Schedule
Course Structure
We will learn several approaches to the digital humanities during the first half of the semester using Herland as a test case. During the second half, you’ll be working in teams on another text from the period, and completing a project using a combination of the methods that we tested on Herland.
All dates are tentative and may be changed if necessary.
Week 1: What are We Doing Anyway?
Monday, January 14
In Class: Syllabus, Introductions
Thursday, January 16:
Before Class: Do a basic google search for “digital humanities” and browse around seeing what you can learn, read Stephen Ramsay, “The Hermeneutics of Screwing Around; or What You Do with a Million Books”
In Class: Discuss Ramsay, work on definitions of DH, discuss what process-oriented class design might look like
Week 2: Alternative Entry to Herland
Artifact: Voyant Visualizations
Blog, due no later than Monday, January 21: Introduce yourself and your interest in the class. Make sure to discuss your relationship to technology. Do you consider yourself a skilled user and even builder or technology or are you just beginning? What aspects of the class and its design most intrigue you? What about the class and its experimental nature makes you want to hide in a corner with your head between your knees?
Monday, January 21
No Class MLK Day
Wednesday, January 23
Before Class:
- What can we learn about the novel without reading? Tinker with Voyant on your own by putting the full-text of Herland into Voyant. Play around and/or read the documentation before coming to class.
- Bring your first draft of a learning contract to share with Dr. DeSpain.
Project Gutenberg e-text for Herland
In Class: Work with a Partner on the Voyant Workshop.
**By the end of the day on Friday, January 25, upload your learning contract to Blackboard.
Week 3-Exploring Herland from the Ground
Artifact: Annotations in Annotation Studio
Blog, due no later than Monday January 28
Share any completed visualizations of interest on the blog, and explain what you’ve learned from them. What did you learn about Herland without reading it? What gaps still exist in your knowledge? How is/is this not a viable mode for learning about texts? What was Voyant especially good at? What do you wish it did more of?
Monday, January 28
Before class: read Herland, Chs. 1-4 Pay close attention to your reading habits and preferences.
In class: Discussion of Voyant Analyses and reading habits as a result of work with annotation studio.
Wednesday, January 30
Before class: Herland, Chs. 5-7, annotating as you go in annotation studio.
In class: discussion of the novel and annotations
Week 4-Timelines and Alternate Histories
Artifact: Contextual Visualization
Blog, due no later than Monday, February 4
What have you learned about your own reading and the reading of your classmates by examining their annotations beside your own in Annotation Studio? How does this kind of communal reading experience compare to the more solitary reading you enact with a the physical book? Now that you’ve started reading, what have you gained that you didn’t consider via your Voyant analysis? What would you have missed without Voyant?
Timeline topics:
- Development of the Women’s Movement
- The Turn Toward Utopia
- Technological Developments
- Socialism
- Women’s Health and Medicalization
Monday, February 4
Before class-
- Read Herland, Ch. 8 & 9 (We won’t have an opportunity to talk much about it this week, but keep working away at it).
- Make yourself a google account if you don’t already have one.
- Visit the TimelineJS Website and familiarize yourself with the process. Be sure to look at the Women in Computing sample so that you know what you’ll be creating.
In class-Discuss best practices for research, spend time working with your group to familiarize yourself with the assignment and begin researching
Research Resources:
- Read over General Research Tips. This page talks more about library databases and scholarly research, but it will be good to revisit, and you may want to do some of this kind of research.
- Look over the Historical Resources page. This is going to have some concise, helpful articles and sources for multimedia materials for your timeline.
Wednesday, February 6
Before class: Continue research process so that you can use Monday’s class primarily for data-entry and proofing.
In class: workshop to finish work on TimelineJS
Week 5 to 6: Viral Networks
Artifact: Network Visualization
Blog, due no later than Monday, February 11: Share your timeline on the blog. What might you learn from constructing and/or viewing digital visualizations of context? In addition to considering the timeline, reflect on your research process. Where did you go to collect sound visual, historical, literary, sources for your part of the project? How did the Internet play a role in this process? In what ways might it have expanded or limited your capabilities of finding items, focusing on specific threads, etc.?
Monday, February 11
Before class:
- Finish up any remaining timeline business
- Read about Networks Analysis
- Read to the end of Herland
- Read Jill Lepore’s The Secret History of Wonder Woman on Bb
In class-share results of timelines, discuss networks
Wednesday, February 13
Before class:
- Spend some time learning about Gephi and download it on your own machine, if you’d like. Start with this tutorial to learn the basics, and then try out this tutorial to learn more advanced skills. Also, see this example on refugee resettlement to think about the consequences of visualization.
- Check out examples of Networks projects, including samples from Harvard’s Visualizing Historical Networks and Stanford’s Republic of Letters, and Evelina Gabasova’s sampling of network analyses of The Star Wars franchise
- Come prepared with details and page numbers to bring the network you are planning to visualize in class.
In class: We’ll be discussing examples, screwing around with Gephi, and doing research into popular cultural resonances of the text
Monday, February 18
Before class:
- Examine the preview of Franco Moretti’s chapter in Distant Reading titled “Network Theory Plot Analysis” (find chapter by looking at the Table of Contents at the top)
- Continue research into long-term influence of the text
In class: working on networks, discussing networks, discussing Moretti
Wednesday, February 20
In class: Workshop to complete networks
Week 7 to 8: Mapping the Empire, Following the Chase
Artifact: Map
Blog, due no later than February 25
Share your network visualization on the blog. Explain your visualization and what we might learn from it about the novel and its reception. Be sure to read ALL of your classmates blogs this week and comment on how their variant visualizations provide alternative readings of the novel.
