Note: All Spring 2021 courses will be online.
DHUM 70002 - Digital Humanities: Methods and Practices #64010
Thursday, 6:30 - 8:30 PM, 3 Credits, Prof. Bret Maney (bret.maney@lehman.cuny.edu)
During the Fall 2020 semester, students explored the landscape of the digital humanities, considering a range of ways to approach DH work and conceive of and propose potential DH projects. In the spring, we will put that thinking into action by refining and producing a small number of those projects. This praxis-oriented course will ask students to organize into teams and, by the end of the semester, produce a project prototype. Upon completion of the course, students will have gained hands-on experience in the conceptualizing, planning, production, and dissemination of a digital humanities project. Student work for this course will demonstrate a variety of technical, project management, and rhetorical skills. One of our goals is to produce well-conceived, long-term projects that have the potential to extend beyond the Spring 2021 semester. A range of advisors may be matched to support the needs of each individual project. Successful completion of the course will require a commitment to meeting mutually agreed-upon deadlines and benchmarks established at the outset of the semester.
The class will hold a public event at the end of the semester where students will launch their projects and receive feedback from the DH academic community.
Note: This course follows "Introduction to Digital Humanities" from the Fall 2020 semester.
DHUM 72700 - Remote Archival Encounters #64011
Tuesday, 6:30 - 8:30 PM, 3 Credits, Profs. Duncan Faherty (duncan.faherty@qc.cuny.edu) and Lisa Rhody (lrhody@gc.cuny.edu)
In “Remote Archival Encounters” we will take an interdisciplinary and participatory approach to archival research. In so doing, we will attend to how current health protocols have fundamentally shifted the practice and possibilities of working with archival materials. Part seminar, part individualized research tutorial, part laboratory, part skills workshop, this course will combine traditional scholarly practices with emergent ones through analog and digital methods. We will consider new modes of access (for both scholarly and public audiences) to archival materials, paying attention to how our current situation has limited physical access to materials. By the end of the course, students will assemble a portfolio that articulates the challenges to archival research, approaches scholars may take to continuing their work, regular short public writing about archival research during troubled times, and a plan for how to move their individual research forward in the coming year.
The course will have four main units, including an introduction to current scholarly debates about the politics of archival work (readings may include work by Lisa Lowe, Jennifer Morgan, Britt Russert, and David Kazanjian), virtual “field visits” with archivists and librarians (crafted in response to the interests of the enrolled students), training in textual editing and book history (readings may include Greetham’s Textual Scholarship, McGann’s Radiant Textuality, Hayles and Pressman’s Comparative Textual Media), and workshops in digital research methods, platforms, annotation and encoding, and design (including but not limited to Archive Grid, HathiTrust, Bitcurator, JStor Labs, Omeka, and Tropy). Students will have an opportunity to interact with curators and archivists working at the various libraries, repositories, and special collections with which we aim to partner (including such possibilities as The New York Public Library, The Morgan Library, The New-York Historical Society, The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The Library for the Performing Arts,The Lesbian Herstory Archives, and the Interfernce Archive).
The course will provide PhD students the opportunity to advance (or experiment with) their own research agendas by pursuing further study in archival research, book history, and scholarly editing. For students in the MA in Digital Humanities program, projects could be expanded to form a digital capstone project--a requirement for completion of the degree.
Course Requirements: Active and engaged participation, a brief oral presentation, weekly reflections, a project outline, a brief mid-semester progress report, and a final portfolio of the student’s own design.
DHUM 73700 - Geospatial Humanities #64164
Wednesday, 6:30 - 8:30 PM, 3 Credits, Prof. Shipeng Sun (shipeng.sun@hunter.cuny.edu)
Cross-listed with DATA 78000 #64009
Website
This course combines an introduction to basic cartographic theory and techniques in humanities contexts with practical experience in the analysis, manipulation, and the graphical representation of spatial information. The course examines the storage, processing, compilation, and symbolization of spatial data; basic spatial analysis; and visual design principles involved in conveying spatial information. Emphasis is placed on digital mapping technologies, including online and offline computer based geographic information science tools.
DHUM 74500 - Digital Pedagogy 2: Theory, Design, and Practice #64013
Monday, 4:15 - 6:15 PM, 3 Credits, Prof. Shawna M. Brandle (shawna.brandle@kbcc.cuny.edu)
In the first digital pedagogy course, students were introduced to the history and contexts within which technology has been integrated into teaching, learning, and research at the college level. In the second core course, students will continue with that investigation as they begin to carve out space for their own work. In Spring 2021, the course will focus on opening our digital pedagogy- exploring open educational resources and open pedagogy, along with related opens: open access and open GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums).
The focus of the course reading will be on the why’s, how’s, and where’s of open educational practices, with a special focus on critical digital pedagogy. By the end of the semester students will produce a polished proposal for a multimedia-based project in their discipline related to research, pedagogy, or both. The course incorporates hands-on exploration of educational uses of new-media applications and open possibilities. The course will use an open pedagogy approach to teaching and learning, beginning with a co-created syllabus wherein students will have significant say in the selection of readings and assignments.
DHUM 78000-01 - Digital Memories: Theory and Practice #64012
Wednesday, 4:15 - 6:15 PM, 3 Credits, Prof. Aránzazu Borrachero (aranzazubm@msn.com)
Memory Studies, an interdisciplinary field focusing on "how, what and why individuals, groups and societies remember, and forget" (Memory Studies), has experienced important paradigm shifts since its inception in the 1980s. The onset of digital media is responsible for the latest and, arguably, most radical changes.
This course explores how the past is constructed, archived and communicated through digital media from a sociocritical angle:
* What is the potential of digital memory and storytelling projects to change or break power structures?
