Programming for Humanists Fall Course

Programming for Humanists, run at Texas A&M will offer Zoom-based courses this fall. Registration is open now and closes on September 2. For details, and to register, see http://programming4humanists.tamu.edu/overview/

Digital Editions, Start to Finish (8 weeks)

This course is designed for Humanities scholars who wish to create a digital edition of a text that is scholarly quality and can be peer-reviewed for promotion and tenure and/or used in classes for students who need access to rare texts. Students will learn all the basics of what Elena Pierazzo has described as “a new publication form called the ‘digital documentary edition’ which is composed of the source, the outputs and the tools able to produce and display them.” In this class, we will spend three weeks learning TEI encoding, the code used to create scholarly digital editions, as we will explain, and then will learn how to transform them into web pages using oXygen. Registration includes a one-year subscription to oXygen. Readings and lessons assigned before class meetings will take approximately two hours per week to complete. ($500)

HTML and CSS (6 weeks)

This class is for absolute beginners who know nothing about the code that lies behind the web sites as seen in browsers such as Google Chrome or Safari.  There are other sources available for learning HTML and CSS, but in this class, students will actually create HTML and CSS files during class time, along with the instructor; making mistakes is integral to learning the coding system, and so going over mistakes is an essential part of the course curriculum. The class consists of workshops in which everyone follows along, making HTML pages and styling them with CSS (Cascading Stylesheets). When problems arise, students will share their screens with everyone, and we will troubleshoot together. We will be using oXygen to create and edit both HTML and CSS.  Registration includes a one-year subscription to oXygen.  Note: Students who do not already have server space for web publishing will need to purchase or activate via your university web-accessible server space (e.g., Reclaim Hosting $30 per year, not covered by the registration fee).  Assignments requiring an hour to complete will be given at the end of every class to prepare you for the next one. ($400)

Taking both classes costs only $750 or $2,500 for 5 participants from the same institution.

Digitorium 2020

The University of Alabama University Libraries is proud to announce the annual Digital Humanities Conference, Digitorium, will be held October 1-3, 2020. The conference, hosted by the University of Alabama Libraries and the Alabama Digital Humanities Center, will be entirely virtual for the first time this year. In an unprecedented time when digital literacies are critically important, Digitorium represents a timely opportunity for faculty, practitioners, and students to learn what’s possible with Digital Humanities (DH) methods and pedagogy. This year, we will offer several workshops that can help build DH skills, with tools such as Nvivo, Orange, 360 videos in VR, and Twine.  

While we are disappointed that we won’t be able to meet in person, we’re looking forward to providing an opportunity for faculty, practitioners, and students worldwide to engage with discussions on Digital Humanities, hear from innovative scholars in the field, and to learn new skills through virtual workshops.

Registration is $25.00 and opens August 16th , 2020.

For more information regarding our schedule, plenaries, and registration, please visit the Digitorium site.

Mapping British Literature

For many years, I have taught the first half of the Survey of British Literature, a standard course in many undergraduate literary studies curricula. This course ends with a unit on eighteenth-century literature. I have always devoted that unit to texts that track eighteenth-century Britons’ growing engagement with the world, even if imaginative, by way of travel, trade, slavery, colonialism, and so forth. However, I have always speculated that students might not be familiar with many of the far-flung places referenced in these literary works, especially places whose names have changed over the centuries. 

This project in digital humanities gave me just the opportunity to enhance this unit. As the final project in my spring 2020 LITR 240 at Ramapo College, I asked each student to select one text from the final unit—a unit that included texts from Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko to Olaudah Equiano’s Interesting Narrative—and to map all of the place names in that text by using Recogito, a free, open-access mapping program. After I gave them a demonstration, students mapped their chosen texts and presented their maps orally to me as their final exam. During their presentations, they walked me through each mapped place name, provided its literary context, and explained how their maps help us understand the period’s global imagination. Students also submitted short response papers in which they reflected on what they learned—about geography, the period’s literature, the digital humanities, and so forth—from the project. 

All in all, the students exceeded my expectations. Most of the maps were complete and accurate, and many students made exciting connections between map and text. More importantly, students indicated that they learned a lot from the assignment and were eager to complete more projects in the digital humanities. 

