presented by Matthew Wilson and Jentery Sayers, 11+21+2008

for the information school research conversation series @ the UW

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Draft Course Description:

“Project-Based Approaches to Mapping the Digital Humanities”

What is the role of digital technologies in learning and taking classes at the university?  How are these technologies influencing scholarship and research practices, as well as facilitating critical and creative inquiry?  With these questions as a framework, this course provides undergraduates with the opportunity to begin or continue their own digital humanities projects throughout (and ideally beyond) an entire quarter.  More specifically, the class is structured around two approaches to “mapping” in the digital humanities: geographical mapping and textual mapping.  In the first instance, students will collaboratively compose an interactive, digital map of the University of Washington’s Seattle campus through a combination of photography, video, sound, text, and Google Maps and Earth.  In the second instance, students will pursue individual projects, where they will produce digital representations of their humanities research and writing.  Put this way, both the collaborative and individual projects will be articulated as vehicles for “animating” information and moving audiences toward new ways of perceiving and inhabiting the work of humanities research. 

Throughout the course, students will practice emerging skills in the digital humanities, including some, if not all, of the following: metadata creation/maintenance (e.g., XML, EXIF and FGDC standards), geo-coding, digital cartography, website design (e.g., HTML and PHP), geographic information systems, Adobe Macromedia Flash, and multi-authored blogging. 
The class will be workshop-driven, using studio-based models for participatory learning, and conducted in a Macintosh laboratory (with the full Adobe design suite), with periodic access to a PC lab (for using ArcGIS).  The main texts for the course will be selections from A Companion to Digital Humanities and A Companion to Digital Literary Studies, all of which will be made available online and in print.  Secondary materials will likely include selections from the Electronic Literature Collection (Volume 1) and texts on the production of space (e.g., by Michel de Certeau), media ecology and aesthetics (e.g., by Matthew Fuller and Alan Liu), and “distant reading” (e.g., by Franco Moretti).  Class will meet for two hours, twice per week, and time will be split equally between the collaborative and individual mapping projects. 

No technical skills in digital technologies are required for this course.  However, students who are looking for the time and space to develop their already existing ideas for digital projects are especially encouraged to enroll.  And "W" credit is an option, arranged on a case-by-case basis.

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