The weekly schedule of discussion topics, reading assignments, and hands-on activities to be completed before each class session. “Watch” and “Read” should be self explanatory. “Explore” means you should skim over the entire collection of articles, projects, or whatever is listed, and then pick a few that grab your attention to read or investigate more fully. Think critically about why you were drawn to those instead of others as you formulate your responses and think of discussion questions.
“Lesson Plan” contains a link to the lesson plan for each class period. These links will go live just before class each day, when they will give you an introduction to the topic, in-class exercises and the specifications for that week’s Blog posts and Lab Assignments.
The “Assignments” section for each week will include direct links to the prompts and specs for the regular round of weekly assignments:
- Reflective Blog Posts (due Fridays)
- Lab Reports (due Sundays)
- Discussion posts in response to classmates’ work (due Mondays)
Week 1: Introduction to Digital Humanities
1.1 Introductions
- Introductions
- Syllabus
- Digital Making 101
Lesson Plan: Digital Creation: 3D basics
1.2 What are the Digital Humanities? Who are the Digital Humanists?
Read:
- Burdick et al. “One: Humanities to Digital Humanities,” in Digital_Humanities (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012), 1-26.
- Debbie Chachra, “Beyond Making,” in Making Things and Drawing Boundaries: Experiments in the Digital Humanities, ed. Jentry Sayers, Debates in the Digital Humanities (University of Minnesota Press, 2017).
- Emily Johnson and Anastasia Salter, “Introduction: Provocations for Making,” in Critical Making in the Age of AI (Amherst College Press, 2025), https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.14510509.
Lesson Plan: Defining Your Place in DH
Assignments
- Blog (due by end of day Friday)
- Lab (due by end of day Sunday)
- Discussion (due by end of day Monday)
- Read and post comments on two of your classmates posts — also feel free to respond to any on yours!
Week 2: How it Works: DH Projects and the Code at their Heart
2.1 Digital Humanities Projects 101
Read:
- Burdick et al. “The Project as Basic Unit” (124-125) and “Project-Based Scholarship” (130-131) in Digital_Humanities (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012), 124-125.
- Also available as an Ebook through Carleton library (log in for access!)
Watch:
- Miriam Posner, How Did They Make That
Explore:
Lesson Plan: Analyzing DH Projects
2.2 Web Development Fundamentals
Read:
- Matt Kirschenbaum, Hello Worlds: Why Humanities Students Should Learn to Program
- Evan Donahue, A “Hello World” Apart (why humanities students should NOT learn to program)
Lesson Plan: HTML/CSS/JavaScript 101
- DevTools: inspecting the web
Assignments
- Blog (due by end of day Friday)
- Lab (due by end of day Sunday)
- Discussion (due by end of day Monday)
- Read and post comments on two of your classmates posts — also feel free to respond to any on yours!
Week 3: Data Management and Data Visualization for DH
3.1 Humanities Data and How to Manage It
- Collecting Data, Where and How
- Content Management Systems
- Setting up your own server, cPanel 101
Guest presentation by Em Palencia on navigating your server space in cPanel
Read:
- Big? Smart? Clean? Messy? Data in the Humanities by Christof Schöch
- Stephen Marche, Literature is not Data: Against Digital Humanities
- Scott Selisker and Holger Syme, In Defense of Data: Responses to Stephen Marche’s “Literature is not Data”
Lesson Plan: Humanities Data
3.2 Data Viz 101
Guest lecture by Lin Winton, Director of the Quantitative Resource Center at Carleton College
Read:
- D’Ignazio, C., & Klein, L, Chapter 4, “What Gets Counted Counts,” In Data Feminism (2020).
- “Introduction: A Counterhistory of Data Visualization,” in Klein et al., Data by Design: An Interactive History of Data Visualization, 1789-1900. 2024 public beta https://dataxdesign.io/
Lesson Plan: Basic Data Viz principles
- Cleaning Data
- Exploratory Data Analysis
Assignments
- Blog (due by end of day Friday)
- Lab (due by end of day Sunday)
- Discussion (due by end of day Tuesday)
- Read and post comments on two of your classmates posts — also feel free to respond to any on yours!
Week 4: Data Analysis: Text, Networks, Images, and AI
4.1 Text Analysis and Network Analysis
Read:
- Natalie Houston, Text Analysis, Digital Pedagogy in the Humanities
- Bowers, Katherine. “DSC #6: Voyant’s Big Day.” The Data-Sitters Club. September 15, 2020. https://doi.org/10.25740/kn731qt7501.