* Has digital technology opened spaces for contesting traditional narratives of the past?
* Is civic action shaped by digital memory initiatives? Are digital memory initiatives shaped by civic action?
With these questions as a framework, students will analyze key concepts in Memory Studies, such as collective memory (Maurice Halbwachs), cultural memory (Aleida and Jan Assman), transnational memory (Astrid Erll), and postmemory (Marianne Hirsch) --concepts, all of them, interrogated by the emerging field of Digital Memory Studies (Andrew Hoskins). Armed with this theoretical work, students will examine a diversity of digital memory and storytelling projects, from well-established and institutionalized ones (e.g. Imperial War Museums, Forced Labor 1939-1945, Memorial Democràtic) to community-led projects and/or projects explicitly engaged in counter-hegemonic memory-making (e.g. 858 Archive, Documenting the Now, Torn Apart/Separados).
This course utilizes a project-based pedagogical approach to the study of Digital Memory. Students will design and develop their own storytelling and memory projects guided, step by step, by a team of expert developers of digital tools for cultural heritage and oral history archives. Besides acquiring skills to create narrative projects, students will become acquainted with tools currently used to build digital archives. They will learn project design, content collection, content management and analysis, and online publication.
DHUM 78000-02 - Special Topics in DH: Alternative Data Cultures #64163
Monday, 4:15 - 6:15 PM, 3 Credits, Prof. Kevin Ferguson (kferguson@qc.cuny.edu)
Cross-listed with DATA 78000 #64008
This course will examine alternative trajectories of data visualization that lie outside of the traditional approaches that aim to represent data as neutrally and naturally as possible. Beginning with Lisa Samuels and Jerome McGann's concept of “deformance”—a new scholarly performance of a text that eschews solely searching for a hidden interpretation—we will survey a variety of ways that data visualization centered on humanistic inquiry can be recontextualized, remixed, and otherwise bent, broken, and glitched in order to generate new knowledge. By considering how data visualization might fruitfully embrace subjective perspectives in order to create meaning, this course will ask students to more deeply consider how and why we visualize complex data sets, including sets of objects such as literary corpora, photographs, motion pictures, and music.
Throughout the course we will explore the intersection of aesthetics, art, and alternative ways of “performing” data to reveal new insights, drawing on surrealist and other avant-garde traditions that begin with defamiliarization as a critical practice. In addition to readings and models of new perspectives on data visualization, students will complete experimental projects visualizing a variety of texts, which may include condensing feature films to single images, comparative movie “barcodes,” glitching historical images, and other experimental exploratory data visualization. Students may complete exploratory projects in ImageJ (Java), Python, and/or R, although no prior expertise is required of students.
Readings may include: Johanna Drucker, Mark Sample, Zach Whalen, Jason Mittell, Deb Verhoeven, Michael J. Kramer, Stephen Ramsay, Lev Manovich, Julia Flanders, Eric Hoyt, Shane Denson, Giorgia Lupi and Stefanie Posavec, Virginia Kuhn, and Bethany Nowviskie.
DHUM 70000 - Introduction to Digital Humanities #62096
Wednesday, 4:15 PM - 6:15 PM, 3 Credits, Prof. Matt Gold (mgold@gc.cuny.edu)
What are the digital humanities, and how can they help us think in new ways? This course offers an introduction to the landscape of digital humanities (DH) work, paying attention to how its various approaches embody new ways of knowing and thinking. What kinds of questions, for instance, does the practice of mapping pose to our research and teaching? When we attempt to share our work through social media, how is it changed? How can we read “distantly,” and how does “distant reading” alter our sense of what reading is?
Over the course of this semester, we will explore these questions and others as we engaging ongoing debates in the digital humanities, such as the problem of defining the digital humanities, the question of whether DH has (or needs) theoretical grounding, controversies over new models of peer review for digital scholarship, issues related to collaborative labor on digital projects, and the problematic questions surrounding research involving “big data.” The course will also emphasize the ways in which DH has helped transform the nature of academic teaching and pedagogy in the contemporary university with its emphasis on collaborative, student-centered and digital learning environments and approaches.
Among the themes and approaches we will explore are evidence, scale, representation, genre, quantification, visualization, and data. We will also discuss broad social, legal and ethical questions and concerns surrounding digital media and contemporary culture, including privacy, intellectual property, and open/public access to knowledge and scholarship.
Though no previous technical skills are required, students will be asked to experiment in introductory ways with DH tools and methods as a way of concretizing some of our readings and discussions. Students will be expected to participate actively in class discussions and online postings (including on our course blog) and to undertake a final project that can be either a conventional seminar paper or a proposal for a digital project. Students completing the course will gain broad knowledge about and understanding of the emerging role of the digital humanities across several academic disciplines and will begin to learn some of the fundamental skills used often in digital humanities projects.
Note: this course is part of an innovative "Digital Praxis Seminar," a two-semester long introduction to digital tools and methods that will be open to all students in the Graduate Center. The goal of the course is to introduce graduate students to various ways in which they can incorporate digital research into their work.
DHUM 72000 - Textual Studies in a Digital Age: "Doing Things with Novels" #62097
Thursay, 6:30 PM - 8:30 PM, 3 Credits, Prof Jeff Allred (jeff.allred@hunter.cuny.edu)
The novel, whose very name is associated with the new, is starting to look a bit antiquated. It demands of us long, uninterrupted stretches of time; it projects a world hermetically sealed from the buzzing data flows that travel in our pockets and around our desks; it resolutely resists—the Kindle notwithstanding—being ripped from between printed covers and scattered in the cloud(s). This course will examine the past and future of the novel genre, attempting to link the history of what William Warner calls the dominant entertainment platform of the
nineteenth century to the present moment, in which an increasing share of our “serious” reading and “light” entertainments alike unfold on networked screens of all kinds.
