The goal of the course is to introduce students to the basic debates and methodologies of the digital humanities (DH) and then to think through how these approaches and methods might best be applied in their respective disciplines and projects. As DH rapidly emerged as a new interdisciplinary field of auxiliary studies during the last decades, and by now, it has its own historiography. Firstly, therefore, we will be tracing how DH has developed, and will also address some of its challenges and limitations. After this basic introduction, we will move through five of the main methodologies featured in DH: network analysis, text analysis, mapping and geographic information system (GIS), digital storytelling/public history, and topic modeling. All of these fields will be discussed on two occasions: first, the methodology itself will be consulted closely, and secondly, related case studies will be discussed. Besides these, the course intends to familiarize students with the most cutting-edge issues of recent digital scholarship, such as the handling of “big data,” “data and text mining,” “crowd-sourcing” and the “born-digital collections.” During these weeks of exploring the various approaches, students will also have the possibility to work in pairs or groups, experimenting with their own datasets and areas of research. By the end of the course, each pair and group will present and submit a DH research or project proposal, incorporating at least one methodology with a selected discipline and area of research.
- Instructor: Marcell Sebok