Schedule

August 23

Welcome to REL 315 – Religion and the Digital Humanities.

Homework (due Friday)

• Complete the Computer Skills Inventory (on Blackboard)
• Complete the Computer Maintenance checklist (on Blackboard)
• Create an account on the course WordPress site and create a post introducing yourself (details on Blackboard)

 

August 24

Last Day to Add / Drop Course

 

August 30

Skills Week: Working with Data

Read before class:

• Chapter 2, part a. Drucker, Johanna. The Digital Humanities Coursebook: An Introduction to Digital Methods for Research and Scholarship. London: Routledge, 2021. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003106531.
• Introduction. Lupi, Giorgia, and Stefanie Posavec. Observe, Collect, Draw!: A Visual Journal. Illustrated edition. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2018.

Homework (due Friday)

• Complete Lab 1 and post on WordPress.

 

September 6

Religion and DH: The Big Tent of DH

Read before class:

• Kirschenbaum, Matthew G. “What Is Digital Humanities and What’s It Doing in English Departments?” ADE Bulletin, 2010, 55–61. https://doi.org/10.1632/ade.150.55.
• Hockey, Susan. “The History of Humanities Computing.” In A Companion to Digital Humanities, 2004. http://www.digitalhumanities.org/companion/view?docId=blackwell/9781405103213/9781405103213.xml&chunk.id=ss1-2-1&toc.depth=1&toc.id=ss1-2-1&brand=default.
• Leon, Sharon. “Complicating a ‘Great Man’ Narrative of Digital History in the United States.” In Bodies of Information, 2018. https://dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/read/untitled-4e08b137-aec5-49a4-83c0-38258425f145/section/53838061-eb08-4f46-ace0-e6b15e4bf5bf.

Homework (due Friday)

• Complete Lab 2 and post on WordPress

 

September 13

Religion and DH: Does it even work?

Read before class:

• Maffly-Kipp, Laurie F. “Putting Religion on the Map.” Edited by Andrew Walsh, Mark Silk, Randall Balmer, Philip Barlow, Jan Shipps, Patricia O’Connell Killen, Wade Clark Roof, Charles Reagan Wilson, and William Lindsey. The Journal of American History 94, no. 2 (2007): 522–29. https://doi.org/10.2307/25094964.
• Mullen, Lincoln. “Where the Problem with Historical Data about U.S. Religion Really Lies.” lincolnmullen.com, January 1, 2016. https://lincolnmullen.com/blog/where-the-problem-with-historical-data-about-u-s-religion-really-lies/.
• Cantwell, Christopher D., and Kristian Petersen. “Digital Humanities and Religious Studies: A ‘Why’ To Guide.” In Digital Humanities and Religious Studies: A “Why” To Guide, vii–xx. De Gruyter, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110573022-001.

Homework (due Friday)

• Complete Lab 3 and post on WordPress

 

September 20

Critical DH: What is Data Anyway?

Bring your reading journals to class for a quick check.

Read before class:

• Drucker, Johanna. “Humanities Approaches to Graphical Display” 5, no. 1 (2011). http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/5/1/000091/000091.html.
• Posner, Miriam. “Humanities Data: A Necessary Contradiction.” Miriam Posner’s Blog (blog), 2015. http://miriamposner.com/blog/humanities-data-a-necessary-contradiction/.
• Johnson, Jessica Marie. “Black [Life] Studies and Slavery [Death] Studies at the Digital Crossroads.” Social Text, 2018, 24. https://doi.org/10.1215/01642472-7145658

Homework (due Friday)

• Complete and submit your Data Diaries assignment

 

September 27

Skills Week: Dissecting Digital Projects

Read before class:

• Chapter 1, part b. Drucker, Johanna. The Digital Humanities Coursebook: An Introduction to Digital Methods for Research and Scholarship. London: Routledge, 2021. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003106531.
• “How Did They Make That? – Miriam Posner’s Blog.” Accessed August 12, 2022. https://miriamposner.com/blog/how-did-they-make-that/.

Homework (due Friday)

• Complete Lab 4 and post on WordPress

 

October 4

DH Methods: Encoding

Read before class:

• Chapter 4. Drucker, Johanna. The Digital Humanities Coursebook: An Introduction to Digital Methods for Research and Scholarship. London: Routledge, 2021. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003106531.
• Duarte, Marisa Elena, and Miranda Belarde-Lewis. “Imagining: Creating Spaces for Indigenous Ontologies.” Cataloging & Classification Quarterly 53, no. 5–6 (July 4, 2015): 677–702. https://doi.org/10.1080/01639374.2015.1018396.