Student Perspectives

Emily Brackenbury

For my Spring 2020 semester at Ramapo College, I was enrolled in the course, Survey of British Literature: Anglo-Saxon Period to Eighteenth Century, taught by Dr. Eric Daffron. Over the duration of the course, we studied various texts from early British literature, moving through different centuries as the course progressed. To finish the course, we had to complete a final project centered around an 18th century British text from our syllabus. However, the project itself was somewhat unconventional because rather than being just a traditional essay or presentation, the central task required for the final project incorporated elements of the digital humanities. As part of this final project, Dr. Daffron asked us to use the application, Recogito, to digitally map all of the locations referenced in our selected text.   

Personally, I found the experience of creating the digital map to be extremely helpful in understanding the context of my selected literary work. Having selected Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko as my text, which not only takes place on two different continents, but also references the wide-reaching influence of the triangular trade of the 18th century, the work contained a great number of locations around the globe. Not only did creating a map with Recogito allow me to become familiar with locations that I had previously not known, but it also allowed me to draw connections between all of the places listed and to see how influential the massive international trade systems of the 18th century were, leading to a growing globalization that would influence many aspects of British life during this time, including literature like Behn’s. Overall, I found my experience with this project to be very enlightening. Completing the mapping project allowed me to learn more about the history and geography surrounding the text, provided me with helpful context to my selected work, and ultimately, aided me in drawing more informed and comprehensive conclusions about the text itself.

Erin Schwarz

The mapping project completed in Dr. Daffron’s Survey of British Literature 240 class allowed me to use a previously unfamiliar software to expand my knowledge of both the piece of literature in focus and the digital humanities in general. For my project, I chose to write about The Turkish Embassy Letters by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (some of this information is drawn from my original response paper to this assignment). The assignment asked us to find different locations mentioned throughout the literature and map them on the software Recogito. By focusing on these specific locations, I was able to learn more about the story and the geographical implications that the locations provided. For example, before starting this assignment I never bothered to find the physical locations mentioned in the letters on a map. Having to map these locations showed me just how far Lady Mary Wortley Montagu went in her travels. Seeing the actual distance between these locations allowed me to see how drastically the culture changes she described happened in reference to their distance from each other.

While this physical representation of the story allowed me a greater understanding of the story, I also learned more about digital humanities. I have had experiences with the digital humanities before, so completing this assignment was challenging in a beneficial way. While I have used software’s to analyze stories and pieces of literature before, I have never come in contact with this particular software before. At first the software seemed quite daunting, but after reading the instructions provided by Dr. Daffron and looking around the software I found it to be very innovative and helpful. The project encouraged me to become more comfortable with Recogito and software similar to it. My experience in completing this mapping project was very educationally beneficial.

Emily Melvin 

This past semester, I was given the opportunity to complete a final assignment in a fashion different than ones I have completed in the past. It was a challenge, but it ultimately introduced me to a new method of presentation and research, and it changed my perception of the standard final exam. In Dr. Daffron’s course LITR 240: Survey of British Literature, instead of having a traditional final exam, we were assigned a Mapping Project. In this project, we were asked to map out various locations mentioned in one of the assigned texts from the course in the online application Recogito, then create a six-minute oral presentation, which was delivered via WebEx between only the student and professor. This was a challenging project, as only being able to virtually present the final was an unfamiliar task. Of course, there were technical difficulties and stresses, but it ended up not being too bad. Frankly, I much prefer this method of a final exam than a test or elaborate essay. It was a way the class could become more engaged with the texts we read in class and gain a deeper, cultural understanding of the works. More importantly, it allowed us to expand our knowledge on digital humanities, the most impactful outcome from this project. Digital humanities was a fairly new term for me, but I quickly discovered its benefits as a student and professional in the world of humanities. This project not only challenged me analytically, but it taught me how to use digital applications to enhance and clearly visualize my work within the humanities. I would gladly complete this project again in a future course, and I believe fellow students would appreciate the creative and innovative final project format.

A year of experiments in Digital Humanities

Academic Year 2019-2020 was an auspicious year to begin experimenting in Digital Humanities in the classroom. I began in an effort to keep up to date with technologies that I could use as a supplement. I ended the year clinging to DH technologies that suddenly became essential as the Covid pandemic closed campuses across the country. When I began the year, I wanted to learn to use DH technologies for mapping (Recogito), annotating (Perusall), and audio/video recording (Techsmith Relay, now known as Techsmith Knowmia). 

I assumed that the big project would be use of mapping (Recogito) in my Survey of American Literature course, where students were reading Moby Dick (among other things). I had hoped to show the global interest of the book and therefor the international reach and foundations of American literature. Ironically, of all the things I tried, this was the one that I could not get to work at all and so I never really used it at all.  However, I did use Perusall, Techsmith, and other applications I had not planned on (blogging and and discussion forums, for instance). And these turned out to be the most effective. 