We will examine this dynamic along two axes. First, we will read classic and recent work on the history and theory of the novel, with a particular emphasis on reading practices and cultural technologies. Second, we will do things with novels other than simply read them, exploring new possibilities for engaging the genre via the affordances of digital technology. For example, we will remediate a printed novel by creating a DIY audiobook; we will transform a novel by “playing” it as a role-playing-game; we will annotate a novel, creating a new
edition to orient lay readers to its cultural historical underpinnings. Those interested can get a fair sense of the course's shape from this site from a prior version of the course:
https://allred720fa18.commons.gc.cuny.edu.
Requirements: rigorous reading, informal writing (on a course blog), enthusiastic participation, participation in collaborative digital projects and a final essay or project.
DHUM 72500 - Methods of Text Analysis #62099
Tuesday, 4:15 PM - 6:15 PM, 3 Credits, Prof Lisa Rhody (lrhody@gc.cuny.edu)
This course takes as its guiding questions: "Can there be such a thing as a feminist text analysis?" and "What does it mean to do computational text analysis in a humanities context?" Through reading and practice we will examine the degree to which problematic racist, sexist, colonialist, corporate, and gender-normative assumptions that activate algorithmic methods impact humanistic inquiry through text analysis, and how the humanist can formulate effective research questions to explore through methods of text analysis.
Taking a completely different approach to the topic "methods of text analysis," this couse will consider what it means to "analyze" a "text" with computers within a humanistic context, with an emphasis on shaping effective research questions over programming mastery. How does the language of analysis draw on Western traditions of empiricism in which "the text" occupies a position of authority over other forms of representation? What is the difference between "text analysis" and "philology"? What is being "analyzed" when we count, tokenize, measure, and classify texts with computers? And, importantly, how do the questions we are asking align with the methods we are using?
The course will be organized according to the stages of the research proces as articulated in our fist week reading, to be completed in advance of our first meeting: "How we do things with words: Analyzing text as social and cultural data," which can be dowloaded here. While students will receive materials to help them learn Python and to develop their own text analysis projects, this will not be the objective of the course or the source of evaluation. However, students will be required to develop a literacy in Python and packages frequently used to perform text analysis. Students will be required to complete weekly Jupyter notebook assignments that have significant portions of text analysis activities already completed. Supplementary information about programming and text analysis will be provided to complete in a self directed way using a free DataCamp account. Final projects will include a portfolio of 14 completed Jupyter notebook assignments, an in-class debate, and a five to eight page position paper.
Exploring terms such as "non-consumptive" and "black box algorithms," this course takes up the affordances and costs of computationally enabled modeling, representation, querying, and interpretation of texts. We will ask questions such as, "Can you 'lead a feminist life' (Ahmed) that is heavily mediated by methods of text analysis?" Readings will include articles by Sarah Ahmed, Mary Beard, Meredith Broussard, Lauren Klein, Wendy Chun, Tanya Clement, Miriam Posner, Liz Losh, Tara MacPherson, Johanna Drucker, Andrew Goldstone, Safiya Noble, Bethany Nowviskie, Andrew Piper, Steve Ramsay, Laura Mandell, Susan Brown, Richard Jean So, and Ted Underwood.
DHUM 73700 - Introduction to GIS: Methods and Applications #63299
Tuesday, 6:30 - 8:30 PM, 3 Credits, Profs. Yuri Gorokhovich (yuri.gorokhovich@lehman.cuny.edu) & Elia Machado (elia.machado@lehman.cuny.edu)
Cross-listed with DATA 78000 (#63300) and EES 79903
Introduction to the fundamentals of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) including vector and raster data formats and applicable analytical techniques. Emphasis on spatial data representation, organization, analysis, and data integration including remote sensing. Theoretical and technical concepts are reinforced through hands-on exercises illustrating GIS applications in hydrology, conservation biology, engineering, geology (topographic analysis), multicriteria-evaluation, and decision making
DHUM 74000 - Digital Pedagogy 1: History, Theory, and Practice #62098
Monday, 6:30 PM - 8:30 PM, 3 Credits, Prof. Andie Silva (asilva@york.cuny.edu)
Students will examine the economic, social, and intellectual history of the design and use of technology. This course will focus particularly on the power of digital pedagogy as feminist praxis, which aims to centralize race, gender, class, and queer perspectives in academic debates. Readings in the course will focus on the history and development of the uses of technology in the classroom and academia alongside current attempts to critique how technology can reproduce structures of power and systems of oppression. We will also explore the unique ways digital humanities has transformed the classroom, and collaborate in defining clear goals for using and teaching new technologies, from engaging students in digital project analyses to teaching code and markup languages. Assignments for this course will include the development of shared resources for teaching and learning with technology, evaluations of projects with pedagogical components, as well as forays into project-based learning within fields such as digital editing, preservation and curation, and gaming.
Electives:
PSYC 80103 - Using Archives in Social Justice Research #59019
Tuesday, 9:30 AM - 11:30 AM, 3 Credits. Prof. Susan Opotow (sopotow@jjay.cuny.edu)
Archives, research, and social justice is a course designed to develop students’ knowledge, skills, and strategies for using physical and digital archival material to study research questions of interest to them. Archives offer rich narrative, visual, & historical material and objects for understanding societal issues, activism, and collective efforts, lives lived in particular times and contexts, histories of groups and institutions, and justice-focused initiatives. The possible uses of archival data and material are boundless. We will visit archives and read deeply in the social sciences and humanities to sharpen students’ understanding of archives as a construct, as a rich empirical repository, and as a resource vulnerable to politicization. By the course's end, students will identify, design, and begin their own scholarly project utilizing archival material.
