Digital History Across the Curriculum
- May 27th, 2009
- Amanda French
How can digital skills and issues be thoroughly incorporated into a humanities curriculum, especially a graduate curriculum? It’s basically a “lazyweb” question, because that’s exactly the question I’m grappling with now in my current position, so if the minds at THATcamp would help me, I’d be extremely grateful indeed. It’s easy enough to design and teach a digital humanities course or two, but there’s something about that approach that just seems wrong. It keeps digital humanities in its own little pen, which is odd considering that those of us yelling into that echo chamber simply *know* that the whole practice of the humanities is going to have to come to terms with new technologies sooner or later. It’s also odd considering how many more careers are opened up to digitally literate people. I do think that digital humanities has been very much a research-oriented field, and I’d really like to concentrate on teaching for a bit. It may be that current educational course-centric structures are simply inimical to the digital humanities; I wager that most of us learned to be digital humanists through collaborative project work and self-directed study, which aren’t well supported by a 3-credit single-teacher single-department course structure.
[Several months later . . . ]
I’m in the thick now of writing a curriculum, and I can tell you a few things:
There are guidelines for M.A. programs set by the National Council on Public History and the Society of American Archivists, and I’m drawing heavily on those. There’s also the AHA’s book, The Education of Historians for the Twenty-First Century, published 2004, but I haven’t had a chance to look at it yet — I’m pretty sure there’s nothing about social networking in it, though! There’s also Dan Cohen’s recent narrative of the GMU PhD in Digital History in the May 2009 issue of AHA’s Perspectives.
What there isn’t is a set of guidelines for baseline digital skills that humanists should have. Perhaps all humanists don’t need digital skills. Nevertheless, it’s something I’m hacking away at.
(Let me just work out a Zotero issue & I’ll link to my bibliography with the above-named resources in it.)
May 27th, 2009 at 7:26 pm
Thanks Amanda,
In the Spring of 2010 I’ll be teaching LIS310 Computing in the Humanities and will be spending the summer working on the syllabus that I’m inheriting from John Unsworth. I will have an initial draft of this by the time I arrive at THATCamp and look forward to having a place to discuss it.
While this course is offered by GSLIS, it is part of a larger initiative called the Illinois Informatics Initiative (aka I-cubed) that offers a cross-disciplinary informatics minor (www.informatics.uiuc.edu). Would something like this fill the bill?
May 27th, 2009 at 9:26 pm
I’m looking forward to seeing what you have been doing with this, Amanda. As far as a baseline set of skills that all humanists should have, I think we can safely say that people should be able to read (X)HTML and CSS and be able to write some; there should be a broad familiarity with Web 2.0 services (so the researcher/teacher can draw on the appropriate tool at the right time); and there should be some knowledge of something like Google Earth or another GIS tool. This list is obviously debatable, but I also think that it represents something that most people will kind of know already without having to take additional courses/workshops.
I also know from poking around UVa’s IATH site that there is a proposal on the books there for an MA in Digital Humanities, but there are currently no details available online about what this might look like.
May 27th, 2009 at 10:05 pm
Unfortunately, I wrote a comment on Larry Cebula’s post that seemed to have vanished into thin air, so I will try to repost the same general idea I had in this thread.
There is often talk by digital humanists at universities of establishing curricula for a digital humanities program. The problem is that each professor has a different definition of “digital humanities” and this sometimes leads to irreconcilable fractures in the vision of such a program. I disagree with the premise that all humanities scholars need to come to terms with new technologies. I think that implies that digital history is somehow different than the traditional study of history. It is merely adapting a technological tool to formulate hypotheses that would not have otherwise been considered. I’m quite frankly not convinced of the longevity of social networking and “web 2.0” (a fairly overused phrase) and their long-term impact on humanities scholarship.
I think it would be a difficult challenge to create a graduate curriculum in the digital humanities that didn’t become extremely focused on a few technologies. I think the best way to encourage students to utilize technological tools in their research is to expose them to as many technologies as you can in hopes that they pick one that is the most relevant to their research, fostering an environment that will encourage them to develop their skills on their own and provide consultation and guidance along the way. It’s practically impossible to hold courses in data curation, visualization (of data and architecture), web development, computer programming, GIS, etc. and expect students to get good at any of them, especially in skills they aren’t necessarily interested in or are relevant to their research. Ten years ago, you could take a TEI course and be considered a digital humanities scholar. Things change over time. There should be more focus on theoretical applications of technology in the humanities rather than a series of courses that teach skills that are popular in higher education think tanks (CHNM, IATH, etc.) right now (and may not be in 3 years).