I learned the lesson that everyone tried to teach us as we began: do less and do it better rather than do more and do it worse. So it’s all for the best that I did not manage to get the mapping done. I used Perusall in all my courses and learned quickly that selected use of Perusall was much more effective than asking students to routinely use the platform. In fact, the single most effective use was using Perusall with readings of graphic novels, as it forced students to comment on images as well as text. The most successful use was with excerpts students read from R. Crumb’s Book of Genesis. After reading the comic strip, they also “read” canonical artistic renderings of the Genesis story they looked for on ArtStor, a visual arts database they have access to.

Once the pandemic closed the college in March, the most useful tool ended up being one I had not trained on at all: Techsmith which allowed for “quizzing” students’ reading. Actually, these “quizzes” served most usefully as “attendance.” In Spring 2020, “taking attendance” expanded—no longer meaning students were “in class” at class time, but that they did their work before the next class. As some students could not access our video classes at the assigned time, knowing they were checking in between class meetings was not just a way to see who was doing the work, but if anyone was in need of encouragement or other help. 


I was able to reach out to more than one student who stopped doing the work due to family or health issues. And that allowed me to connect them to services that could offer at least a little help. Also, Techsmith allows the user to get comfortable making videos and recording audio. After the semester ended, my colleagues and I made a “wevideo” movie (another DH application) to say goodbye to graduates whom we could not see off at commencement. Techsmith, more than any other tool, emerged as a useful, multi-application tool. Whether teaching at a distance or face to face, Techsmith seems a very useful and versatile way to quiz and to instruct. Below are three slides from a Techsmith from my Graphic Novel course, where students were reading Watchmen:

An unexpected use of DH methods happened because of the pandemic, rather than in spite of it. In my Graphic Novel course, students read Marjane Sartrapi’s Chicken with Plums, about an Iranian tar player. As it happens, a friend plays traditional Iranian drums in Portland, OR. I invited him and his musical partner to perform for the students via webex video links. The guests loaded music to YouTube and also performed live for the class (YouTube helped, as webex was not ideal for them to play “together” from two different homes in Portland). 

Had we not been forced into the situation, I do not know if I would have invited him via video. Now, I have to reconsider what it means to have a “guest” come to class. Below is a screenshot of the class listening to the music:

Recogito is not the only project that did not work out for me. I had hoped to have students in my Graphic Novel course record their group oral presentations as audio podcasts, to be posted on our learning management system page (Moodle). With the Covid shutdown, I could not do that in the Graphic Novel course. 

I did have students submit PowerPoint presentations instead of a paper for one assignment on visual composition; that worked well. Students in my Humanities class took it on themselves to record their group presentations via Techsmith, using audio, video, still images and text. This was a real success to be replicated. Other students responded via forums to the presentations, offering a virtual roundtable on their presentations. 

I look forward to revisiting Techsmith and Peruall, to operationalizing a podcast presentation, and adding VidoAnt annotation tools to my courses in the fall. Thank you for the support!

Choosing Tools for DH Research?

A recent article, “Which DH Tools Are Actually Used in Research?, ” by Laure Barbot, Frank Fischer, Yoann Moranville and Ivan Pozdniakov analyzed tools mentioned in the last five years of the Digital Humanities Conference run by the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations.

Among the top tools were Python, Twitter, Gephi, and Omeka. The article also demonstrates different visualizations styles for the data, including the one above.

The authors also created a network graph overview of tools mentioned in the Programming Historian.

Applications open for Second Digital Humanities Research Institute – New York City

Digital Humanities Research Institute (DHRI): Further Expanding Communities of Digital Humanities Practice

by Kalle Westerling

Do you want to become a DHRI Community Leader?

Apply now and join us from June 15-24, 2020.

You are invited to apply for the second Digital Humanities Research Institute (DHRI), which will take place at The Graduate Center, City University of New York. This ten-day institute will introduce participants to core digital humanities skills, and help you develop those skills as part of a growing community of leaders at universities, libraries, archives, museums, and scholarly societies.

Apply here. Applications must be received by March 2, 2020.

What to expect:

  • 8 days of in-person workshops focused on foundational digital research skills like the command line, data and ethics, introduction to python, and mapping,
  • mentoring to help grow local partnerships and launch your local version of the Digital Humanities Research Institutes,
  • sharing your experience through a final report and evaluations that will be included in our Guide to Leading Digital Humanities Research Institutes,
  • a stipend of $3,600.