DHUM 70002 - Digital Humanities: Methods and Practices #61139
Prof. Bret Maney (bret.maney@lehman.cuny.edu)
During the Fall 2019 semester, students explored the landscape of the digital humanities from a Caribbean Studies perspective, considering a range of ways to approach DH work and propose potential DH projects. In the spring, we will put that thinking into action by refining and producing a small number of those projects. This praxis-oriented course will ask students to organize into teams and, by the end of the semester, produce a project prototype. Upon completion of the course, students will have gained hands-on experience in the conceptualizing, planning, production, and dissemination of a digital humanities project. Student work for this course will demonstrate a variety of technical, project management, and rhetorical skills. One of our goals is to produce well-conceived, long-term projects that have the potential to extend beyond the Spring 2020 semester. A range of advisors may be matched to support the needs of each individual project. Successful completion of the course will require a commitment to meeting mutually agreed-upon deadlines and benchmarks established at the outset of the semester.
This class will hold a public event at the end of the semester where students will launch their projects and receive feedback from the DH academic community.
DHUM 71000 - Software Design Lab #61145
Prof. Patrick Smyth (psmyth@gradcenter.cuny.edu)
Many digital humanities projects require the creation of software, and many of these projects are large, complex, or require sustained collaboration. Knowledge of particular methods, processes, and tools is necessary for completion and maintenance of significant projects in the digital humanities. This course will give students a foundation in software development methodologies that they can draw from throughout their coursework and career.
This is a technical course, and students will learn a variety of hard and soft skills important for successful project completion. These include a limited number of fundamental concepts in programming, the use of version control, common software design patterns, managing state and persistence, and the basics of test driven development (TDD). The course will focus on two software "stacks," or collections of systems and tools frequently used alongside one another: a WordPress stack less focused on writing code, and a flexible stack based on coding in the Python programming language. Broader topics of discussion will include working to specifications, time line estimation, formulating an MVP, using project management tools, reading documentation, building for maintainability, and software ethics. After completing this course, students will be able to evaluate tradeoffs in software design, collaborate in a small group of mixed skills, and implement the most common techniques for designing modern software.
DHUM 72000 - Textual Studies in a Digital Age #64581 (CANCELLED)
Prof Andie Silva (ASilva@york.cuny.edu)
This course addresses the question, “what is a text?” and interrogates the extent to which the modifier “digital” in “digital textuality” alters prior conceptions of textuality. To that end, it surveys the history and practices of textual studies from a three-part perspective, including critical, material, and digital approaches. Students will explore how ideas of authorship and readership shape critical editions and notions of textuality itself. The course will focus on introducing students to bibliography and book history studies, employing a variety of approaches to digital book history to study texts as material and virtual objects. Assignments will include critically analyzing digital humanities projects, learning the basics of textual encoding methods, as well as evaluating and using tools for remediating texts in digital spaces. After completing this course, students will be able to interrogate the purposes of digital editing for teaching and scholarship, collaborate in group projects to digitize and re-contextualize materials, and become confident users and producers of digital texts.
DHUM 73700 - Geospatial Humanities #61146
Prof. Jonathan Peters (jonathan.peters@csi.cuny.edu)
Cross-listed with DATA 78000
This course combines an introduction to basic cartographic theory and techniques in humanities contexts with practical experience in the analysis, manipulation, and the graphical representation of spatial information in a fun and engaging way. The course examines the storage, processing, compilation, and symbolization of spatial data; basic spatial analysis and spatial statistics; and the visual design principles involved in conveying spatial information. Emphasis is placed on digital mapping technologies, including online and offline computer based geographic information science tools. Students will develop original maps using various forms of data collection, analysis and historical resources.
The overarching objective of this course is to familiarize students with GIS and spatial analysis tools and techniques used in professional and scholarly fields. By the conclusion of this course, students will be able to:
* gather and manipulate geospatial data;
* interact with geospatial data stored in a database;
* interact with geospatial data stored in hierarchical data formats;
* explore historical geospatial data resources and understand variations in data reporting based upon time period and location;
* collect geospatial data in field using GPS technology and map as needed;
* use cartographic theory to design effective graphical representations of geospatial data;
* use cartographic theory to interpret, analyze, and critique graphical representations of spatial phenomena;
* and create both static and interactive maps containing different representations of geospatial information.
Texts:
Mastering ArcGIS by Maribeth H. Price – Seventh Edition. ISBN-13: 978-0078095146 $78.25 MSRP
Getting to Know ArcGIS Desktop Second Edition, for ArcGIS 10 Edition by Tim Ormsby, Eileen J. Napoleon, Robert Burke, Carolyn Groessl ISBN-13: 978-1589482609 $25.00 MSRP.
Lost City of the Monkey God by Douglas Preston ISBN 9781455569410 – selected chapters as noted
Topics / Academic Papers as noted
DHUM 74700 - Critical Approaches to Educational Technology #61142
Prof Luke Waltzer (lwaltzer@gc.cuny.edu)
As schools at all levels integrate digital tools into teaching, learning, and administration, educational technology is an increasingly important and contested field. Too frequently educators adopt tools without sufficient concern for their impacts on students, faculty, and staff. Rhetoric in the field tends towards the techno-utopian, fueled by venture capital that’s more hungry for lucrative user data than it is interested in finding better ways to support students.
