Below is the schedule for the course. All of the readings for the class can be found linked in this schedule. For the “Prep” items, please complete them in the order listed. This will avoid confusion. Because of the nature of this class and the project we are working on, this schedule may be changed throughout the semester. You will be notified in advance of any changes in class and/or through the #REL-502 Slack channel.
Also, feel free to reply and comment on each other’s writing and responses in the class Slack. I will also make comments there, both publicly on the channel and privately through direct message.
Getting acquainted with our selves and our abilities.
Setting up our apps:
- OneDrive – create an REL502 folder
- Slack – join the REL#502 Slack channel
- Creative Cloud for your PC
- Creative Cloud for your mobile
Introduction to the course and our course organizational tools: Slack, UA Box & Creative Cloud.
08/31 Public Humanities
Prep
Tour the sites of digital resources on campus: Office of Information Technology, Center for Instructional Technology, ADHC, Sanford Media Center, IT Service Desk, and the UA libraries research data guides, equipment, software, whisper booths and group study spaces.
Show and Tell 1
Explore your research interest on social media:
- Locate five individual scholars specific to your interests.
- Locate three organizations specific to your interests.
- Locate at least one scholarly website associated with one of the above.
- Post all of these to our Slack channel.
30 minutes – Without reading anything further below, write your rationale for doing public humanities. Defined as you wish (don’t ready anything further below until you’ve done this!). Save the rationale to your course folder in OneDrive, and then post it on #502 Slack.
Review the following pieces on public humanities
“Rethinking Public Humanities” Anne Ruggles Gere – a short history of PH since 1965.
“A Typology of the Publicly Engaged Humanities,” Daniel Fisher.
“Take Your Scholarship Public”, Brady Krien.
30 minutes – Write a new rationale for individual public humanities. Save it under a different file name in your OneDrive folder, and then post it on #502 Slack.
30 minutes – Compare your two rationales. For example: what changed? Did you double-down? Write a post on the 502 blog (see our syllabus for blog post requirements).
In Class
Review and discuss PH rationales.
Review the public scholars posted on Slack and compare them with your blog posts. Please be prepared to review your site with the class.
09/07 Public Religious Studies
Prep
30 minutes – Compose an “elevator pitch” for your MA research interests (roughly 300-500 words; look at what Brady Krien’s reading from 08/31 says about pitching public humanities). Save a copy of the pitch in your OneDrive course folder. Perhaps you changed your mind since we talked this summer? Post your pitch to our Slack channel.
60 minutes – Review the 2015 summary of digital religious studies methods, “Religion, Media, and the Digital Turn” (pages 3-16) Christopher D. Cantwell and Hussein Rashid. Create a file in your OneDrive course folder that reflects on what you know about the state of religious studies and digital media. What’s changed? What may be the same? What’s needed or missing?
60 minutes – Read “Learning to Code: Digital Pebbles and Institutional Ripples” by Russell T. McCutcheon. Create a file in your course folder where you reflect on whether, and how, the history of events outlined by McCutcheon map onto Cantwell and Rashid’s descriptions and explanations. What are the similarities? What are the differences? What do you think explains your observations?
60 minutes – Speculate (and perhaps fabulate!) about the possible ways your “elevator pitch” may manifest in digital forms. Please take license with what digital forms are possible: data gathering, research methods, analytical processes, and the presentation of outcomes. Create a file in your course folder, and then post it to the REL502 Slack channel.
60 minutes – Remember to write this week’s blog post by 9 AM Wednesday morning!
In Class
Discussion of our reflections, evaluations, and speculations.
Introduction to our WordPress project.
09/16 Experimenting with WordPress
Prep
30 minutes – Return to the prep from 08/31 and class discussions to create file in your course folder with three lists:
- What do you think are the desired outcomes for an online public humanities project?
- What principles might guide an online project towards those outcomes?
- Thinking about what you can learn about WordPress, what actions might someone consider in order to fulfill those principles and accomplish those outcomes?
60 minutes – Use your lists to reflect on and evaluate Magic City Religion, created by Samford University Prof. Mark Bains. Compose the outcomes in with a file in your course folder. Read Dr. Bains’ reflection on the project in “Magic City Religion: a Student-Authored Digital Humanities Project on Birmingham, Alabama.” Does anything there suggest that you modify your reflection? Enable “track changes” on your file to make revisions or additions to the file you created. Post it on the REL502 Slack.
