English 596K: Intro to Digital Humanities

This graduate course is an introduction to digital humanities geared toward applications in literary and cultural studies. While students’ interests will help to shape our syllabus, particularly for sessions in the final weeks, we’ll be experimenting with: text mining and entity extraction, text encoding, social network analysis, web design frameworks, mapping and GIS, topic modeling, and creative visualization. No prior knowledge of computer programming is presumed; all students will learn some basic principles, and many of our lab activities will include options for students who wish to try out more advanced tools and methods. In our discussions of critical readings and a shared literary text, we’ll aim to find ways that digital methods can be integrated with traditional methods as we discuss current literary and cultural studies research problems. Student projects will include conference abstracts, a grant proposal, and a digital project prototype or mock-up accompanied by a conference-length paper.