Ideally, faculty, staff, and administrators will be critically engaged with developments in educational technology so that they can meaningfully advocate for the ethical deployment of tools on behalf of their institutions and their students. In this course, we will examine the history and current state of educational technology at the primary, secondary, and college and university levels, gaining a deeper understanding of how ed tech tools are conceived of and sold, procured and deployed, and rationalized and resisted. Students will gain hands-on experience with the skills and ways of making and working that educational technologists must possess if they wish to approach their work critically. We will pursue this work by drawing upon connections with the digital humanities, and by applying lessons learned in the specific contexts in which we work or aspire to work. A full version of the course description on the Teaching and Learning Center website.
DHUM 74500 - Digital Pedagogy 2 #60132
Profs. Michael Mandiberg (mmandiberg@gc.cuny.edu) & Sonia Gonzalez (skgteaching@gmail.com)
Cross-listed with ITCP 70020
Students build on the historical and theoretical insights gleaned in the first interactive technology and pedagogy course, as they begin to employ digital tools in their own work. In this praxis oriented course students explore digital methodologies in the contemporary academy, enabling them to better contextualize their own work and negotiate the practicalities involved in creating a technology dependent project. By the end of the semester students will produce a polished proposal for a technology-based project in their discipline related to research, teaching, or both.
Through class discussions, online work and workshops, students will hone their understanding of and ability to use digital dools and new media approaches in teaching and research. This is the second course in the Interactive Technology and Pedagogy Certificate Program. ITP courses meet Monday 4:15 - 6:15 PM with a two-hour non-credit bearing lab that takes place on the same day as class, directly afterwards, from 6:30 - 8:30 PM, in room 6418. Students must take at least six labs in the semester.
Learn more about the 9 credit, 3 course certificate at http://www.gc.cuny.edu/itp and see examples of past capstone projects here: https://itpis.commons.gc.cuny.edu/ For information about enrollment please contact Julie Fuller, Program Assistant (jfuller1@gc.cuny.edu)
DHUM 70000 - Introduction to Digital Humanities #62523
Profs. Matthew Gold (mgold@gc.cuny.edu) and Kelly Josephs (kjosephs@york.cuny.edu)
In this introduction to the digital humanities (DH), we will approach the field via a Caribbean Studies lens, exploring how an understanding of the digital based in the growing area of digital Caribbean studies might shape the larger field of DH.
The course aims to provide a landscape view of DH, paying attention to how its various approaches embody new ways of knowing and thinking, new epistemologies. What kinds of questions, for instance, does the practice of mapping pose to our research and teaching? How does the concept of mapping change when we begin from the Global South? When we attempt to share our work through social media, how is it changed and who do we imagine it reaches? How can we visually and ethically represent various forms of data and how does the data morph in the representation?
Over the course of this semester, we will explore these questions and others as we engage ongoing debates in the digital humanities, such as the problem of defining the digital humanities, the question of whether DH has (or needs) theoretical grounding, controversies over new models of peer review for digital scholarship, issues related to collaborative labor on digital projects, and the problematic questions surrounding research involving “big data.” The course will also emphasize the ways in which DH has helped transform the nature of academic teaching and pedagogy in the contemporary university with its emphasis on collaborative, student-centered and digital learning environments and approaches.
Central themes in the course will emerge from our focus on the Caribbean -- in particular, how various technologies and technical approaches have been shaped by colonial practices; how archives might be decolonized and how absences in the archives might be accounted for; and how concepts like minimal computing might alter the projects we build.
Though no previous technical skills are required, students will be asked to experiment in introductory ways with DH tools and methods as a way of concretizing some of our readings and discussions. Students will be expected to participate actively in class discussions and online postings (including on our course blog) and to undertake a final project that can be either a conventional seminar paper or a proposal for a digital project. Students completing the course will gain broad knowledge about and understanding of the emerging role of the digital humanities across several academic disciplines and will begin to learn some of the fundamental skills used often in digital humanities projects.
Note: this course is part of an innovative "Digital Praxis Seminar," a two-semester long introduction to digital tools and methods that will be open to all students in the Graduate Center. The goal of the course is to introduce graduate students to various ways in which they can incorporate digital research into their work.
DHUM 72500 - Methods of Text Analysis #62525
Prof. Lisa Rhody (lrhody@gc.cuny.edu)
This course takes as its guiding questions: "Can there be such a thing as a feminist text analysis?" and "What does it mean to do computational text analysis in a humanities context?" Through reading and practice we will examine the degree to which problematic racist, sexist, colonialist, corporate, and gender-normative assumptions that activate algorithmic methods impact humanistic inquiry through text analysis, and how the humanist can formulate effective research questions to explore through methods of text analysis.
Taking a completely different approach to the topic "methods of text analysis," this couse will consider what it means to "analyze" a "text" with computers within a humanistic context, with an emphasis on shaping effective research questions over programming mastery. How does the language of analysis draw on Western traditions of empiricism in which "the text" occupies a position of authority over other forms of representation? What is the difference between "text analysis" and "philology"? What is being "analyzed" when we count, tokenize, measure, and classify texts with computers? And, importantly, how do the questions we are asking align with the methods we are using?
The course will be organized according to the stages of the research proces as articulated in our fist week reading, to be completed in advance of our first meeting: "How we do things with words: Analyzing text as social and cultural data," which can be dowloaded here. While students will receive materials to help them learn Python and to develop their own text analysis projects, this will not be the objective of the course or the source of evaluation. However, students will be required to develop a literacy in Python and packages frequently used to perform text analysis. Students will be required to complete weekly Jupyter notebook assignments that have significant portions of text analysis activities already completed. Supplementary information about programming and text analysis will be provided to complete in a self directed way using a free DataCamp account. Final projects will include a portfolio of 14 completed Jupyter notebook assignments, an in-class debate, and a five to eight page position paper.