- Scott Weingart, Demystifying Networks, Parts I & II
Lesson Plan: Text Analysis and Network Analysis
4.2 Artificial Intelligence, Image Analysis, and Ethics
Read:
- Ted Chiang, ChatGPT Is a Blurry JPEG of the Web, The New Yorker
- Sonja Drimmer, How AI is Hijacking Art History, The Conversation
- Lauren Tilton, “Relating to Historical Sources,” ed. R. D. Meadows, The American Historical Review, AHR History Lab Forum: Artificial Intelligence and Its Implications for the Present and Future of Historical Research, 128, no. 3 (September 1, 2023): 1354–59, https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/rhad365.
Explore: (open in Chrome, and Google Translate to English if you don’t read Dutch)
- CRIME SCENES: Interbelluminterieurs in België door de lens van de forensische fotografie, an art history project from the University of Ghent exploring domestic interiors through AI-colorized crime scene photos
- Read this page on the methods and rationale: From Black and White to Color
Lesson Plan: Image Analysis and AI
Assignments
- Blog (due by end of day Friday)
- Lab (due by end of day Sunday)
- Discussion (due by end of day Monday)
- Read and post comments on two of your classmates posts — also feel free to respond to any on yours!
Week 5: Spatial Humanities
5.1 GIS/Mapping 101
Read:
- Jo Guldi, What is the Spatial Turn? (read the introduction and at least one disciplinary section of interest)
Lesson Plan: DH Mapping Projects and Historical Mapping
- Georeferencer/MapWarper
5.2 Web Mapping 101
Read:
- Alan McConchie and Beth Schechter, Anatomy of a Webmap (use arrows to advance or go back)
Lesson Plan: WebMapping 101
- JavaScript APIs
- ArcGIS Online
Assignments
- Blog (due by end of day Friday)
- Lab (due by end of day Sunday)
- Discussion (due by end of day Monday)
- Read and post comments on two of your classmates posts — also feel free to respond to any on yours!
Week 6: Building Project: 3D Humanities
6.1 Archives Project Launch and 3D Humanities
- Introduction to archives class project and photogrammetry
- Guest presentation by David Bliss
Lesson Plan: Virtual Humanities
6.2 3D Modelling and Photogrammetry
Explore:
- Ed Triplett, The Book of Fortresses
Lesson Plan: Photogrammetry: 3D Modeling from Photographs
- Model Cleaning
- NetFabb
- Shapeways and the Maker Space
Assignments
- Blog (FREEBIE, no post required)
- Lab (due by end of day Sunday)
- Discussion (due by end of day Monday)
- Read and post comments on two of your classmates posts — also feel free to respond to any on yours!
Week 7: Putting it all together
7.1 Data Cleaning / Archive Finishing / Final Project launching
Lesson Plan: Cleaning data using Open Refine
7.2 Midterm Exam
Assignments
- Blog (due by end of day THURSDAY)
- Final Project Pitch
- Lab (due by end of day Sunday)
- MIDTERM EXAM
- Discussion (due by end of day Monday)
- Read and post comments on two of your classmates posts — also feel free to respond to any on yours!
Week 8: Project Work
8.1 Final Project Update and Work Session
Lesson Plan: Final Project Work
8.2 DA&H Across Campus
Assignments
- Final Project Team Charter (due by end of day Tuesday)
- Blog (due by end of day Friday)
- Lab (due by end of day Sunday)
- Discussion (due by end of day Monday)
- Read and post comments on two of your classmates posts — also feel free to respond to any on yours!
Week 9: Group Work to Finalize Projects and Presentations
9.1 Group Project Work
Prepare:
- Your final project materials
- Your interactive data vizualization
Lesson Plan: Tutorial Assignment
9.2 Tutorial Assignments / Final Project Work — PROFESSOR AT CONFERENCE
Everyone will give a brief description of the tool or technique they wrote a tutorial for, and we will each work through 2 of our peers’ tutorials, leaving feedback as comments.
Lesson Plan: Tutorial Demo & Final Project Presentations
Assignments
- Blog (due by end of day THURSDAY)
- Lab (due by end of day Sunday)
- Final Project Data Visualization
- Discussion (due by end of day Monday)
- Read and post comments on two of your classmates posts — also feel free to respond to any on yours!
Week 10: Project Presentations
10.1 Final Project Presentations
Prepare:
- A “Pecha Kucha” style presentation of your final project:
- 20 slides, for 20 seconds each (6:40 total), following the 1/1/5 rule: at least 1 image per slide, each used only 1 time, and less than 5 words per slide
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- the final tech familiarity assessment and
- final course evaluation