May 27th, 2009 at 10:08 pm
I am currently a student in the American Studies program at Penn State Harrisburg, and I think the faculty there would be thrilled to have some set of guidelines for building a digital skill set. If not, they should. While most professors are well versed in using the Web for research, I am disappointed that they do not take the next step to make digital collaboration among students a required part of the curriculum.
May 27th, 2009 at 10:20 pm
There is often talk by digital humanists at universities of establishing curricula for a digital humanities program. The problem is that each professor has a different definition of “digital humanities” and this sometimes leads to irreconcilable fractures in the vision of such a program. I disagree with the premise that all humanities scholars need to come to terms with new technologies. I think that implies that digital history is somehow different than the traditional study of history. It is merely adapting a technological tool to formulate hypotheses that would not have otherwise been considered. I’m quite frankly not convinced of the longevity of social networking and “web 2.0” (a fairly overused phrase) and their long-term impact on humanities scholarship.
I think it would be a difficult challenge to create a graduate curriculum in the digital humanities that didn’t become extremely focused on a few technologies. I think the best way to encourage students to utilize technological tools in their research is to expose them to as many technologies as you can in hopes that they pick one that is the most relevant to their research, fostering an environment that will encourage them to develop their skills on their own and provide consultation and guidance along the way. It’s practically impossible to hold courses in data curation, visualization (of data and architecture), web development, computer programming, GIS, etc. and expect students to get good at any of them, especially in skills they aren’t necessarily interested in or are relevant to their research. Ten years ago, you could take a TEI course and be considered a digital humanities scholar. Things change over time. There should be more focus on theoretical applications of technology in the humanities rather than a series of courses that teach skills that are popular in higher education think tanks (CHNM, IATH, etc.) right now (and may not be in 3 years). I probably sound like a heretic.
May 27th, 2009 at 10:20 pm
Fully agreeing with getting some sort of standard for humanists. I think that one key area to keep an eye on (as well as the great suggestions by Brian) is location-based technologies. I think with the proliferation of approachable mobile applications that have comprehensive GPS as almost an afterthought, we are going to see lots of new and interesting integrations of location-aware uses, be it simple “who’s around me” collaboration to really nice history-flavoured altered-reality-time-shift stuff.
Looking forward to this!
May 28th, 2009 at 2:26 am
I like your skepticism about digital humanities courses. I am sympathetic to the argument that digital humanities should be infused into existing curriculum, rather than taught in isolation. I worry, though, that this would mean watering down the digital and leaving students with the impression that digital is merely an extension of traditional humanist and disciplinary practices.
I think we could have a interesting discussion of whether the DH we teach is actually applied or theoretical. We could get into a debate over whether our DH courses are seriously or slightly interdisciplinary. We might even want to talk about whether we teach our students that there is a research agenda in DH or simply how to carry out traditional research with DH tools.
May 28th, 2009 at 8:26 am
Hopefully Karin ( twitter: @nirak ) will jump in here–she had some great posts about whether LIS students should learn computer programming, and I suspect has good insights here, too.
I also vaguely remember a twitter convo with Jeremy and a bunch of others (maybe you? sorry–I can’t remember) about this.
I’m willing to go so far as to say that a digital humanist should at least be familiar with XML and CSS, along with a smattering of XML vocabs, starting with XHTML. That’s partly due to my background as a medievalist. It’s fundamental to a medievalist’s training to at least be familiar with how a manuscript is constructed, even if one doesn’t specifically study manuscripts. Similarly, I think it’s fundamental for a digital humanist to be familiar with how a digital text is constructed.
I’ve taught XML to undergrads, and was surprised to discover that many of them really enjoyed it once they started to get it!
In any case, it sounds like a conversation around this will be super interesting for all!
Patrick
May 28th, 2009 at 12:25 pm
Friends: I absolutely agree that an across-the-curriculum approach to digital humanities is needed. Unfortunately this is the hardest to implement, because you need a buy-in from a majority of your department. I have a very collegial and supportive department that values what I do. But I shudder at the thought of going into my colleagues’ offices and telling them “You need to change the way you teach, you need to learn a new skill set, and by the way I hope you will vote in affirmative on my tenure decision next year…”
My current approach is to energize my own students with digital humanities ideas and let them evangelize for me. The other day a colleague asked “So what is this Zotero thing you have all my students using?” But it is slow going, too slow really.