Exploring terms such as "non-consumptive" and "black box algorithms," this course takes up the affordances and costs of computationally enabled modeling, representation, querying, and interpretation of texts. We will ask questions such as, "Can you 'lead a feminist life' (Ahmed) that is heavily mediated by methods of text analysis?" Readings will include articles by Sarah Ahmed, Mary Beard, Meredith Broussard, Lauren Klein, Wendy Chun, Tanya Clement, Miriam Posner, Liz Losh, Tara MacPherson, Johanna Drucker, Andrew Goldstone, Safiya Noble, Bethany Nowviskie, Andrew Piper, Steve Ramsay, Laura Mandell, Susan Brown, Richard Jean So, and Ted Underwood.
DHUM 73000 - Visualization and Design: Fundamentals #62522
Thursday 6:30 - 8:30 PM, 3 Credits, Rm. 5417, Prof. Michelle McSweeney (michelleamcsweeney@gmail.com)
Cross-listed with DHUM 73300
Data are everywhere and the ability to manipulate, visualize, and communicate with data effectively is an essential skill for nearly every sector—public, private, academic, and beyond. Grounded in both theory and practice, this course will empower students to visualize data through hands-on experience with industry-standard tools and techniques and equip students with the knowledge to justify data analysis strategies and design decisions.
Using Tableau Software, students will build a series of interactive visualizations that combine data and logic with storytelling and design. We will dive into cleaning and structuring unruly data sets, identify which chart types work best for different types of data, and unpack the tactics behind effective visual communication. With an eye towards critical evaluation of both data and method, projects and discussions will be geared towards humanities and social science research. Regardless of academic concentration, students develop a portfolio of interactive and dynamic data visualization dashboards and an interdisciplinary skill set ready to leverage in academic and professional work.
Note: This class will involve 9 in-person meetings and 6 hybrid (online) meetings.
DHUM 74000 - Digital Pedagogy 1 #57343
Monday, 4:15 - 6:15 PM, 3 Credits, Prof. Ximena Gallardo (xgallardo@lagcc.cuny.edu)
Cross-listed with ITCP 70010
Students will examine the economic, social, and intellectual history of the design and use of technology. The course focuses on the mutual shaping of technology and academic teaching, learning and research—how people and ideas have shaped classroom and research interactions in the past, and how they are transforming knowledge production in the present. By examining the use and design of technologies inside and outside of the university, students reflect on what it means to be human in a world increasingly mediated by technology.
The course also highlights the theoretical and practical possibilities of digital media for teaching, research, reading, writing, activism, collaborative knowledge production, and play. Assignments for the course ask students to leverage new, multimodal approaches for creating scholarship, including a publishable final paper or project that contributes to the discourse around the use of technology in their discipline as well as considers the growth of fields of academic inquiry such as Scholarship of Teaching and Learning and the Digital Humanities. This course includes a two-hour non-credit bearing lab that takes place on the same day as class, directly afterwards.
This is the first course in the Interactive Technology and Pedagogy certificate sequence. ITP courses meet Monday 4:15-6:15 with skills Lab directly following from 6:30-8:30. Learn more about the 9 credit, 3 course certificate at http://www.gc.cuny.edu/itp and see examples of past capstone projects here: https://itpis.commons.gc.cuny.edu/ For information about enrollment please contact Julie Fuller, Program Assistant (jfuller1@gc.cuny.edu)
DHUM 73000 - Visualization and Design: Fundamentals #12561
Prof. Michelle McSweeney (michelleamcsweeney@gmail.com)
Data are everywhere and the ability to manipulate, visualize, and communicate with data effectively is an essential skill for nearly every sector—public, private, academic, and beyond. Grounded in both theory and practice, this course will empower students to visualize data through hands-on experience with industry-standard tools and techniques and equip students with the knowledge to justify data analysis strategies and design decisions.
Using Tableau Software, students will build a series of interactive visualizations that combine data and logic with storytelling and design. We will dive into cleaning and structuring unruly data sets, identify which chart types work best for different types of data, and unpack the tactics behind effective visual communication. With an eye towards critical evaluation of both data and method, projects and discussions will be geared towards humanities and social science research. Regardless of academic concentration, students develop a portfolio of interactive and dynamic data visualization dashboards and an interdisciplinary skill set ready to leverage in academic and professional work.
DHUM 71000 - Software Design Lab # 59977
Prof. Patrick Smyth (psmyth@gradcenter.cuny.edu)
Many digital humanities projects require the creation of software, and many of these projects are large, complex, or require sustained collaboration. Knowledge of particular methods, processes, and tools is necessary for completion and maintenance of significant projects in the digital humanities. This course will give students a foundation in software development methodologies that they can draw from throughout their coursework and career.
This is a technical course, and students will learn a variety of hard and soft skills important for successful project completion. These include a limited number of fundamental concepts in programming, the use of version control, common software design patterns, managing state and persistence, and the basics of test driven development (TDD). The course will focus on two software "stacks," or collections of systems and tools frequently used alongside one another: a WordPress stack less focused on writing code, and a flexible stack based on coding in the Python programming language. Broader topics of discussion will include working to specifications, time line estimation, formulating an MVP, using project management tools, reading documentation, building for maintainability, and software ethics. After completing this course, students will be able to evaluate tradeoffs in software design, collaborate in a small group of mixed skills, and implement the most common techniques for designing modern software.