Monday, February 25
Before class: Read and then screw around with the exercises in the page from DH101. Not all of the links are active, but many are, and there are a lot of things to explore. Be prepared to wrap-up discussion of the novel and discuss its spatial implications.
In class: Discuss the novel’s spatial implications. How might a spatial consideration of the text change our readings of it?
Wednesday, February 27
Before Class:
-
- Spend time going back through Herland and thinking about specifically what you’d like to map and what page references you’d need to do it or additional research you might need to conduct
- Look at the following examples, and consider how they present different methods of mapping projects. Mapping Emotions in Victorian England, Civil War Washington, and Kristine Hildebrandt’s Manang Languages Project at SIUE.
- Read this brief article about mapping Africa in both the 18th century and today.
In Class: Mapping Workshop
Monday, March 4
Before class: Examine the novels for your final project and start to consider which ones might interest you. Read the final project description–we can talk about any needed modifications or adaptations.
In class: Discussion of maps, thinking through the quarter’s activities, talking through the portfolio again, thinking ahead to final projects, take time to work on maps
Wednesday, March 6
In class: work on completing maps project
Complete midterm portfolio with reflection no later than Sunday, March 17 at 11:59 pm.
Week 9: No Class, Spring Break
Note: From this point on, please be sure to check the final project page for important dates and further information about required checkpoints.
Week 10: Final Project Beginnings
The goal of this week in class is to establish an effective team, brainstorm about the kinds of projects that might interest you, choose your text or texts, and make a reading schedule. Your reading teams may not end up being the same as your project teams, but this way you’ll all experience some collaboration, and if you decide to break out on your own later, that will be okay. Note that collaboration is one of the outcomes on the learning contract, so if you haven’t demonstrated this outcome yet, it would be wise to work with others for the final project.
Monday, March 18
In class: Discuss collaboration, collaborative practices, take some time to get to know your teams. See this class resource about collaboration, which we will consult in class and which you’ll want to talk about with your groups, develop a reading schedule.
Wednesday, March 20
In class: Time to meet in class to discuss the novel with one another, run Voyant analyses on your novel, appointments with Dr. DeSpain about portfolio progress
Week 11: Reading and Discussion
Blog, due no later than Monday, March 25
What are the rewards and drawbacks of working with others? What makes for a successful collaboration? How do you plan to hold one another accountable? What are the drawback and benefits to working on your own? Also feel free to discuss what gets you fired up about the novel and the project. What do you like about the book so far? What gets your wheels spinning intellectually?
Monday, March 25 & 27
Time to continue to meet and discuss the novel
Week 12: Reading and Discussion Continued
Blog, due no later than April 1
What significant themes, issues, styles, etc. are coming to the surface in your reading? What did you learn this week about collaboration as you discussed the novels in class? What might you need to rework in your team structure for more successful collaboration going forward?
Monday, April 1
In Class: Continue discussions. By this day, you should have determined who you are working with for the final project.
Wednesday April 3
In class: On this day, your group will give a 5-7 minute presentation that gives a synopsis of the novel and explains what themes, ideas, and theories might be useful for understanding it further. You should also consider what aspects of the digitial humanities might be useful in exploring the text, and whether you might be interested in pairing the novel with other texts or using it on its own.
Week 13: Proposal Presentations
Blog, due no later than Monday, April 8
- On the blog someone in your group should submit a list of at least ten sources that you plan to explore in preparation for your project proposal (5 related to the novel itself and 5 related to DH tools and methods), with group assignments for each.
- In addition, you should each write a blog exploring what you learned from the presentations. What new ideas have you had since the discussion about what questions you might want to explore with the novel? What research, skills, or tools will you need to complete the work you are imagining?
Monday, April 8
Work on proposal presentations in class and in consultation with Dr. DeSpain to consider the scope of your final project digital exploration of the novel and what tools you’ll use to complete it.
Wednesday, April 10
On this day, your group will present a 5-7 minute proposal for the final project itself. You should cover your research and address what methods you want to use to explore the novel digitally and why. Explain what you still need to investigate, what your work plan is for the coming two weeks, and how you will break up the required tasks. Have one team member share your slides on the blog too. See the Final Project page for layout and content requirements.
Week 14: Studio Time
Blog, due no later than Monday, April 15
What adjustments do you need to make to your question and/or your work plan after discussing your proposal with the class? Why are you making these adjustments?
Monday, April 15
in-class lab time
Thursday, April 17
in-class lab time
Blog: Discuss the project’s progress? What have you done? What do you still need to do? What are you struggling with?
Week 15: Peer Review and Studio Time
Monday, April 22
Peer Review; Have a rough draft of the project available for your classmates to assess.
Wednesday, April 24
Studio Time
Week 16: Studio Time
Monday, April 29 & 30
Studio Time
Wednesday, May 8, 12:00-1:40, Final Exam Period
In class: Presentation of Final Projects
Final submission of portfolio and any contract revisions by end of day on May 8