Class Schedule

Week 1: What are the Digital Humanities?

Synopsis

  • Learn what computers can discover & how they operate
  • Discuss what this field is and where we are headed
  • See a demonstration of what these methods can do for you
  • Discuss some basic concepts

Assignments Due

  • First Week, No Assignments

Class Setup

  • Check here before every class to see if you need to do anything when you arrive
  • Every single class you need to...
    • Join the class conference page
    • Join the class slack channel

Lesson

  • Lecture: Introduction to Digital Humanities
  • Introduction
    • Naive Learning: The Dangers of Big Data
    • Bit Dungeon Exercise
  • Overview
    • Email List, using alternate emails
    • What is this Class, What is Digital Humanities?
    • What is the end product of this class?
    • Setting Up Your Computer, Setting Up for Class
  • Demonstration of Methods
    • USF News
  • Basic Concepts
    • Binary to text: the purpose of programming languages
    • Plaintext, CSVs

Week 2: First Steps

Synopsis

  • Brief history of computation
  • Using class chat program
  • Intro to programming concepts

Assignments Due

Class Setup

  • Announce Setting Up For Class, Conferences and Checking the Workbook

Lesson

  • Lecture: Computational Development
  • Slack Features:
    • Polls
    • Threads
    • Other Channels
    • Other Features
  • Discussion: Why Code?
  • Python Basics
    • Terminal, navigation, variables, scripts
    • Command-line / Script / Compiled code
    • Variables, Conditionals
    • List, Dictionaries
    • Loops, & Functions
    • Objects(preview)

Week 3: Python & GitHub

Synopsis

  • Synthesize basic programming concepts
  • Last questions about programming
  • Introduction to Github and Atom

Assignments Due

  • Read textbook, chapter 2, pp. 37-72
  • Register an account at Codecademy
  • Codecademy Python course, Units 1-3 (or as far as you can get). Submit a screenshot showing your completion on Canvas. Here are tutorials on taking screenshots for Windows and Mac.

Class Setup

Lesson

  • Python
    • Comprehension Check
    • Lists/Dictionaries/Functions
    • Recursion, Factorials
    • Example in Action, Getting/Scraping Web Data
  • Git/Github / Atom
    • Starting a Project, a Git Folder
    • Local Repositories
    • Remote Repositories
    • Branches / Cloning / Forking
    • Example in Action, Cloning and Editing this Workbook
  • Web Scraper Preview

Week 4: Data Scraping

Synopsis

  • Use Webscraper to get historical data
  • Discuss the origin of 'hacking'
  • Learn how to visualize data

Assignments Due

Class Setup

Lesson


Week 5: Scrubbing and Scraping

Synopsis

Assignments Due

Class Setup

Lesson

  • Data Scrubbing: OpenRefine
    • Formulae
    • Facets
    • Clustering
    • Splitting Columns
  • View in OverviewDocs
  • Webscraper Review

Week 6: Visualizing the Past

Synopsis

  • Learn the top journals, blogs, etc. where discussion happens in the field
  • Discuss the race and gender in computation and DH
  • Alter and visualize data with Excel
  • Learn how modern internet applications work
  • Explore our main visualization tool, tableau

Assignments Due

Class Setup

Lesson

  • Where Are the DH Discussions?
  • An Introduction to Excel Pivot Tables
    • What Pivot Tables Do
    • Crossing Columns and Rows
    • Pivot Chars
  • Discussion: So, why do the Digital Humanities remain so white?
    • Development of UNIX and of Critical Theory
    • Modularity in Code and in Global Theory
    • Divergence in Computational Scholarship and Historiography
    • Radical Data, Can the Subaltern Program?
    • Bridging the Digital Divide
  • Introduction to Tableau
    • Some Other Visualization Programs (we won't be focusing on)
    • Importing Data
    • Field Types, Dimensions, and Measures
    • Tableau Pivot Tables
    • Visualizations and Types
    • Customizing Visualizations
    • Dashboards
    • Stories

Week 7: Managing and Visualizing Data

Synopsis

Assignments Due

  • Read textbook, chapter 5, pp. 159-194
  • Complete the GitHub Hello World Tutorial
  • Skim the GitHub guide on making your code citable in academic worlds.
  • Create a post in the [assignment-discussion] Slack Channel (make sure you click the '+' button then choose 'Post') that answers at least one of the following prompts...
    • Are the Digital Humanities inherently racist or gendered, or, put more gently, is it still affected by racial/gendered assumptions?
    • How did racial/gendered assumptions affect the development of the field?
    • Can we use digital methods to overcome the influence of the racial/gendered history of the field of digital studies?
    • Is the historical racial/gendered bias of DH any different than the racial/gendered bias of the field of history?