DHUM 72700 - The Future of the Book: Publishing and Scholarly Communications # 59979
Profs. Duncan Faherty and Lisa Rhody (duncan.faherty@qc.cuny.edu and lrhody@gc.cuny.edu)
In “Archival Encounters” we will take an interdisciplinary and participatory approach to archival research, scholarly editing, and the praxis of recovery. Part seminar, part individualized research tutorial, part laboratory, part skills workshop, this course will be an admixture of traditional scholarly practices and emergent ones, fundamentally both analog and digital, and varyingly held at and outside the Graduate Center. The course aims to provide students an introduction to the knowledge and tools necessary to create new access (for both scholarly and public audiences) to archival materials held within collections around the New York City area. The end goal of the course is for each student (or possibly several small groups of collaborating students) to produce an “edition” of a currently neglected archival artifact (which might be anything from an eighteenth century serialized short story, to a transcription of a Medieval fragment, to an unpublished letter by an early twentieth century poet to her editor). In order to produce these editions, students will be exposed to both practical methodologies and theoretical debates concerning archival work and the politics of recovery, as well as receive training in textual editing, book history, text encoding and annotation, markup strategies, and basic web design.
The course will have four main units, including an introduction to current scholarly debates about the politics of textual recovery and archival work (readings may include work by Lisa Lowe, Jennifer Morgan, Britt Russert, and David Kazanjian), field visits to area collections (crafted in response to the interests of the enrolled students), training in textual editing and book history (readings may include Greetham’s Textual Scholarship,McGann’s Radiant Textuality, Hayles and Pressman’s Comparative Textual Media), and training in digital research methods, platforms, annotation and encoding, and design. While anchored in issues of recovery and public engagement, the course will also enable students to actively pursue their own individual research agendas and gain valuable experiences in collaborating both with external partners (in terms of their archival projects) and with GC colleagues in the construction of the class platform (on the CUNY Academic Commons) for the display of the projects. More importantly they will receive this training not simply from the instructors themselves, but from the curators and archivists working at the various New York City repositories and special collections with which we aim to partner (including such possibilities as the New York Public Library, The Morgan Library, The New-York Historical Society, The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The Library for the Performing Arts, the Herstory Archives, and the Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Archives).
The course will provide PhD students the opportunity to advance (or experiment with) their own research agendas by pursuing further study in archival research, book history, and scholarly editing. For students in the MA in Digital Humanities program, projects could be expanded to form a digital capstone project--a requirement for completion of the degree.
Course Requirements: Active and engaged participation, a brief oral presentation, weekly reflections, a project outline, a brief mid-semester progress report, and the creation of the final textual edition. NOTE: At least four class sessions will take place at local archives within a 25-minute public transportation radius.
DHUM 73700 - Geospatial Humanities # 59981
Prof. Jeremy Porter (jporter@brooklyn.cuny.edu)
This course aims to familiarize students with GIS and spatial analysis tools and techniques used in the visualization, management, analysis, and presentation of geo-spatial data. The course will be a hand's on applied course in which students will learn to work with publicly available geo-spatial data in open-source software packages, including but not limited too: R, Python, QGIS, and CartoDB. Topics covered include, Data Acquisition, Geo-Processing, Data Visualization, Cartography, Spatial Statistics, and Web-Mapping.
DHUM 74500 - Digital Pedagogy 2: Theory, Design, and Practice # 59982
Profs. Michael Mandiberg and Julie Van Peteghem (mmandiberg@gc.cuny.edu and jv41@hunter.cuny.edu)
Cross-listed with ITCP 70020.
Students build on the historical and theoretical insights gleaned in the first interactive technology and pedagogy course, as they begin to employ digital tools in their own work. In this praxis oriented course students explore digital methodologies in the contemporary academy, enabling them to better contextualize their own work and negotiate the practicalities involved in creating a technology dependent project. By the end of the semester students will produce a polished proposal for a technology‐based project in their discipline related to research, teaching, or both.
Through class discussions, online work and workshops, students will hone their understanding of and ability to use digital tools and new media approaches in teaching and research. This course includes a two-hour non-credit bearing lab that takes place on the same day as class, directly afterwards.
MALS 75500 - Digital Humanities Methods and Practices # 59896
Prof. Andrea Silva (asilva@york.cuny.edu)
During the Fall 2018 semester, students explored the landscape of the digital humanities, considering a range of ways to approach DH work and proposing potential DH projects. In the spring, we will put that thinking into action by refining and producing a small number of those projects. This praxis-oriented course will ask students to organize into teams and, by the end of the semester, produce a project prototype. Upon completion of the course, students will have gained hands-on experience in the conceptualizing, planning, production, and dissemination of a digital humanities project. Student work for this course will demonstrate a variety of technical, project management, and rhetorical skills. One of our goals is to produce well-conceived, long-term projects that have the potential to extend beyond the Spring 2019 semester. A range of advisors will be matched to support the needs of each individual project. Successful completion of the class will require a rigorous commitment to meeting deadlines and benchmarks established at the beginning of the course.
The class will hold a public event at the end of the semester where students will launch their projects and receive feedback from the DH academic community.
DHUM 70000 - Introduction to the Digital Humanities
Profs. Matthew Gold and Stephen Brier
Cross-listed with MALS 75400 and IDS 81660
What are the digital humanities, and how can they help us think in new ways? This course offers an introduction to the landscape of digital humanities (DH) work, paying attention to how its various approaches embody new ways of knowing and thinking. What kinds of questions, for instance, does the practice of mapping pose to our research and teaching? When we attempt to share our work through social media, how is it changed? How can we read “distantly,” and how does “distant reading” alter our sense of what reading is?
Over the course of this semester, we will explore these questions and others as we engaging ongoing debates in the digital humanities, such as the problem of defining the digital humanities, the question of whether DH has (or needs) theoretical grounding, controversies over new models of peer review for digital scholarship, issues related to collaborative labor on digital projects, and the problematic questions surrounding research involving “big data.” The course will also emphasize the ways in which DH has helped transform the nature of academic teaching and pedagogy in the contemporary university with its emphasis on collaborative, student-centered and digital learning environments and approaches.
