Course Schedule (subject to change):

August 27

Introductions

September 3

No class (Labor Day)

Reading:

• Judith Halberstam, The Queer Art of Failure (Introduction)
• John Unsworth, “The Importance of Failure”

Playing:

• Join the Commons course group and blog
• Install MAMP or XAMPP on your computer
• Install WordPress

September 10

Defining the Digital Humanities

Reading:

• Debates in the Digital Humanities: Introduction, Part I: Defining the Digital Humanities + Matthew Kirschenbaum, “Digital Humanities As/Is a Tactical Term”
• Gold, “Digital Humanities” from The Johns Hopkins Guide to Digital Media and Textuality
• Susan Hockey, “The History of Humanities Computing” from A Companion to Digital Humanities
• The CUNY Digital Humanities Resource Guide

Writing:

• Write a blog post on our public course blog that either proposes a definition of digital humanities or explores interesting similarities and differences between our readings

Playing:

• Install a new theme on your WordPress blog

September 17

No Class

September 24

Reading:

• DHDebates: Practicing and Teaching sections

Writing:

• Blog post on any aspect of our reading

Playing:

• Explore DH-related websites and teaching websites and suggest new links/features/resources for our own class site.

October 1

Rethinking the Academy (Guest: Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Director of Scholarly Communication, Modern Language Association)

Reading:

• Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Planned Obsolescence
• Hacking the Academy: Hacking Scholarship section

Writing:

• Write a blog post on new forms of scholarly communication, perhaps reflecting on what happens in the “playing” assignment

Playing

• Take part in a public open peer review experiment.

October 8

No class

October 10

Rebuilding the Academy (Guest: Katina Rogers, Senior Research Specialist, Scholarly Communications Institute, University of Virginia)

Reading:

• Alt-Academy: Alternative Academic Careers for Humanities Scholars: Essays by Julia Flanders, Lisa Spiro, Doug Reside, Tom Scheinfeldt, Gilbert/Graham/Johnson
• Bethany Nowviskie, “Praxis, Through Prisms: a Digital Boot Camp for Grad Students in the Humanities” and “It Starts on Day One”
• Hacking the Academy: Hacking Institutions section

• Paul Jay and Gerald Graff, Fear of Being Useful (Inside Higher Ed, Jan 2012)
• Kaustuv Basu, The Radical New Humanities PhD (Inside Higher Ed, May 2012)
• Anthony Grafton, No More Plan B (AHA, Oct 2011)
• Executive Summary [pdf], Pathways Through Graduate School and Into Careers

Writing:

• Write a blog post proposing a few ways in which graduate education should be reformed in light of our readings

Playing

• Experiment with a DH tool selected from the Bamboo DiRT Wiki

October 15: DH in Practice: “Distant Reading”

Reading:

• Franco Moretti, Graphs, Maps, Trees: Abstract Models for Literary History
• Stephen Ramsay, Reading Machines: Toward an Algorithmic Criticism
• DH Debates: Matthew Wilkens, “Canons, Close Reading, and the Evolution of Method”
• Stanley Fish, “Mind Your Ps and Bs: The Digital Humanities and Interpretation”
• Optional Reading: Allison, et. Al. “Quantitative Formalism: An Experiment” (PDF)

Writing:

• Optional blog post on our readings

Playing

• Experiment with an algorithmic reading/analysis tool chosen from the Bamboo DiRT Wiki

October 22: DH in Practice: DH in the Archives (Guest: Steve Brier, CUNY Graduate Center)

Reading:

• Ben Vershbow, “Hacking the Library” (video)
• Steve Brier and Joshua Brown, “The September 11 Digital Archive.” Radical History Review. Issue 111 (Fall 2011)
• Claire Potter, “Because it is Gone Now: Teaching the September 11 Digital Archive” (OAH Magazine of History, Vo. 25, No. 3: 31-34.
• Canterbury Earthquake Digital Archive

Writing:

• Blog post on DH and archives

Playing:

• Explore the following archives: September 11 Digital Archive, Canterbury Earthquake Digital Archive, What’s On the Menu?

October 29: DH in Practice: Visualizing Big Data (Skype Guest: Lev Manovich, University of California-San Diego)

Reading:

• Lev Manovich, “Trending: The Promises and the Challenges of Big Social Data,” “How to Compare One Million Images”
• Other readings to be assigned

Writing:

• Write a blog post about our readings

Playing:

• Explore the Software Studies and Visual Complexity websites

November 5: DH in Practice: Geospatial Humanities (Guest: Steve Romalewski)

Reading:

• Mark Monmonier, How to Lie With Maps

Writing:

• First draft of DH project proposal due

Playing:

• Explore the Neatline live sandbox, CUNY Mapping Service projects (especially Welcome to 1940s New York), Bamboo DiRT mapping tools

November 12: Digital Materiality (Skype Guest: Matthew Kirschenbaum)

Reading:

• Matthew Kirschenbaum, Mechanisms: New Media and the Forensic Imagination
• From Tubes: A Journet to the Center of the Internet: “Prologue,” “The Map,” “A Network of Networks,” “Where Data Sleeps”

Writing/Playing:

• Find and share a web-based resource related to digital materiality

November 19: Open Access/Open Source

Reading:

• Peter Suber, Open Access
• Samir Chopra and Scott D. Dexter, Decoding Liberation: Ch. 1 “Free Software and the Political Economy” and Ch. 2 “The Ethics of Free Software”
• Boone Gorges, “I develop free software because of CUNY and Blackboard” and “Free Software Development and the Commons”

Writing

• Write a blog post exploring issues related to open access and/or open source

Playing

• Make some changes to a WordPress theme file; download the source code for an open-source application you use; explore GitHub

November 26: Theorizing DH

Reading:

• Debates in the Digital Humanities: Theorizing DH section
• Journal of Digital Humanities 1.1: Conversations section on theory and DH

Writing:

• Blog post on DH and theory

Playing:

• Explore funded projects from the NEH Office of Digital Humanities

December 3: Critiquing DH/Future of DH

Reading:

• Debates in the Digital Humanities: Critiquing DH section, Envisioning the Future section

Writing:

• Blog post on future directions in the digital humanities
• If possible, post project abstract/project materials to our course group or blog for feedback

December 10: Project Management/Project Feedback

Reading:

• Tom Scheinfeldt, Intro to Project Management Notes
• Bethany Nowviskie, Ten Rules for Humanities Scholars New to Project Management (pdf)
• Sharon Leon, “Project Management for Humanists”

Writing:

• Post a project abstract/project materials to our course blog or group

December 17: Final Project Presentations