120 Minutes – Show and Tell 2 – Return to your elevator pitch and digital speculations from 09/07. Create a new post in the 502 blog where you attempt to follow through on your lists. Post the link to the REL502 Slack.
In class
Show and Tell 2 – Present and discuss the “pitch posts.”
Establish the workflow and assignments for our WordPress project.
09/21 Continuing the WordPress Project
Prep
Before Tuesday morning – 60 minutes – Document a close reading of the REL blog. As you know, you can access the blog archives back to May 2012. Choose a month of the year, and then choose two years from the archives to read through (one before January 2019, and one after January 2019). Post your chosen month and years on the #502 Slack. Then create a document in your OneDrive folder where you explain:
A. What posts do you think should be set aside by our project? Why?
B. What posts do you think should be optimized? For what reasons? (e.g. audience, editorial style, theory/method, common useful application, word-count, etc.)
C. What posts do you think should be “repackaged”? For what purposes? (e.g. teaching materials, edited volume, best-of review blog post, etc.)
After Tuesday morning – 120 minutes – Your chosen months from your chosen years will be imported into this instance of WordPress. You will be designated as author for those posts. By Thursday morning, you need to do the following:
1. Create an excel file in your OneDrive folder where you document changes made to the posts within your chosen month/years. How do you think it best to keep track of your changes?
2. Make changes to your month/years of posts.
3. Write a private post for the course blog folder where you document and reflect on your prep. How did you decide to get started? What did you stop doing? Did you chose to start making other choices and actions? Why? How did that work?
In Class
We will discuss everyone’s work, agree on a workflow, and apply it to newly-imported months from the REL blog.
09/28 Explainer workshop with Adobe Premiere Rush
Prep
1-10 minutes – Double-check that you have installed and updated Adobe Premiere Rush on your mobile device (part of UA’s Creative Cloud license). Be sure that you are signing in with your mybama username and password (follow these steps).
120 minutes – Used Adobe Premiere Rush to create a brief “explainer” video for your elevator pitch. The working assumption is that organic experimentation provides more customized learning than slogging through generic tutorials. Your explainer should contain a mix of the following elements (“assets” in Adobe lingo): image, text, video, audio.
- The assets for your explainer can be literally anything (!!!) that conveys meaning to your audience (e.g. you need not use your likeness or voice).
- Consider your explaining in the context of our class discussions and the #rel-502 Slack post synthesizing our discussion of outcomes, principles, and actions for public humanities.
- Do you wish to see what others have done in the past? Go back to the September 2020 videos post on the #rel-502 Slack channel. These are merely examples of what others tried. Please don’t see them as templates.
60 Minutes – Continue working on the WordPress Project. Specific instructions will be TBA.
60 minutes – Write a post for the course blog.
Class session
Please confirm AE Friday morning workshop attendance with Prof. Loewen.
Show and Tell 3 – Your explainer videos.
Guest visit! – Victoria Collins from UA’s CIT team will answer your questions about Adobe Rush!
We will continue to work on the WordPress project in class.
10/05 Podcast discussion & experiment workshop
Prep
60 minutes – Re-categorize 30 REL blog posts from “REL502” to another category (where “delete” is reserved for REL blog posts you deem not useful for repurposing).
3 hours- Reflections on the art of podcasting:
- Select an episode of CBC’s Podcast Playlist.
- Make notes on what the episode teaches you about the art of podcasting.
- Find an exemplary and/or interesting example of an academic/public humanities vod/podcast episode. (Note: exemplary/interesting may be artful, awful, or a mix of the two!)
- Prepare an explanation of a) what you think that vod/podcast can teach us about public humanities, b) what are 5 specific technical aspects worth paying attention to learning, c) what you think is the workflow required to produce that podcast. Post the episode link and your explanations to our Slack.
- Finally, use Adobe Rush to create a short video that compares a selection of your thoughts from #2 with your explanation from #4. Post the video in our Slack.
Do not write a course blog post this week. Your Rush video is the substitute.
Class session
Discussion of your discoveries about the art of podcasting.
Review of you podcasting assignment for next week.
Guest visit! A chance to discuss public humanities with Dr. Lauren Horne Griffin!
