AMST 2692 Digital Public Humanities

What is “digital humanities” and how does it impact and intersect with the field of public humanities? Digital humanities work involves new approaches to reading, writing, research, publication, and curation: digital tools help us examine digital and non-digital material in innovative ways, and digital modes of communication help us reach new and wider ranges of audiences. This course provides students with the opportunity to create digital projects and utilize digital tools to further their academic and professional interests. Key questions that this course will cover include: How can digital tools and resources make cultural objects more accessible, engaging, and relevant to the personal and professional lives of various publics? What can working with a particular team of collaborators (the great people at PPL Special Collections) teach us about the benefits and challenges of digital preservation, digital archives, and digital curation (and, more generally, about the ways the long history of non-digital approaches to archives, preservation, and curation inform digital archives and curation)? 2 What is digital humanities, and how can public humanities practitioners productively collaborate, critique, revise, and reimagine the shape of this field through the practice of digital public humanities? How can I do cool things with digital tools, resources, and publication platforms? Who is doing cool things already?