Homework (due Friday)

• Complete Lab 5 and post on WordPress

 

October 11

DH Methods: Visualization

Read before class:

• Chapter 6. Drucker, Johanna. The Digital Humanities Coursebook: An Introduction to Digital Methods for Research and Scholarship. London: Routledge, 2021. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003106531.
• Gibbs, Frederick W. “New Forms of History: Critiquing Data and Its Representations.” The American Historian, February 2016. http://tah.oah.org/february-2016/new-forms-of-history-critiquing-data-and-its-representations/.
• Lauren F. Klein. “The Image of Absence: Archival Silence, Data Visualization, and James Hemings.” American Literature 85, no. 4 (2013): 661–88. https://doi.org/10.1215/00029831-2367310.

Homework (due Friday)

• Complete Lab 6 and post on WordPress

 

October 18

Critical DH: Data Privacy, Sovereignty, and Open Access

Read before class:

• Chapter 12, b. Drucker, Johanna. The Digital Humanities Coursebook: An Introduction to Digital Methods for Research and Scholarship. London: Routledge, 2021. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003106531.
• Marwick, Alice E. “How Your Data Are Being Deeply Mined.” The New York Review of Books, January 9, 2014. https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2014/01/09/how-your-data-are-being-deeply-mined/.
• Rainie, Stephanie Carroll, Jennifer Lee Schultz, Eileen Briggs, Patricia Riggs, and Nancy Lynn Palmanteer-Holder. “Data as a Strategic Resource: Self-Determination, Governance, and the Data Challenge for Indigenous Nations in the United States.” International Indigenous Policy Journal 8, no. 2 (March 10, 2017). https://doi.org/10.18584/iipj.2017.8.2.1.
• Anderson, Talea, and David Squires. “Open Access and the Theological Imagination.” Digital Humanities Quarterly 011, no. 4 (December 22, 2017). http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/11/4/000340/000340.html

 

October 25 (Cancelled due to Weather)

Skills: Using a Content Management System

Bring your reading journals to class for a quick check.

Read before class:

Chapter 11. Drucker, Johanna. The Digital Humanities Coursebook: An Introduction to Digital Methods for Research and Scholarship. London: Routledge, 2021. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003106531.
Earhart, Amy E. “Can We Trust the University? Digital Humanities Collaborations with Historically Exploited Cultural Communities.” In Bodies of Information. Debates in Digital Humanities. University of Minnesota Press, 2018. https://dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/read/untitled-4e08b137-aec5-49a4-83c0-38258425f145/section/c449610c-af71-4373-9359-0eb138a15d51.

 

Homework (due Friday)

• Complete and submit your Data and Datasheet Project

 

October 26

Last Day to Drop the Course with a grade of “W”

 

November 1

Skills: Using a Content Management System

Read before class:

• Chapter 11. Drucker, Johanna. The Digital Humanities Coursebook: An Introduction to Digital Methods for Research and Scholarship. London: Routledge, 2021. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003106531.
• Earhart, Amy E. “Can We Trust the University? Digital Humanities Collaborations with Historically Exploited Cultural Communities.” In Bodies of Information. Debates in Digital Humanities. University of Minnesota Press, 2018. https://dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/read/untitled-4e08b137-aec5-49a4-83c0-38258425f145/section/c449610c-af71-4373-9359-0eb138a15d51.

Homework (due Friday)

• Complete Lab 7 and post on WordPress

November 8

DH Methods: Mining

Read before class:

• Chapter 7. Drucker, Johanna. The Digital Humanities Coursebook: An Introduction to Digital Methods for Research and Scholarship. London: Routledge, 2021. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003106531.
• Underwood, Ted. “A Genealogy of Distant Reading.” Digital Humanities Quarterly 011, no. 2 (June 27, 2017). http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/11/2/000317/000317.html.

Homework (due Friday)

• Complete Lab 8 and post on WordPress

 

November 15

Critical DH: Big Data and the Rise of Data Science (and Machine Learning)

Watch before class:

• Coded Bias (Available on Netflix. Screening to be scheduled.)

Read before class:

• boyd, danah, and Kate Crawford. “Critical Questions for Big Data.” Information, Communication & Society 15, no. 5 (June 1, 2012): 662–79. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2012.678878.
• Bender, Emily M., Timnit Gebru, Angelina McMillan-Major, and Shmargaret Shmitchell. “On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big?” In Proceedings of the 2021 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency, 610–23. FAccT ’21. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1145/3442188.3445922.

Homework

• Complete Lab 9 and post on WordPress

 

November 22

Thanksgiving Break

 

November 29

REL and the Digital Humanities

Bring your reading journals to class for a final check.

Read before class:

• Risam, Roopika. “Decolonizing the Digital Humanities in Theory and Practice.” In The Routledge Companion to Media Studies and Digital Humanities. Routledge, 2018. http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.13013/421
• Smith, Jonathan Z. “Religion, Religions, Religious” (PDF on Blackboard)

Homework

• Work on Final Projects (Due Dec. 8)

 

December 2

Last Day to Withdraw from the Course

 

December 8

Scheduled Final Exam Period

Final Projects due at the end of the day