Schedule

Lecture/Discussion: Mondays, 2:00–2:50 pm (with a prerecorded asynchronous lecture)

Digital Lab: Wednesdays, 1:30–2:50 pm

Week 1: Introduction to Digital Humanities

Feb. 1: Lecture/Discussion

Watch Part I and Part II of the lecture, posted on Canvas

Pre-Discussion Readings:

  • Eileen Gardiner and Ronald G. Musto, The Digital Humanities: A Primer for Students and Scholars, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015). pp. 1–14. [posted on canvas]
  • Ann Burdick et al., “A Short Guide to Digital_Humanities,” in Digital_Humanities (Cambridge, 2012). [posted on canvas]

Feb. 3: Digital Humanities Lab (Guest: Special Collections Librarian)

Pre-lab Assignments:

  • Please complete this Google form so the instructors can gauge archival and digital expertise.
  • Register for a GitHub account if you don’t already have one; if you’ve never worked in GitHub before, complete the Hello World intro lesson to learn basic functionality of GitHub.
  • Visit Digital PUL, Princeton Library’s digital repository, and spend some time looking around at the various kinds of sources available in digital facsimile
  • In-class discussion with Emma Sarconi from Special Collections to discuss the variety of digital sources available to you via Firestone Library’s digital collections and discussion of the final project

Week 2: The ABCs of Philosophy

Feb. 8: Lecture/Discussion

  • Watch Part I and Part II of the lecture posted on Canvas

Pre-Discussion Readings:

  • Jack Goody and Ian Watt, “The Consequences of Literacy,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 5 (April 1963), pp. 304–332. (You don’t need to read section IV.) [posted on canvas]
  • Marc Van De Mieroop, Philosophy before the Greeks: The Pursuit of Truth in Ancient Babylonia (Princeton, 2015), pp. Preface, Ch 1. and Ch 9. [posted on canvas]

Feb. 10: Digital Humanities Lab

Pre-Lab Assignment:

  • Visit the Cuneiform Digital Library and view a cuneiform tablet from any one of the digitized tablets accessible on the site. A good way to find a tablet that’s been translated is to run a “Full Search” and type a single word into the “Translation” search box. Use your imagination to think about what sorts of words or terms might be preserved on a cuneiform tablet.
  • Visit Machine Translation and Automated Analyses of Cuneiform Languages and read their About page. Think about what it means to make a computer read ‘human’ languages, and what it means for humans to try to ‘read’ computer languages.
  • Complete the Getting Started with Markdown lesson on The Programming Historian
  • Post to our Canvas Discussion

Introduction to Digital Tools Assignment #1: Markdown Starter Post

Week 3: Romans and their Capitals

Feb. 15: Lecture/Discussion

Digital Tools Assignment 1 due February 15 at 11:00 pm EST Watch Part I and Part II of the lecture, posted on Canvas

Pre-Discussion Readings:

  • Stephanie Ann Frampton, Empire of Letters: Writing in Roman Literature and Thought from Lucretius to Ovid (Oxford, 2018), pp. 1–12, 33–55. [posted on canvas]
  • Rebecca R. Benefiel, “Urban and Suburban Attitudes to Writing on Walls? Pompeii and Environs,” ed. I. Berti, K. Bolle, F. Opdenhoff, and F. Stroth, Berlin: De Gruyter (2017), 353–373. [posted on canvas]

Feb. 17: Digital Humanities Lab

Special Guest: Matthew Larsen, Cotsen Postdoctoral Fellow in the Society of Fellows and Lecturer in Religion, who will discuss his project to digitally recreate carceral spaces in the ancient world

Pre-Lab Assignment:

  • Read Rebecca Benefiel et. al, “The Herculaneum Graffiti Project: Initial Field Season, 2014,” The Journal of Fasti Online. FOLD&R 361 (2016), 1–23.
  • Visit The Ancient Graffiti Project website, read the About page, and browse some of the graffiti at Herculaneum with Rebecca Benefiel’s “Urban and Suburban Attitudes Towards Writing on Walls” in mind. Select a graffito to discuss.
  • Post to our Canvas Discussion

Introduction to Digital Tools Assignment #2: Story Maps

Week 4: Sacred Books for Sacred Stories

Feb. 22: Lecture/Discussion

Watch Part I and Part II of the lecture posted on Canvas

Pre-Discussion Readings:

  • Christopher de Hamel, Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts: Twelve Journeys into the Medieval World (New York, 2016), pp. 1–7, 52–94. [posted on canvas]
  • Alain George, “Calligraphy, Colour and Light in the Blue Qur’an,” Journal of Qur’anic Studies 11, no. 1 (April 2009): ONLY 95–108. [posted on canvas]
  • OPTIONAL: View the short series of videos demonstrating the preparation of a medieval manuscript from the British Library, linked to our Canvas site

Feb. 24: Digital Humanities Lab

Special Guests: Will Noel, John T. Maltsberger III ‘55 Associate University Librarian for Special Collections and Dr. Shirin Fozi, Associate Professor of Medieval European Art and Architecture at the University of Pittsburgh

