I am being completely honest when I admit that I was a little overwhelmed by the thought of writing my digital humanities essay. However, after reading the required resource from our class textbook (Drucker Chapter 1, Part B) this week, I felt a little more confident when the steps were outlined very clearly about how to approach a digital humanities project. There were also many different options for analyzing and presenting data in Miriam Posner’s online reference article “How Did They Make That?” Based upon all the references and resources, I think I would be most likely interested in creating a map or analyzing text for my essay. I enjoy working with maps and finding patterns in texts (searching for common words and phrases) seems straightforward.
I am a double major in Geography and Religious Studies, so subjects relating to these fields would be within my comfort zone. For example, I might be interested in mapping visitation patterns in the most popular national parks (Yellowstone, Grand Teton, Glacier, or Yosemite). Should I choose to analyze text for my essay, I would likely focus on the Bible as a reference. For example, maybe research texts related to biblical covenants or the influence of women in the Bible. I have worked with both of these subjects before and think it would be great to research these topics from a digital humanities perspective.
I am familiar with data relating to the national park system and would be able access websites for park visitation easily. I would be interested in seeing if there are any other resources for national park visitation outside of the government databases. I have used a few different Bible reference sites, but I now know, after collecting information in this course, that there is data in many different forms that I have not even thought about that would be helpful for this essay should I choose to go in the text analysis direction. I will be thinking about choosing a specific direction and clearly defining my topic.
I think either of these projects would be really interesting. I was also contemplating working with maps. There are probably a lot of great resources that you could use for these projects. I’m looking forward to seeing it.