Topics in Digital Humanities

Course Schedule


Week 1: Introduction Monday, January 6th

NOTA BENE: Vanderbilt University Classes Cancelled for January 6th.

Required Reading:

Week 2: Defining "Digital Humanities" Monday, January 13th

Required Reading:

Optional Reading:

Week 3: Exploring TEI Monday, January 20th

--No Class--

Optional Reading:

Recommended Exercises:

Week 4: What is "Distant Reading"? Monday, January 27th

Required Reading:

In Class Exercise:

Optional Response Paper: Review of Moretti, Distant Reading.

Week 5: Querying Texts with XPath Monday, February 3rd

Required Reading:

In Class Exercises:

Required Response Paper: Identify and review an XML based digital humanities project relevant to your research or vocational interests.

To help you find a repository, you might want to look at the data we have collected here (and trace it back to its source): https://github.com/paralipomena

There is also an excellent repository curated by Hugh Cayless of Duke University here: https://github.com/TEI-examples/tei-examples

Next you should look over these list of links:

You could also search the index of:

You could also search the archives of a mailing list or join and ask about projects relevant to your interests:

Week 6: Exploring Digital Corpora with XQuery (Part I) Monday, February 10th

Required Reading:

Optional Reading:

Optional Response Paper: From your own academic perspective, define "digital humanities".

Week 7: Exploring Digital Corpora with XQuery (Part II) Monday, February 17th

Required Reading:

Optional Reading:

Optional Response Paper: Review an example of scholarly usage of XML in a domain specifc to your research interests.

Week 8: XQuery Review February 24th

Required Reading:

Optional Response Paper: Topic of your choice.

Week 9: No Class March 3rd

Spring Break

Week 10: Planning your XML Research March 10th

Informal Midterm Survey:

Please complete this course survey here before March 9. Thank you for your feedback!

Required Response Papers:

All students should bring to class (and turn in on OAK) a 500 word response paper addressing three questions:

Required Reading:

Please adjust your reading this week to fit your specific needs. If you feel that you have a solid research question and data set, then please read:

If you are still searching for model projects or model research questions, then we suggest that you focus your time on reading that will help you identify possible model projects that may inspire your research. Please browse:

Week 11: Recursive Descent March 17th

NOTA BENE: Please see this blog post update to the syllabus for this week. We have decided to defer this weeks readings to later in the semester in favor of a week to catch up.

Week 12: Recursive Descent March 24th

Required Reading:

Optional Reading:

Optional Response Paper: What are the limits of digital analysis?

Week 13: Digital Analysis and Visualizing TextsMarch 31th

Required Reading:

Recommended Exercise:

Optional Response Paper: Review of week 12 readings.

Week 14: Natural Language Processing April 7th

Required Reading:

Optional Reading:

Week 15: Mapping Texts April 14th

Required Reading:

Optional Reading:

Optional Response Paper: Review of week 14 readings.

Week 16: "A Celebration of XML-Based Scholarship" April 21st

The Vanderbilt University community is invited to join our course for public presentations of student research using XML and XQuery. The ten-minute presentations will run from 2:10-3:00 p.m. and be held in Furman 003 (Center for Second Language Studies). The presentations are open the university community.

Student presenters, please see the presentation guidelines at this link.

Week 17: No Class April 28th