locations.
- Read around the “Map of Early Modern London.” Retrieved from https://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/index.htm.
- HASTAC Scholars Program. 2013. “Visualizing Geography: Maps, Place and Pedagogy.” Retrieved from https://www.hastac.org/initiatives/hastac-scholars/scholars-forums/visualizing-geography-maps-place-and-pedagogy.
- “Examples of Spatial Humanities Projects.” 2011. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/07/27/arts/spatial-maps.html?_r=0.
- CartoDB Acadaemby: http://academy.cartodb.com/
*October 1 (Week 6): Digital Publishing Part 2 (TEI)
Guest Speaker: John Walsh
Prior to class students should install Oxygen XML Editor on their personal machines. It is available for Mac and Windows on http://iuware.iu.edu/, under the “Development Tools” category.
Readings:
- TEI Consortium. A Gentle Introduction to XML.
- Renear, Allen H. Text Encoding.
- Willett, Perry. Electronic Texts: Audiences and Purposes
- Walsh. John. (2014). A brief introduction to Markup, Part 1 (video: about 15 minutes).
- Walsh. John. (2014). A brief introduction to Markup, Part 2 (video: about 14 minutes).
*October 8 (Week 7): Text Analysis (R: The Basics)
Come to class having already created a Karst account: https://kb.iu.edu/d/bezu.
Also download and install RStudio.
- Code and intro from Jockers, M. Text Analysis with R for Students of Literature, 2014. http://link.springer.com/book/10.1007%2F978-3-319-03164-4
- Clement, Tanya. 2013. “Text Analysis, Data Mining, and Visualizations in Literary Scholarship.” Literary Studies in the Digital Age: An Evolving Anthology. Retrieved from https://dlsanthology.commons.mla.org/text-analysis-data-mining-and-visualizations-in-literary-scholarship/. (Erin)
- Hoover, David. 2013. “Textual Analysis.” Literary Studies in the Digital Age: An Evolving Anthology. Retrieved from https://dlsanthology.commons.mla.org/textual-analysis/. (Chelsea)
- Torget, Andrew and Jon Christensen. 2012. “Mapping Texts: Visualizing American Historical Newspapers.” Journal of Digital Humanities, 1:3. Retrieved from http://journalofdigitalhumanities.org/1-3/mapping-texts-project-by-andrew-torget-and-jon-christensen/. (Abby)
- Whitmore, Michael. 2009. "Comic Twelfth Night, Tragic Othello." Retrieved from http://winedarksea.org/?p=228. (Tassie)
October 15 (Week 8): Text Analysis Redux (RStudio on Karst)
- Talk about previous week's readings!
- From an IU IP address, download the PDF of Text Analysis with R for Students of Literature: http://link.springer.com/book/10.1007%2F978-3-319-03164-4. This will be a handy reference.
October 19 (Monday): Wikipedia Edit-a-thon, 4p.m.-8p.m.
October 21: Final Project Proposals Due, 5 p.m.
October 22: No Class
October 29 (Week 10): Topic Modeling with R (RStudio)
- Follow the tutorials at http://www.indiana.edu/~cyberdh/wordpress/r-tutorials/.
- Zhao, Yanchang. 2014. “Text Mining with R – an Analysis of Twitter Data.” Retrieved from http://www.slideshare.net/rdatamining/text-mining-with-r-an-analysis-of-twitter-data.
- Brett, Megan R. 2012. “Topic Modeling: A Basic Introduction.” Journal of Digital Humanities 2:1. Retrieved from http://journalofdigitalhumanities.org/2-1/topic-modeling-a-basic-introduction-by-megan-r-brett/.
- Blei, David M. 2013. "Topic Modeling and Digital Humanities." Journal of Digital Humanities. Retrieved from: http://journalofdigitalhumanities.org/2-1/topic-modeling-and-digital-humanities-by-david-m-blei/
- Jockers, Matthew. 2011. “The LDA Buffet is now open; or, Latent Dirichlet Allocation for English Majors.” Retrieved from http://www.matthewjockers.net/2011/09/29/the-lda-buffet-is-now-open-or-latent-dirichlet-allocation-for-english-majors/.
Final Project Proposal due by Wednesday, October 14, 5 p.m.
November 5 (Week 11): Project Analysis and Intro to Network Analysis
- Weingart, Scott. 2011. “Demystifying Networks, Parts I & II.” Journal of Digital Humanities, 1:1. Retrieved from: http://journalofdigitalhumanities.org/1-1/demystifying-networks-by-scott-weingart/.
- “Cytoscape.” 2014. UCLA Center for Digital Humanities. Retrieved from http://dh101.humanities.ucla.edu/?page_id=165.
