Digital Methods

Description

This course will be of interest to students from Humanities disciplines interested in building a digital component into their Honours degree. It provides an introduction to the history of humanities computing, and its development through the ‘computational turn’ into Digital Humanities. Technical skills aren’t required, but an interest in computers and a desire to learn more will be invaluable. You will be challenged to consider what it means to be a digital humanist, and attend seminars in technological determinism, systems theory, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and data visualization, TEI (The Humanities Text Encoding Initiative), text analysis and the nature of digital texts, algorithmic criticism and distant reading, open source and open access movements, digital forensics, crowd-sourcing, and materiality. The course is designed to give students a broad overview of the field so they can decide what areas they might like to specialize in. It is highly recommended for those wishing to progress to Masters and Doctoral studies. The goal is to offer students a broad education in digital humanities, from theory to elementary programming and system design.  Students are encouraged to take this course in conjunction with courses in other Humanities disciplines, and those interested in further developing their technical skills are encouraged to progress to courses offered by Computer Science and Engineering.

Image: Hypercities New York. Todd Presner et al.