Pre-Lab Assignment:

  • Visit the digital exhibition A Nostalgic Filter and click through the exhibit, paying special attention to the “Golden Books” virtual gallery. You’ll want to watch the videos, look closely at the images, and read the gallery notes.
  • Read about International Image Interoperability Framework, or IIIF. Then visit the webpage for Project Mirador. On the Mirador website, try a live demo.
  • Watch Dr. Noel’s TEDTalk, “Revealing the Lost Codex of Archimedes”

Week 5: Writing to Rule

March 1: Lecture/Discussion

Watch Part I and Part II of the lecture, posted on Canvas

Pre-Discussion Readings:

  • M. T. Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record, 1066–1307 (New York, 2012), pp. 44–73, 294–317. [posted on canvas]
  • Marina Rustow, The Lost Archive: Traces of a Caliphate in a Cairo Synagogue (Princeton, 2020), 1–8, 247–273. [posted on canvas]

March 3: Digital Humanities Lab

Special Guest: Marina Rustow, Khedouri A. Zillkha Professor of Jewish Civilization in the Near East; Professor of Near Eastern Studies and History

Pre-Lab Assignment:

  • Visit the Princeton Geniza Project and explore the project by searching the Project’s Digital Document Library and JTS Image Collection.
  • Visit the crowd-sourced transcription platform From the Page and look through this manuscript. We’ll try to transcribe one of the recipes from this manuscript together as a class.
  • Post to our Canvas Discussion

Week 6: Writing Embodied Knowledge

Digital Tools Assignment 2 due March 8 at 11:00 pm EST

March 8: Lecture/Discussion

Watch Part I and Part II of the lecture, posted on Canvas

Pre-Discussion Readings:

  • Pamela O. Long, Openness, Secrecy, Authorship: Technical Arts and the Culture of Knowledge from Antiquity to the Renaissance (Baltimore, 2001), pp. 102–142. [posted on canvas]
  • Pamela H. Smith, “In the Workshop of History: Making, Writing, and Meaning.” West 86th 19, no. 1 (2012): 4–31. [posted on canvas]

March 10: Digital Humanities Lab

Pre-Lab Assignment:

Introduction to Digital Tools Assignment #3: XML and TEI

March 15 and 17: Spring Break NO CLASS

Week 7: The Print Revolution

March 22: Lecture/Discussion

Watch Part I and Part II of the lecture, posted on Canvas

Pre-discussion readings:

  • Anthony Grafton, “Humanists with Inky Fingers,” in Inky Fingers: The Making of Books in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2020), pp. 29–55. [posted on canvas]
  • Kai-wing Chow, “Reinventing Gutenberg: Woodblock and Movable-Type Printing in Europe,” in Agent of Change: Print Culture Studies after Elizabeth L. Eisenstein (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2007), pp. 169–192. [posted on canvas]

March 24: Digital Humanities Lab

Special Guest: Professor Tony Grafton, Henry Putnam University Professor of History

Pre-Lab Assignment:

Week 8: Technologies of Empire: Maps and Ethnography

Digital Tools Assignment 2 due March 29 at 11:00 pm

March 29: Lecture/Discussion

Watch Part I and Part II of the lecture, posted on Canvas

Pre-Discussion readings:

  • Daniela Bleichmar, “Painting the Aztec Past in Early Colonial Mexico: Translation and Knowledge Production in the Codex Mendoza,” Renaissance Quarterly 72 (Winter 2019): 1362–1415. [posted on canvas]
  • Barbara E. Mundy, “Mapping the Aztec Capital: The 1524 Nuremburg Map of Tenochtitlan, Its Sources and Meanings,” Imago Mundi 50 (1999): 11–33. [posted on canvas]

March 31: Digital Humanities Lab

Pre-Lab Assignment:

Introduction to your Final Project

Week 9: The Enlightened Correspondent

April 5: Lecture/Discussion

Watch the Week 9 Lecture, posted on Canvas

Pre-discussion readings:

  • Carol Pal, Republic of Women: Rethinking the Republic of Letters in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 1–21. [posted on canvas]
  • Dena Goodman, Becoming a Woman in the Age of Letters (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009), pp. 1–15, 133–57. [posted on canvas]

April 7: Digital Humanities Lab

Special Guest: Kristen Starkowski on her work with Cytoscape

Pre-Lab Assignment:

  • Visit Networking the Republic of Letters, 1550–1750 and read about the problems of networking correspondence (you can also read about the New Metadata and New Features added to the project).
  • Next, visit EMLO, and try to find your favorite Humanist or Enlightenment thinker’s letters with the traditional database search function. Then Browse the catalogue by People and find a woman letter writer or recipient. View the graphs and visualizations of their correspondence by clicking on the author’s name. Finally, take a look at the EMLO Collections and take a look at the graphic search function by Geography and Chronology.
  • Cytoscape is an open source platform that allows user to create network visualizations. Click through the Cytoscape tutorial to learn more about its features and capabilities and be sure to download the software before class on Wednesday.
  • Post to our Canvas discussion