*November 12 (Week 12): Network Analysis & Social Media Reporting
Install Cytoscape on your personal computer.
This class, we will build on our network graphs and have social media reporting. No reading!
November 19 (Week 13): Digital Cultural Heritage (Photogrammetry)
You need to have completed two photo shoots: one of an IU statue assigned to you and another of an object of your choosing. Download Memento to upload photos and have them processed--you probably need to have them uploaded by Wednesday night at the latest for them to process by class on Thursday. See Canvas for shooting instructions and sample photos. You need to check out a DSLR camera from Digitization Services in the Scholars Commons--there is only one and you may have it for 24 hours. Plan accordingly. Please see Canvas assignment.
- Provide feedback on a faculty project in progress comparing two versions of a site. Email Word docs back to me by XXX.
- Frischer, Bernard. 2013. “Introduction with remarks on digital restoration of the Richmond Caligula and its methodological implications.” Retrieved from http://www.digitalsculpture.org/papers/frischer/frischer_paper.html.
- Weber, Gerhard. 2013. “Another link between archaeology and anthropology: Virtual anthropology.” Digital Applications in Archaeology and Cultural Heritage, 1:1. Retrieved from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212054813000027. (I'm assuming you googled for the correct article if you noticed that the link was incorrect before. It is correct now.)
- Konwest, Elizabeth and Stacie King. “Moving toward public archaeology in the Nejapa Valley of Oaxaca, Mexico. Retrieved from: http://www.indiana.edu/~anthro/people/faculty/king/KonwestandKing2012movingtowardpublicarchaeologyinthenejapaoaxaca.pdf.
November 26 (Week 14): Thanksgiving, NO CLASS
December 3 (Week 15): Project Workshop
December 10 (Week 16): Project Presentations
Final Project due by midnight
POLICIES
Grading Policy
The following definitions of letter grades have been defined by student and faculty members of the Curriculum Steering Committee and have been approved by the faculty as an aid in evaluation of academic performance and to assist students by giving them an understanding of the grading standards of the Department of Information and Library Science.
Grade | GPA | Definition |
A (95-100%) | 4.0 | Outstanding achievement. Student performance demonstrates full command of the course materials and evinces a high level of originality and/or creativity that far surpasses course expectations. |
A- (90-94.5%) | 3.7 | Excellent achievement. Student performance demonstrates thorough knowledge of the course materials and exceeds course expectations by completing all requirements in a superior manner. |
B+ (87-89.5%) | 3.3 | Very good work. Student performance demonstrates above-average comprehension of the course materials and exceeds course expectations on all tasks as defined in the course syllabus. |
B (84-86.5%) | 3.0 | Good work. Student performance meets designated course expectations, demonstrates understanding of the course materials, and is at an acceptable level. |
B- (80-83.5%) | 2.7 | Marginal work. Student performance demonstrates incomplete understanding of course materials. |
C+ (77-79.5%) C (73-76.5%) | 2.3 2.0 | Unsatisfactory work. Student performance demonstrates incomplete and inadequate understanding of course materials. |
C- (70-72.5%) D+ (67-69.5%) D (63-66.5%) D- (60-62.5%) | 1.7 1.3 1.0 0.7 | Unacceptable work. Course work performed at this level will not count toward the MLS or MIS degree. For the course to count towards the degree, the student must repeat the course with a passing grade. |
F | 0 | Failing. Student may continue in program only with the permission of the Dean. |
Academic dishonesty
There is extensive documentation and discussion of the issue of academic dishonesty in the Indiana University “Code of Student Rights, Responsibilities and Conduct.” The section on Plagiarism states:
3. Plagiarism
“Plagiarism is defined as presenting someone else’s work, including the work of other students, as one’s own. Any ideas or materials taken from another source for either written or oral use must be fully acknowledged, unless the information is common knowledge. What is considered “common knowledge” may differ from course to course.
- A student must not adopt or reproduce ideas, opinions, theories, formulas, graphics, or pictures of another person without acknowledgment.
- A student must give credit to the originality of others and acknowledge indebtedness whenever:
- directly quoting another person’s actual words, whether oral or written;
- using another person’s ideas, opinions, or theories;
- paraphrasing the words, ideas, opinions, or theories of others, whether oral or written;
- borrowing facts, statistics, or illustrative material; or
- offering materials assembled or collected by others in the form of projects or collections without acknowledgment”
From: http://www.iu.edu/~code/code/responsibilities/academic/index.shtml
Indiana University and School of Information and Library Science policies on academic dishonesty will be followed. Students found to be engaging in plagiarism, cheating, and other types of dishonesty will receive an F for the course. As a rule of thumb, when in doubt, cite the source.