5170V01 Hacking the Humanities: Programming and Analysis

This course provides students with an introduction to the digital humanities. It builds a firm foundation of technical skills and introduces students to the basic questions in the field. Although we will engage with theoretical work on the digital humanities and read secondary materials, this is primarily a methods course. While a basic familiarity with computers is recommended, students will not need to have any prior programming or command line experience. All of the tools used in this course are open-source or freely available on the internet. We will be using Anaconda (a scientific computing distribution of the Python programming language), Processing, and other open source software. In this course, students will learn to identify and acquire useful materials, program ad-hoc tools, and use digital analytical techniques where appropriate. The course will culminate in a 2,000 to 3,000 word research paper and a short ten-minute presentation. This paper must contain at least two figures. Alternatively, students can develop an online project (with a similar amount of content) in consultation with me. Students should meet with me by October 31st to discuss ideas for final papers/projects. Course materials will be distributed through GitHub and Blackboard. Over the course of the semester, I will provide students with assignments that will help guide you through the important concepts. Each assignment will require the student to write a short program that implements techniques from previous sessions and an essay describing the program and its purpose. Students should complete the assignment on her/his/their own. You are encouraged to search the internet for help in finishing the assignments. If you find a solution to the problem somewhere online, you can use it but post the source and explain in detail why the solution works.