Who should apply?

We encourage applications from humanities scholars from a wide range of institutional types, including but not limited to universities, community colleges, libraries, archives, museums, historical associations and who fill an array of professional roles (graduate students, experienced faculty, librarians, administrators, museum curators, archivists and more). No previous technical experience is required—applications will not be evaluated based on familiarity with existing technologies.

If you have questions about the form, the application process, or the evaluation criteria, see our application page or contact info@dhinstitutes.org.

The Digital Humanities Research Institute is made possible through generous funding from the Office of Digital Humanities, National Endowment for the Humanities and with the support of the Provost’s Office of the CUNY Graduate Center and GC Digital Initiatives.

Call for Papers: Digitorium 2020

Digitorium 2020 CFP

by Anne Ladyem McDivitt

We’re very excited to invite proposals for Digitorium 2020, a multi-disciplinary Digital Humanities conference held at the University of Alabama from October 1-3, 2020. We seek proposals from a range of people including those who are brand new in the field of digital humanities, experienced scholars, practitioners, students, and anybody in-between to create an inclusive environment where everybody can learn something from each other. Proposals should demonstrate how we as digital humanists can engage with communities and our scholarship in new and innovative ways using digital methods.

This year, we will be celebrating the 6th year of Digitorium, as well as the 10th anniversary of the Alabama Digital Humanities Center. To celebrate those milestones, our theme this year will be “Progress.” This could be progress that the field has made in a particular area, how we continue to progress, or where we could improve digital humanities to further progress the field. We welcome creativity in your proposals! If you have any questions about whether your proposal might fit, please contact us at adhc@lib.ua.edu.

Participants can submit proposals that engage with one of the following:

  • Digital Methods: presentations that use digital methods to further scholarship in established fields or highlight new and exciting areas in their research subjects.
  • Public Scholarship: presentations on utilizing digital methods to engage the public through institutions such as universities, libraries, and museums.
  • Digital Pedagogy: presentations on using digital methods for innovative approaches to teaching at any level.

Presentations include a variety of formats for the conference, but they are not limited to those listed below. For example, presentations could be:

  • -20 minute papers
  • -Workshops where the presenter teaches a digital method or tool (let us know what the specifications are for the workshop)-Posters
  • -Completed or in-progress project demonstrations
  • -Panel discussions

Deadline for submitting abstracts is March 15, 2020.

All proposals should be made via the Submissions page on the conference website.

Please visit our website for more information as it becomes available regarding the plenary speakers, the venue, and the departments generously offering their support for Digitorium 2020.

Contact Email: adhc@lib.ua.edu
URL: https://adhc.lib.ua.edu/digitorium/?page_id=36

Digital Humanities Fellowships at the American Philosophical Society

The Center for Digital Scholarship (CDS) at the American Philosophical Society Library & Museum in Philadelphia invites applications for Digital Humanities Fellowships. These fellowships, for up to 2 months, are open to scholars at all stages of their careers, including graduate students, who are developing digital projects that: 1) utilize the APS Library & Museum collections, open datasets, or other APS holdings to advance a digital component of an independent research project, or, 2) seek to apply existing tools and expertise to digital projects developed in collaboration with the Library & Museum’s Center for Digital Scholarship.

Successful applicants will receive a stipend of $3,000 per month for a minimum of one month and a maximum of two months.

Recent examples of collaborative projects have focused on the Center’s Open Data Initiative and have explored datasets created from Benjamin Franklin’s postal records, indenture records for servants and redemptioners coming through the port of Philadelphia during the 1770s, and a network visualization of correspondence networks of women scientists found in the APS’s collections.

The APS Library & Museum’s collections make it among the premier institutions for documenting and exhibiting the history of the American Revolution and founding, the history of science from Newton to NASA, Native American languages and culture, and the development of American anthropology. The Library & Museum houses over 13 million manuscripts; 350,000 volumes of printed materials and bound periodicals; 250,000 images, fine art, and other objects; thousands of maps and prints; and more than 3,500 hours of audio recordings of Native American languages.

Comprehensive, searchable guides and finding aids to our collections are available online at www.amphilsoc.org/library and http://amphilsoc.pastperfectonline.com/.

The Center for Digital Scholarship promotes the holdings of the APS Library & Museum through digitization, digital humanities, and the development of tools and software. We partner with scholars, institutions, and students from across the country to explore what digital scholarship means in a small, independent research library. We ask questions about our role within the field of digital scholarship, and we find answers through practice and experimentation. To learn more about the Center for Digital Scholarship, and to explore our recent projects, please visit us here.

