Intro to Digital Humanities

3 Credits · Level: Graduate

"Digital Humanities" has many different meanings, inside and outside academia. Whether praised as the next big thing in knowledge creation or derided as an empty buzzword, DH is an important and influential part of the contemporary landscape of the humanities. Indeed, it sits across both of these extreme characterizations: as a set of methodologies and practices, DH provides novel ways to think about meaning in our networked world; as a scholarly/institutional (social) network, it represents the best and the worst of what academia can accomplish. We will attend to its technical, methodological, and social complexities throughout the semester. This class will give students an overview of the field in its many different forms, from distance reading and humanities computing through game studies and social media. In addition to developing a sense of the field through reading and conversation, students will also gain experience with the tools of the trade through a combination of demo projects and the completion of a larger DH prototype.