Among the themes and approaches we will explore are evidence, scale, representation, genre, quantification, visualization, and data. We will also discuss broad social, legal and ethical questions and concerns surrounding digital media and contemporary culture, including privacy, intellectual property, and open/public access to knowledge and scholarship.
Though no previous technical skills are required, students will be asked to experiment in introductory ways with DH tools and methods as a way of concretizing some of our readings and discussions. Students will be expected to participate actively in class discussions and online postings (including on our course blog) and to undertake a final project that can be either a conventional seminar paper or a proposal for a digital project. Students completing the course will gain broad knowledge about and understanding of the emerging role of the digital humanities across several academic disciplines and will begin to learn some of the fundamental skills used often in digital humanities projects.
Note: this course is part of an innovative "Digital Praxis Seminar," a two-semester long introduction to digital tools and methods that will be open to all students in the Graduate Center. The goal of the course is to introduce graduate students to various ways in which they can incorporate digital research into their work.
DHUM 72000 - Textual Studies in the Digital Age: "Doing Things with Novels"
Prof. Jeff Allred
The novel, whose very name is associated with the new, is starting to look a bit antiquated. It demands of us long, uninterrupted stretches of time; it projects a world hermetically sealed from the buzzing data flows that travel in our pockets and around our desks; it resolutely resists—the Kindle notwithstanding—being ripped from between printed covers and scattered in the cloud(s). This course will examine the past and future of the novel genre, attempting to link the history of what William Warner calls the dominant entertainment platform of the nineteenth century to the present moment, in which an increasing share of our “serious” reading and “light” entertainments alike unfold on networked screens of all kinds.
We will examine this dynamic along two axes. First, we will read classic and recent work on the history and theory of the novel, with a particular emphasis on reading practices and cultural technologies. Second, we will do things with novels other than simply read them, exploring new possibilities for engaging the genre via the affordances of digital technology. For example, we will remediate a printed novel by creating a DIY audiobook; we will transform a novel by “playing” it as a role-playing-game; we will annotate a novel, creating a new edition to orient lay readers to its cultural historical underpinnings. We will use several novellas by Herman Melville as our jumping-off point for these projects. Those interested can get a fair sense of the course's shape from this site from a prior version of the course for undergraduates at Hunter College.
Requirements: rigorous reading, informal writing (on a course blog), enthusiastic participation, participation in group digital projects and a final essay or project.
DHUM 73000 - Visualization and Design: Fundamentals
Prof. Lev Manovich
Cross-listed with DATA 73000 and CSC 83060
Data visualization is increasingly important today in more and more fields. Its growing popularity in the early 21st century corresponds to important cultural and technological shifts in our societies – adoption of data-centric research methods in many new areas, the availability of massive data sets, and use of interactive digital media and the web for dissemination of information and knowledge. Data visualization techniques allow people to use perception and cognition to see patterns in data, and form research hypotheses. During last 20 years data visualization has also become an important part of contemporary visual and data cultures, entering the worlds of art, visual communication, interactives and interface design.
In this course students learn the concepts and methods of data visualization. They practice these methods by completing four practical assignments and a final project. These assignments will be discussed and analyzed in class. In addition, the class covers the following four topics:
1) Learning about data visualization field, becoming familiar with most well-known designers and data artists, classic visualization projects, relevant organizations and available software.
2) Visualization can be understand as a part of a scientific paradigm for summarizing, analyzing and predicting data that also includes statistics, data science and AI. Accordingly, students will be introduced to selected concepts from these areas so they understand how data visualization interacts with these fields.
3) Alternatively, visualization can be seen as a part of modern culture that includes languages and techniques of visual art, design, architecture, cinema, interactive art, and data art. We will devote some time to considering these perspectives and links.
4) Another topic which we will also cover is the use of visualization in recently emerged fields devoted to analyzing big cultural data - digital humanities, computational social science, and cultural analytics.
DHUM 74000 - Digital Pedagogy 1: History, Theory, and Practice
Profs. Gallardo and Hernandez
Cross-listed with ITCP 70010
Core 1 is the first course in the ITP certificate sequence. This course examines the economic, social, and intellectual history of technological change over time, as well as technology and digital media design and use. A full description is available here: https://itpcp.commons.gc.cuny.edu/courses/
ITP is a 9 credit, 3 course certificate that provides intellectual opportunities and technical training that enable students to think creatively and critically about the uses of technology to improve teaching, learning, and research. Students learn praxis-oriented methodologies for digital research and pedagogy, and complete capstone projects under the mentorship of one of our faculty. Our students have won intramural and extramural grants for their research, and their skills and knowledge are in demand on the job market.
Learn more at http://www.gc.cuny.edu/itp and see examples of past capstone projects here: https://itpis.commons.gc.cuny.edu/
ITP courses meet Monday 4:15-6:15 with skills Lab directly following from 6:30-8:30. For more information about enrollment please contact Julie Fuller, Program Assistant (jfuller1@gradcenter.cuny.edu)
DHUM 73000 - VIsualization and Design: Fundamentals
Profs. Erin Daugherty and Prof. Michelle McSweeney
Cross-listed with DATA 73000
As employers in every sector continue to search for candidates that can turn their data into actionable information, this course is designed to demystify data analysis by approaching it visually. Using Tableau Software, we will build a series of interactive visualizations that combine data and logic with storytelling and design. Over the course of four weeks, we will dive into cleaning and structuring unruly data sets, identifying which chart types work best for different types of data, and unpacking the tactics behind effective visual communication. Our data sets will be geared towards humanities and social science research, and Tableau’s drag-and-drop interface will not require coding. Regardless of your academic concentration, you will walk away from this class with a portfolio of four dynamic dashboards and a new interdisciplinary skill set ready to leverage in your academic and professional work.