This syllabus is for a two-semester core course in year one of the Master's degree program in digital humanities. The course will serve to provide intellectual coherence to the first year and to provide a series of readings, discussions, and projects that develop familiarity with some of the areas and contributing disciplines that are shaping the field.
This course is based on the conviction that several basic steps are essential to all work in digital humanities:
Acquisition (digitization, metadata, tagging, mark-up)
Organization (information structure, systems or classification etc.)
Manipulation (search engines, programming operations)
Communication presentation (user/community interaction, interface, standards).
Though different levels of complexity and sophistication can be achieved in any area, with little or no upper limit on the technical and intellectual skills that can come to bear on these tasks, we believe that an understanding of these principles built into each cycle of this course (every project, task, etc.) will provide a solid point of departure for later work. These elements are part of any use of digital (and traditional) materials. Calling attention to them as the basic elements of knowledge representation in digital humanities is essential.
The course will be taken concurrently with several others focused on areas that complement the work done here. In particular: a design seminar in digital humanities, a course in humanities information systems, and a seminar in social and cultural issues in digital media. Additional work in humanities electives, a seminar on thesis and project preparation, and teaching of Media Studies 110 (Information technology and digital media) will provide the rest of the intellectual structure of the MA.
An overview of the MA curriculum is reproduced in Appendix B of this document.
This page was created on 10 August 2002.