All application materials will be submitted online via Interfolio (https://apply.interfolio.com/69515) by Friday, March 6, 2020 at 11:59 pm EST.

Applicants must submit:

  • Cover letter
  • Curriculum vitae
  • Proposal for a digital project including a detailed work plan and a proposed timeline for the fellowship term (no more than 4 double-spaced pages)
  • Examples of previous digital humanities projects (if available)
  • Two confidential letters of reference

Contact regarding the Fellowship program and the American Philosophical Society Library & Museum may be directed to Adrianna Link, Ph.D., Head of Scholarly Programs, at alink@amphilsoc.org or by phone at 215-440-3415.

Applicants: Please use Interfolio’s help desk for any issues pertaining to the online application process.

Digital Humanities Research Institute (NYC) Applications Open

Do you want to become a DHRI Community Leader?
Apply now and join us from June 15-24, 2020.



You are invited to apply for the second Digital Humanities Research Institute (DHRI), which will take place at The Graduate Center, City University of New York. This ten-day institute will introduce participants to core digital humanities skills, and help you develop those skills as part of a growing community of leaders at universities, libraries, archives, museums, and scholarly societies.

Apply here. Applications must be received by March 2, 2020.

What to expect: 

  • 8 days of in-person workshops focused on foundational digital research skills like the command line, data and ethics, introduction to python, and mapping,
  • mentoring to help grow local partnerships and launch your local version of the Digital Humanities Research Institutes,
  • sharing your experience through a final report and evaluations that will be included in our Guide to Leading Digital Humanities Research Institutes,
  • a stipend of $3,600.

Who should apply?

We encourage applications from humanities scholars from a wide range of institutional types, including but not limited to universities, community colleges, libraries, archives, museums, historical associations and who fill an array of professional roles (graduate students, experienced faculty, librarians, administrators, museum curators, archivists and more). No previous technical experience is required—applications will not be evaluated based on familiarity with existing technologies.

If you have questions about the form, the application process, or the evaluation criteria, see our application page or contact info@dhinstitutes.org.

The Digital Humanities Research Institute is made possible through generous funding from the Office of Digital Humanities, National Endowment for the Humanities and with the support of the Provost’s Office of the CUNY Graduate Center and GC Digital Initiatives.

NEH Summer Institute: Engaging Geography in the Humanities (Boston)

Engaging Geography in the Humanities is a three-week Summer Institute to be held at Northeastern University from July 6 – 24, 2020. The Institute will explore the possibilities and productive tensions at the intersection of geography and the humanities. By engaging with readings, lectures, discussions, workshops, and field visits, the Institute will introduce scholars teaching in the humanities (and related disciplines) to concepts and methods from geography, as participants consider how these approaches can enhance their own research and teaching.

The poet Walt Whitman writes that in the urban environment we see “the past, the future, dwelling there, like space, inseparable together.”  Inspired by this idea, the Institute will use Boston as our classroom to explore the layered nature of space and place, as well as how Boston and the region have served as setting and inspiration for a range of philosophical and literary works. At the same time, the geographic perspectives and spatial methods developed here will help participants engage more deeply with their immediate surrounds, as well as distant locations.

Through a series of workshops, the Institute will introduce participants to the emerging field of digital humanities and some of its possibilities for spatial representation and analysis. Participants will be exposed to digital projects and receive hands-on training on tools such as 3D modeling, web mapping, and Geographical Information System (GIS). In addition to providing practical skills, sessions and workshops will critically examine the meanings of maps and uses of digital technology in humanistic inquiries.

Meanwhile, the Institute will build on Northeastern’s commitment to public humanities and the experiential liberal arts to facilitate more public facing engagements through popular writing, digital media, and memorialization and public history projects.

Please apply to participate by March 1, 2020.

Our goal is to create a diverse cohort of college and university faculty interested in exploring how geographic perspectives and spatial methods can enhance their own teaching and research. The Institute welcomes scholars in the humanities (and related fields) who currently engage themes of space and place in their work, as well as those interested in learning how to do so.

We would like to acknowledge the territory on which Northeastern University stands, which is that of The Wampanoag and The Massachusett People. While visiting campus, please honor the continued efforts of the Native and Indigenous community leaders who work to preserve the history and culture of the tribes which make up Eastern Massachusetts and the surrounding region. Today, Boston is still home to many indigenous peoples, including the Mashpee Wampanoag and Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah), and many more in our region.


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