As for a digital skill set, I am reluctant to define one. I could not disagree more with the statement: “I think we can safely say that people should be able to read (X)HTML and CSS and be able to write some.” I think it is more important to be able to talk to people who can do those things. As the old saying goes, it is better to know a person who owns a boat than to own one yourself.
May 29th, 2009 at 11:55 am
This is very exciting to see, I’m interested in how this develops at camp!
June 1st, 2009 at 3:58 pm
An exciting and puzzling topic. Larry’s mention of his colleagues applies pretty broadly: we are in the midst of a generational transition that leaves us in a bind. I’m having a hard time untangling the catch-22 in my head, so please forgive the unordered and half-baked list:
– Many faculty members don’t have a basic grasp of what internet and other computing technologies mean socially and cognitively, nor a good idea of what digital resources exist that are directly relevant to them.
– Convincing those faculty members to learn new things, new skills, new skillsets is non-trivially difficult. They’re already overloaded with work, and those who haven’t already bought in don’t tend to regard digital humanities as something crucial to their careers.
– Teaching students the basics of digital humanities is an excellent goal that should probably be accomplished in different ways in different disciplines.
– In any discipline, DH is a highly applied (as opposed to theoretical) field, at least insofar as its basics are concerned.
– Without faculty buy-in, which involves learning and understanding and excitement enough to re-work syllabi, teaching digital humanities seems to me impractical.
– And here again we get to reluctance to learn, no time to take on all this work, etc. As a non-faculty staff member, I’ve had a tremendously difficult time with attempts at organizing workshops for faculty; they just don’t come no matter what we build, not in numbers.
There’s got to be some curricular material that’s applicable across the humanities and teachable in a very short time. The challenge is, it needs to be taught in the context of specific courses, otherwise people won’t show up. I like the idea of modules, which are practiced in some institutions but not in others. Something like: before a semester begins, working with a faculty member to identify a couple of key concepts and/or skills that would benefit students in a particular course. Then, sometime early on in the semester, doing one or two guest practicums in that course, taking up precious class time but in return equipping students with more tools for chipping away at their subject(s).
Right now, I think we’re still in the phase of the very basics of internet research, search engine tricks, subject-specific sources, and technologies that are needed in order to use those resources. Students can’t learn everything about DH even if they try, so I’m curious to talk with folks about this: developing a list of general DH topics that would be nice to teach, and strategies for picking relevant bits of that list and applying them to specific situations.
June 4th, 2009 at 10:16 am
It seems to me that it’s potentially useful when thinking about the integration of the digital humanities into curricula to distinguish between the digital humanities as a medium and the digital humanities as a method. The issues involved with integrating the DH into courses are more easily tackled, it seems to me, when we’re talking about the DH as a medium. Including one or more pieces of digital scholarship as readings on a syllabus, asking students to use digital archives in their research, or asking them to publish their work on a blog or a wiki–all of that is comparatively easy. As a product to be either consumed or used, it seems to me that the digital humanities is becoming widely if not universally incorporated into many humanities courses and curricula.
Integrating the production rather than the consumption of digital humanities scholarship and tools is another matter altogether–and I think this is what you’re talking about, Amanda. I can’t help thinking of Bill Turkel’s comment recently in a JAH exchange (www.historycooperative.org/journals/jah/95.2/interchange.html): “I’m occasionally dismayed to meet people who describe themselves as digital humanists but don’t do any programming.” (That piece, by the way, has a great exchange about the method vs. medium vs. field question.) The production of substantive digital humanities scholarship undeniably requires deep technical skills, whether those be in programming or GIS or 3D visualization or whatever. I’ve been thinking about and wanting to develop a digital history methods course to teach at the undergraduate level. There are some great courses to emulate–Bill’s (digitalhistory.wikispot.org/UWO_History_9808_2008-09) and Dan Cohen’s (www.dancohen.org/clio-wired/) and Jeff McClurken’s (digitalhistory.umwblogs.org/syllabus/). While I dream about my students producing sophisticated digital projects, I don’t see how I could ask them to do that. To do that students would either either need to bring with them or acquire some technical expertise, and that’s of course unrealistic. Even in a methods course I think I’d have to focus on the medium, teaching my students to be critical consumers and users of digital scholarship rather than producers of it. (Which isn’t different from more conventional undergraduate methods courses, it seems to me. We teach our students to recognize, appreciate, and criticize Marxist scholarship, but we generally don’t ask them to produce Marxist analyzes themselves.)