10/12 AE Discussion & Podcast experiment discussion
Prep
180 minutes – Create a vod/podcast with your assigned partner: One pair is Kate and Steve. The other pair is Trevor and Lauren.
60 minutes – Write a post for the course blog that specifically reflects on your observations of the AE workshop.
Class session
Presentation and discussion of AE pod/vodcasts.
Show and Tell 4
Discussion of AE workshop observations: what did you learn about public humanities?
Adobe Premiere Pro workshop – audio editing outside of Premiere Rush.
Discussion of further work on the WordPress project.
10/19 Video experiment workshop & conclusions
Prep
3 hours – Re-create and improve your pitch videos using Adobe Premiere Pro exclusively (please do not use any other video editing platform). Use Adobe Encoder to export to mp4.
In Class
PH project pitch assignment discussion.
Planning for the WordPress Project.
10/26 No class (fall break)
3 hours – TBA individual work on the WordPress Project (likely work: complete categorization of all remaining posts).
11/02 WordPress Project
Prep
120 minutes – TBA individual work on the WordPress Project (likely work: complete categorization of all remaining posts).
60 minutes – Draft an original blog post for the REL blog that synthesizes insights from at least 6 of your WordPress Project posts. Your writing should develop a unique observation about the content visitors might find on the REL blog. The copy must include at least one image and specify the text that will hyperlink to the 6 posts, respectively. (Innovating beyond the basics of this prep is worth considering!)
In Class
Show and Tell 5
11/09 Digital Humanities: text analysis
Prep
60 minutes – Revise your blog post from last week, with the intention to publish it in the REL blog.
120 minutes – Using your access to UA libraries, find, access and closely read chapters 1 and 2 of Hermeneutica: Computer-Assisted Interpretation in the Humanities, by Geoffery Rockwell and Stéfan Sinclair.
Similarly, find, access and closely read chapter 3 of Enumerations : Data and Literary Study, by Andrew Piper.
60 minutes – Then, compose a post where you speculate how these readings might be applied to the contents of our WordPress project. What kinds of investigations might be done? What questions would these investigations potentially answer?
In class
Discussion of prep and explore the applications of Voyant as an example for working on the WordPress project.
11/15 8:30am-10:30 Text processing experiment
Prep to be completed by Monday morning:
60 minutes – re-categorize the oldest posts in the REL502 category. If there remain still more old REL blog posts on Tuesday morning, please find another 30 minutes to re-categorize further.
60 minutes – Review Voyant’s List of Tools. Which three interest you? Read each’s overview by selecting them from the list of tools. Then, write an entry for each on the REL502 Slack.
Prep to be completed by Tuesday night:
120 minutes – (Re)think about how you might apply what you learned from the 11/09 readings, 11/09 class discussion and your knowledge of Voyant tools to our collection of WP posts. Please, please ask further questions on Slack to help you complete this prep!
In class
A hands-on workshop of finding capta, making it data, and encoding it for text analysis in Voyant.
No Class 11/23 Thanksgiving break
11/30 Text processing experiment
Prep
30 minutes – Look ahead: the PH project pitch assignment will be posted on our Slack. Please begin reflecting and working on this final piece. Please ask me any questions for clarification.
30 minutes – Using the files posted in our Slack, complete any data preparation. If you forget what to do, see my Slack post from 11/08.
120 minutes – Create a “research journal” of the following in your REL502 folder, and then move your “bag of words” into Voyant Tools and experiment with how to find outputs that either relate to your questions, or, spur you to revise your questions, hypotheses, and approaches. If you think your data preparation needs improvement, remember to save under a new filename prior to making changes! Try verifying your distant reading conclusions by close reading some random samples of from our “capta.”
75 minutes – Translate your experiments into a blog post. Use your research journal as well as information and images from Voyant to explain what you found meaningful to theorize your conclusions. You may include subjective observations (e.g. “Wow, this was amazing!”), but that should not be the topic of your blog piece. If possible, but not necessarily, you may use this as an opportunity to substantially revise your writing from 11/02 as a candidate for the REL blog.
In class
Discussion of WP project findings.
Review 11/04 and 11/09 preps regarding WP project blog posts.
Experimenting with Image analysis.
Discussion of the PH project pitch assignment.