Introduction to Digital Tools Assignment #4: Cytoscape

Week 10: Newspapers in the Age of Revolutions

April 12: Lecture/Discussion

Watch the lecture “Newspapers and Nations” posted to Canvas

Pre-discussion readings:

  • Benedict Anderson, “Creole Pioneers,” in Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism, 3rd edition (New York: Zone Books, 2006), 47–65. [posted on canvas]
  • Marcus Daniel, “John Fenno and the Constitution of a National Character,” in Scandal and Civility: Journalism and the Birth of American Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 19–61. [posted on cavas]

April 14: Digital Humanities Lab

Special Guest: Kristen Starkowski on Voyant Tools and lexical analysis

Pre-Lab Assignment:

  • Search the newspapers digitized in the Chronicling America archive at the Library of Congress for the names of any of the historical figures cited in our readings. Choose one article from a newspaper mentioned or related to our secondary readings this week and read it. We will work with the text of this article in class on Wednesday.
  • Visit the Google Books Ngram Viewer website. This tool allows users to chart word usage over time. Choose three or four seemingly random words or names drawn from the newspaper article you selected from Chronicling America and enter them into the search box, separated by commas. Take a screenshot of the graph generated, and head to our Canvas discussion page.
  • Post to our Canvas discussion

Week 11: Mass Media and Politics

Digital Tools Assignment 4 due April 19 at 5 pm

April 19: Lecture/Discussion

In lieu of a pre-recorded lecture, listen to the podcast, The First Family of Radio, from American RadioWorks

Listen to Paul Robeson sing “Ballad for Americans,” broadcast on the radio show Pursuit of Happiness in 1940

Pre-Discussion Readings:

  • D. M. Ryfe, “Franklin Roosevelt and the Fireside Chats.” Journal of Communication 49, no. 4 (1999): 80–103. [posted on canvas]
  • Kate Lacey “Radio in the Great Depression: Promotional Culture, Public Service, and Propaganda,” in Michele Hilmes and Jason Loviglio, eds., Radio Reader: Essays in the Cultural History of Radio (New York: Routledge, 2002), pp. 21–40. [posted on canvas]
  • Judith E. Smith, “Radio’s ‘Cultural Front,’ 1938–1948,” in Radio Reader: Essays in the Cultural History of Radio, pp. 209–230. [posted on canvas]

April 21: Digital Humanities Lab

Special Guest: Nick Budak, Developer at the Center for Digital Humanities, Princeton

Pre-Lab assignment:

  • Visit The First Family of Radio site and listen to FDR’s fireside chat on “The WPA and Social Security,” from April 28, 1935
  • Check out these web platforms that allow you to create sounds for your digital projects.
    1. For free podcast hosting, Spotify has a service called Anchor. Once your podcast is hosted with them, you can easily embed it into your site with HTML embed code.
    2. For studio-level audio creation and manipulation, Spotify has a service called Soundtrap. If you’re interested, I can get us a free trial for 30 days with my Princeton email.
    3. For music composition and annotation (with sheet music), there’s a free online service called Flat.io.
  • Post to our canvas discussion

Week 12: Democracy in the Digital Age

April 26: Lecture/Discussion AND Digital Humanities Lab

There is NO PRERECORDED LECTURE this week. We will meet for the full class time, from 1:30–2:50 pm to discuss the readings and our digital archive.

Pre-class Readings:

  • Habibul Haque Khondker, “Role of the New Media in the Arab Spring,” Globalizations 8 (October 2011): 675–679. [posted on canvas]
  • Nathaniel Persily, “Can Democracy Survive the Internet?” Journal of Democracy 28 (April 2017): 63–76. [posted on canvas]
  • Matthew Hindman, The Internet Trap: How the Digital Economy Builds Monopolies and Undermines Democracy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018), Ch. 8. [posted on canvas]

Pre-Lab assignments:

  • Read Axel Bruns, “The Library of Congress Twitter Archive: A Failure of Historic Proportions,” Medium, January 1, 2018.
  • Visit TweetSets from George Washington University. Select an election-related dataset (from 2016 or 2018) and run a few searches through the set. Depending on what you search for (i.e. “electionfraud” or Russia, for example) you’ll be able to see the top accounts that used your search terms and the top websites linked to that language. Pay particular attention to the websites, and notice how many of them are social media posts.
  • No Canvas discussion post this week!

Reading Week (April 28–May 4)

Office hours meetings with Professor Reynolds and Kristen Starkowski to consult on final digital projects & DH response paper

May 10: Dean’s Date

Final Response paper due at 11:59 pm Final projects due to GitHub repository at 11:59 pm

May 6 - May 14: Final Exam Week

You have three hours to take the exam and you may choose when to do so anytime over the course of exam week. The exam will go live at 12:01 am on May 6 and will remain accessible until 11:59 pm on May 14.