Class Setup

Lesson

  • Revisit Questions: Is DH racist? Is DH anti-theory?
  • Talk About Groups
    • Expectations
    • Query for Specializations
    • Query for Project Ideas, Sites, Datasets, etc.
    • Group Together
  • Make an example local/GitHub.com repo, use command line
  • Use GitHub to practice submitting the source analysis
  • Revisit working with OpenRefine
  • Revisit working with Tableau

Week 8: Visualizations

Synopsis

  • Edit your Github project, add pages, links, images, and files
  • Manage merging and multiple branches
  • Explore [tableau] further

Assignments Due

  • Review textbook, chapter 5, pp. 159-194
  • Complete UCLA's introductory Tableau Tutorial
  • Use sample data files in Tableau
    • Use the church survey, espy execution, war diaries, or USF in the News data sets
    • Note If you want to know more about your data, remember you can always look into the sources behind the data by googling...
    • Try to create several visualization that are connected in some way
    • Create a post (300-500 words) explaining what your visualizations 'mean' assignment-discussion channel.

Class Setup

  • No extra setup

Lesson

  • Submitting Your Souce Analysis, Pull Requests, and Social Coding
  • How A Full-Stack App Works
    • Sever-side Database
    • Sever-side Application
    • Client-side Application
    • APIs
  • Make Groups Continued
    • Expectations
    • Query for Specializations
    • Query for Project Ideas, Sites, Datasets, etc.
    • Group Together
  • Project Management
    • GitHub
    • Cloning, Forking, Branching
    • gitignore
    • issues, bugs, stats
  • Project Starter Template
    • Clone and upload to your repo
    • How an MkDocs repo works
    • Make branches, changes
  • Why Visualize?
    • Discuss your visualization attempts
    • What makes a Good Visualizaiton?
    • wtf.viz
  • Continuing Visualizing in Tableau - Merging and Joining Data - Florida Postcards - Join Tables

Week 9: Networks

Synopsis

  • Discuss how to choose the 'right' visualizations
  • Discuss network analysis
  • Ask questions about the digital source analysis and group proposal
  • Learn to fail well (no really)
  • See network analysis demonstration

Assignments Due

Class Setup

  • No extra setup

Lesson

  • Reviewing Visualization Types
  • Big Data and Big History: The Possibilities and Dangers
  • Groups and Projects: Team Up and Talk on Slack
    • The Digital Source Analysis
    • The Proposal and Bibliography
  • Planning for Failure
    • Think out 'passing the ball'
    • Backup plans
    • Planning out steps: Assignments and Milestones in Github
    • Failing Well: The Role of Failure in Science
  • Lecture: Network Analysis
  • Using Gephi
    • Manual Editing
    • Data Import, Node/Edge, Adjacency, Matrix, Co-Occurrences
    • Finding or Creating Historical Network Data Sets

Week 10: Machine Learning and Linked Data

Synopsis

  • Discuss group proposals
  • Explore how topic modeling and other methods analyze text
  • Learn how 'AI' (machine learning) works
  • Discuss other types of open-source data

Assignments Due

  • Read textbook, chapters 3 & 4, pp. 73-158

Class Setup

  • No extra setup

Lesson

  • Groups & The Proposal
  • Networks Continued
  • Topic Modeling
    • Theory of LDA
    • GUI Tool
    • What can it teach us?
  • Markov Chains
  • Neural Networks
    • How They Work
    • Biological Model
  • Linked Open Data
    • RDF, XML
    • Authority File
    • Ontological Entities
    • Problem of Standards

Week 11: GitHub and Markdown Continued

Synopsis

Assignments Due

  • No assignments planned. (May change upon notice)

Class Setup

  • No extra setup

Lesson


Week 12: Reading Period

Synopsis

Assignments Due

Class Setup

  • No extra setup

Lesson

  • Reading Period

Week 13: The Power of the Digital Archive

Synopsis

Assignments Due

  • No assignments planned. (May change upon notice)

Class Setup

  • No Extra Setup

Lesson


Week 14: Bringing the Pieces Together

Synopsis

  • Discuss your project progress
  • Debate the possibilities of digital methods
  • Learn to market your skills
  • Troubleshoot your project

Assignments Due

  • No assignments planned. (May change upon notice)

Class Setup

  • Be prepared to have a brief discussion about your project's progress to date

Lesson

  • Project Presentations
    • Discuss your project, your process
    • Biggest success
    • Biggest surprise
    • Biggest failure
    • What would you do different?
  • What are the Digital Humanities, Revisited?
    • The Evolution (And Devolution?) of the Field
    • Historians and Digital Sources of the Future
    • The Coming of the New Digital Economy, Resistance?
    • The Influential Power of Data Capta, Separation of Data and Logic
    • Modeling Data of Connections, Relationships
    • Talking to Humans: Programming Language and Languages Revisited
    • Rise of Network Theory in Historical Contexts
    • Can Data Ever Be Radical?
    • 42 - The Limit with All Quantitative Models
    • The Processing Power of the Human Brain
  • Marketing Your Skills
  • Projects Troubleshooting
    • How to write online
    • Slack channel, opt in/out for the future
    • Skills we have learned, and where to go from here on your own
    • Trouble-Shooting Projects

Week 15: Publishing Your Projects

Synopsis

  • Discussion - Future of DH and 'Big Data'
  • Troubleshooting - Last minute help

Assignments Due

  • No assignments planned. (May change upon notice)

Class Setup

  • Come ready with a list of issues that need troubleshooting

Lesson

  • What is DH?
  • The future of 'big data' and the future of history
  • Humanizing the Digital
  • Troubleshooting