Syllabus
One of the first pioneers in this area is considered to be the Jesuit Roberto Buso, who came with the project of complete processing of Index Verborum by Thomas Aquinas in 1949. The project itself was finally carried out in 1974–1980 and published in a printed version of 56 volumes with the support of IBM. In the project, Thomas Aquinas's work was completely transcribed into punch cards, and then a complete concordance was created by the computer. Today, the Thomisticus Index is accessible online, which enables searching for all occurrences of the word even in a bulk piece of work in fractions of seconds.
This groundbreaking project is a great example of the basics of digital humanities. It was enabled by computing power and new media, changing the approach to research itself, and finally changing the overall approach to the information that the research is based on. These changes are precisely what defines the area of digital humanities and the content of this seminar. 1. What are Digital Humanities?
Keywords: digital humanities, social computing, humanities versus social sciences
Main topics: Explanation of main methodological approaches in digital humanities. Clarify the change brought by the concept of digital humanities to the research work of humanities. Answering the question of how this change is possible and how does it change the idea of the methodological anchoring of the humanities. Problems with the application of the Popper method of understanding the natural sciences on humanities.
Recommended literature:
Eileen Gardiner, Ronald G. Musto: The Digital Humanities: A primer for Students and Scholars, Cambridge University Press, 2015.
Matthew K. Gold, Editor: Debates in the Digital Humanities, University of Minnesota Press, 2012.
Willard McCarty: Humanities Computing. Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.
David M. Berry (ed.): Understanding Digital Humanities. Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. 2. History of Digital Humanities
Keywords: Index Thomisticus, Perseus Project, distant reading
Main topics: How did relationship between information science and computer science grew up in the XX. century on the one hand and humanities on the other? What are the important projects in the second half of XX. centuries that preceded the emergence of digital humanities.
Recommended literature:
Alves, Daniel. 2014. “Introduction: Digital Methods and Tools for Historical Research.” International Journal of Humanities and Arts Computing 8 (1): 1–12.
Burdick, Anne, Johanna Drucker, Peter Lunenfeld, Todd Presner, and Jeffrey Schnapp. 2012. Digital Humanities. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Schreibman, Susan, and Ray Siemens. 2008. A Companion to Digital Literary Studies. Hardcover. Blackwell Companions to Literature and Culture. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Professional. http://www.digitalhumanities.org/companionDLS/. 3. Cultural Analysis and Cultural Analytics
Keywords: cultural analytics, cultural analysis
Main topics: What is cultural analytics and how does it differ from cultural analysis? What are the typical researches in the area of cultural analytics and who represents them. What brings this area new compared to classical cultural studies.
Recommended literature:
Cultural analytics on Sofftware Lab http://lab.softwarestudies.com/p/cultural-analytics.html
Cultural analytics journal: http://culturalanalytics.org/ 4. Netnography
Keywords: netnography, online communities, grounded theory, human subject research
Main topics: What is netnography and how is different from classical ethnography? What are its basic methods and its ethical limits. Case Studies of Netnographic Research.
Recommended literature:
Robert V. Kozinets: Netnography: Doing Ethnographic Research Online, Sage Publications, 2010
Robert Kozinets: Netnography: Redefined
Sarah Pink,: Digital Ethnography: Principles and Practice 1st Edition 5. Collective Intelligence
Keywords: collective intelligence, swarm intelligence, predictive markets, wikipedia
Main topics: How to define basic principles of collective intelligence and their examples at present. How its principles apply in the field of digital humanities and what are the limits of using the principles of collective intelligence.
Recommended literature:
Thomas W. Malone, Michael S. Bernstein (eds.), Handbook of Collective Intelligence
Handbook of Collective Inteligence. URL: http://scripts.mit.edu/~cci/HCI 6. Social Network Analysis
Keywords: centers, nodes and links, oriented and non-oriented graphs
Main topics: What is social network analysis? What are the so-called social network sites. What different aspects of social network analysis can be explored by it. What is its use in digital humanities? Examples of social networking in practice.
Recommended literature:
Danah m. boyd, Nicole B. Ellison:Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1083-6101.2007.00393.x/full
Kadushin, Charles. 2012. Understanding Social Networks: Theories, Concepts, and Findings. New York: Oxford University Press. 7. Data sources for Digital Humanities
Keywords: API, linked data, semantic web, wikidata, SPARQL
Main topics: Web archives making their cultural heritage accessible, its accessibilty and the analytical methods they allow to be applied on. What are wikidata and how they can be used for research in digital humanities.
Recommended literature: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Main_Page 8. Visualisation, Data Mining, Text Mining and Digital Humanities
Keywords: keywords extraction, small multiple, anscombe quartet, data mining, text mining, data visualisation
Main topics: How can be visualization used in digital humanities visualisation research. What are the basic mining techniques that can be applied in digital humanities. What basic mining practices can be applied in digital humanities.
Recommended literature:
Tufte, Edward R (2001) [1983], The Visual Display of Quantitative Information (2nd ed.), Cheshire, CT: Graphics Press, ISBN 0-9613921-4-2.
Nathan Yau: Visualize This: The Flowing Data Guide to Design, Visualization, and Statistics
Ted Kwartler: Text Mining in Practice with R
Moretti, Franco (2005). Graphs, maps, trees: abstract models for a literary history. Verso. p. 119. ISBN 1-84467-026-0. 9. Computer Based Collective Collaboration and Digital Humanities
Keywords: online collaborative research, videoconference, wiki
Main topics: What is computer-assisted collective collaboration? What opportunities open up the possibility for collaborative online collaboration to research. How is the issue of authority and power addressed?
Recommended literature:
Kelly Prange, Joseph A. Allenand Roni Reiter-Palmon: Collective Impact versus Collaboration: Sides of the Same Coin OR Different Phenomenon? online: https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1098668.pdf
Thomas Boyer-Kassem, Conor Mayo-Wilson, Michael Weisberg (eds.): Scientific Collaboration and Collective Knowledge 10. Critical Reflection, Pros and Cons of Digital Humanities
Keywords: the critique of digital humanities from the point of view of so-called blackbox, the critique of digital humanities from the point of view of objectivity (The lure of objectivity), the critique of digital humanities from the point of view of power (The power of visual evidence)
Main topics: What are the main complaints about the methodology of digital humanities. Specific examples of research that can be applied immediately and defensive techniques which can be used against possible distortions.
Recommended literature:
McPerson, Tara. 2012. “What Are the Digital Humanities so White? Or Thinking through the Histories of Race and Computation.” In Debates in the Digital Humanitie
Annotation
The movement around digital humanities has come as a response to the humanities and social sciences to the development of computer technology and new (digital) media since the middle of the last century. With the advent of computers, there have gradually emerged projects utilizing their computing power and the ability to process an amount of information that is otherwise practically impossible by an individual.
The course is introduction to the use of digital humanities and their forces in the field of research in difital era. The course aims to bring together theorists foundations for a new approach in the humanities with practical student projects.
Participants will learn about the courses during the current trends in the digital humanities and tested a range of methodologies. Course students should understand the changes brought about by digital data processing in the field of humanities.