DIGH5000 is the introductory core course for the MA Specialization in Digital Humanities. We develop an understanding of what ‘DH’ might mean for you, in the context of your home program, through an exploration of how members of the Carleton community are pursuing their own research in/and/through DH. We meet on select Tuesday mornings throughout the Fall and Winter terms, starting October 1st. From time to time, to accommodate the schedules of participating faculty, we might have to adjust our meeting times. Carleton has scheduled our meetings as fully online; with everyone’s consent we might try to meet in person from time to time.

The course catalogue will tell you that this course is about an “Introduction to the theoretical and practical aspects of the Digital Humanities, including the historical and ongoing debates over its boundaries, methodologies, objectives and values.” I suppose that’s more or less correct. Doesn’t actually tell us much about what ‘dh’ is about.

I’m loathe to define DH. But I will say this much: it’s not just about tool use or shiny new digital toys applied to humanities-type materials. It is also about exploring what our tools do to us. I would suggest that’s the more important aspect. Archaeology teaches us that our things help make us us as much as we make our things. What kind of a world are we building? There is no such thing as ‘data’. Perhaps there are only ‘capta’.

We will read, and we will make. We will build!

The goals of the course are to

  • develop a perspective on the breadth and depth of DH work and an understanding of where your own research interests intersect
  • develop facility in learning how to learn digital tools and techniques as they evolve and emerge

One other thing

…oh: notice that sidebar on the right hand side of the screen? That’s an annotation layer powered by hypothes.is. If you create an account with Hypothes.is, you can use this tool (here enabled by default, but elsewhere you add a plugin for your browser) to mark up a webpage with your annotations. These can be private and invisibile; or they can be public. We in fact have our own reading group whose annotations are only visible to other members; click here to join it!. Then feel free to mark up this website - or others you encounter - with your observations. Sometimes I tell people to use the 3w’s: what’s weird, worrying, or wonderful about a passage? You can connect your annotations to others’ using each annotations permanent link, too.