Having said that, I’m a little uncomfortable admitting this. Few would debate that it’s not enough to teach undergraduate students to be critical, appreciative readers. They need to learn how to write thoughtfully and clearly. And, it seems to me, the same is increasingly true of digital projects. It’s not enough to teach students to be critical, appreciative consumers and users of digital scholarship. They need to learn to be producers too, to be able to author a multimedia presentation or a visualization or to write code to tackle an historical question. How do they get those skills? Is this something that needs to be incorporated into humanities curricula? Or is this something that should be tackled in other disciplines that students generally have to take courses in as part of most colleges’ and universities’ GER requirements–in computer science courses, in geography courses, etc.? In other words, if we as humanists deem digital literacy (and, again, by that I’d emphasize not just the ability to read but the capacity to write) an essential skill for our students to possess, are “digital skills” something that needs to be tackled within humanities curricula or more broadly within the liberal arts curricula, more likely than not by faculty outside of the humanities?
June 4th, 2009 at 12:35 pm
rnelson2: Great comments and questions. You are probably spot on about encouraging humanities students to take GIS courses offered by geography departments. In computer science I think the situation is different. In Albuquerque, the university CS professors refuse to teach web development courses. Instead they focus on problem solving skills, computational and algorithmic thought, and deep immersion in programming languages. So if a student wants to learn HTML, CSS, PHP, Javascript, etc., he or she will find those courses offered at the local community college. The model in the digital humanities so far is that these kinds of web development skills are taught to individuals once they enter graduate programs. This seems like some serious mismatch. So I think we need to do a better job of distinguishing between expected skill sets for undergraduates in the digital humanities versus those for graduate students in the digital humanities. And we should be asking ourselves whether we can match the level of skills we expect for digital humanities students with the kinds of courses that university professors in computer science and related departments are willing to teach. In the situation is different on other university campuses, I would love to hear about it.
June 5th, 2009 at 2:19 am
Good comments! I think the problem of generating faculty buy-in is as much a problem of attitude as age. I dropped by the home of my department chair the other day and he proudly showed me his weekend reading stack of books–CSS for Dummies, a couple more web design books, and a guide to Dreamweaver. He is 68 (and a model for us all).
June 9th, 2009 at 9:15 pm
In my undergraduate classes, I’ve struggled with the problem of teaching specific methods of digital productions or teaching broad approaches to using digital tools. At times I’ve had (made?) students learn HTML or 3-4 different software tools; other times I’ve just had them post their thoughts on a pre-framed blog/website/wiki. It depends on what larger goals I have for the assignment, class, and (sometimes) for their college career. In the class Rob Nelson mentions above, I (and some very helpful colleagues) just threw many different tools at students early in the semester and had them pick the tools they needed as they were creating their projects. The result was some pretty cool projects, but not (for most) a deep understanding of the underlying code. The question of whether that matters is an important one here and one I’d like to talk about more in a few weeks.
To circle back more directly to Amanda’s query, I do think a _loose_ set of guidelines for aspiring graduate or undergraduate digital humanists is in order.
June 9th, 2009 at 10:01 pm
[…] tools, the very notion of what digital humanities is and its place in the curriculum (something even THATCampers seem to be debating), when we need to do full-on DH evangelizing, and when we need to back off from our evangelizing in […]
June 11th, 2009 at 1:39 pm
This looks like its turning into a great conversation. I posted a proposal yesterday (thatcamp.org/2009/06/from-history-student-to-webmaster/)dealing with people who find themselves in Digital Humanities professions that probably could have benefited from the type of training being proposed in this thread. Following up on the suggestion of Jeffrey McClurken, I’m thinking there may be a connection somewhere here. At the very least, I imagine we would be interested in getting this group’s advice on furthering our continued self education.
June 12th, 2009 at 9:59 pm
[…] think this fits in to some degree with Jim Calder’s post and Amanda French’s post, among others (sadly, I have yet to read all the posts here, but I will get to it soon and maybe […]
August 3rd, 2009 at 11:23 am
[…] think this fits in to some degree with Jim Calder’s post and Amanda French’s post, among others (sadly, I have yet to read all the posts here, but I will get to it soon and maybe […]
March 9th, 2010 at 4:09 am
[…] thatcamp.org/2009/digital-history-across-the-curriculum/ Amanda French […]