Course Details
Course: HUMN/LITS 1352: Hacking Humanities & Going Digital (3 credits)
Times: Tue/Fri 10:00a-11:15a
Locations:
Flo on Tue in Monninger 119
Met on Fri in Dickinson 1128
Zoom ID: 958 3905 3342
Instructor: Dr. April Patrick (patricka@fdu.edu)
Office Hours: Tue11:30-12:30 in Monninger 222, Fri 11:30-12:30 in Robison 37, by appt
Required Materials
One-Year Membership to COVE Collective ($10): see instructions here
All other readings available for free online through Perusall (Access Code: PATRICK-4TF4D)
Description and Goals of this Course
Catalog Description: Digital Humanities (DH) is an umbrella for the wide range of approaches to engaging with works in the humanities (including literature, history, art, music) by using technological tools to provide new insights about those materials or new ways of accessing them. This introductory course explores the goals and methods of DH work and provides hands-on experience with textual and data analysis, visualization, digital editions, and publishing. Designed to satisfy the Gen Ed requirement in Information and Technological Literacy. Students do not need a background in technology or the humanities to enroll.
Additional Description: Throughout this course, we will divide our class meetings between discussing the theoretical foundation and history of DH as a field, exploring existing DH projects, analyzing literary and other humanities texts, and performing hands-on activities with DH tools. The first half of the semester will focus on creating a solid foundation in the digital humanities and discovering the type of work done in this field. Then, in the second half, we will focus on applying that understanding to creating a DH project of your own. Each class meeting, we will be multitasking on various assignments; it’s essential that you stay organized and on top of the reading and projects.
Course Outcomes: By the end of Hacking Humanities & Going Digital, you will...
…understand the foundational ideas in the field of digital humanities.
…use various kinds of digital humanities tools.
…interpret literary texts and other humanities materials through digital and distant reading practices.
…evaluate digital humanities projects.
…create an original digital humanities project.
Course Fulfills:As a course that counts toward the major in Humanities or Literature, this course helps student to work toward the objectives in those majors. You can read them at the end of the syllabus. In addition to the course and major learning objectives, this course allows students to meet the General Education Learning Objectives for Information and Technological Literacy, which indicates that FDU graduates will demonstrate the ability to…
…identify and parse information sources in a variety of physical, print, digital, and online formats.
…use this collected information to conduct research and analyze data for professional purposes.
Assigned Requirements
Homework & Other Classwork (20%): Before each class meeting, you will complete homework to prepare you for our class activity. Sometimes it will simply be annotating our reading on Perusall. Other times, there will be a specific activity (usually an exploration of some digital tools or resources that we started in class) to complete. Late homework will not count for credit.
Participation (15%): Participation occurs through both in-person and zoom meetings during our scheduled class time. See Participation section below for more about how participation will be evaluated. Additionally, participation logs will be submitted 3 times over the course of the semester.
Project 1—Indexing New Monthly Magazine (15%): You will collect details about the items published in assigned volumes of New Monthly Magazine. Then you’ll analyze your collected data in a written overview and present your findings to the class.
Project 2—Distant Reading Open-Access Texts (15%): You will choose a collection of open-access texts to explore using free digital tools. You will submit a written analysis of the text and present your findings to the class.
Project 3—Digital Project & Presentation (35%): You will create a public-facing digital resource about a humanities-based topic of interest to you. The resource can be an archive, an edition, a mapping project, a series of data visualizations, or another type of digital resource. COVE Editions will likely help here. You will also submit a written overview of the project and present it to our class.
Grading
Simply fulfilling the minimum requirements of the course warrants an average grade (as in C), not an A. Higher grades are earned through the distinctive quality and development of your work. As we move into the semester, we’ll talk more about rubrics for specific assignments.
The grade scale for final grades in this course is: 94-100=A | 90-93=A- | 87-89=B+ | 83-86=B | 80-82=B- | 77-79=C+ | 73-76=C | 70-72=C- | 60-69=D | below 60=F
Deadlines and Late Work
Work will be due by its assigned due date and will be considered late thereafter. Late work is not accepted without prior discussion. If you know you will be missing a class, you need to submit the assignment ahead of time. All assignments due during an official university-mandated activity need to be submitted in advance of the absence. This late work policy applies to all work for the course unless I have agreed to late submission in advance of the due date.
Attendance
Attendance and engagement are essential for success in this course. You should plan to attend every class session to participate in the learning activities during class meetings. If something prevents you from coming to class, you will have 2 ‘free’ absences in the class. These can cover any sort of life issues, including a flat tire, general illness, needing to sleep in, or whatever else you need. I do not need to see any documentation for these absences. Think of these like paid vacation/sick days in a job. Each additional absence beyond the 2 ‘free’ absences may result in your overall course average being dropped by 1/3 of a letter grade (at 3 absences, a B becomes a B-; at 4, a C+; and so on). Arriving late or leaving early will count as 1/2 of an unexcused absence.
Because our course is hybrid, there will always be a zoom session running. If needed, you can attend virtually on up to 2 of your in-person days. After that, each day you attend on zoom instead of in-person counts as 1/2 of an absence. Absences for FDU athletics games/matches, one-time medical appointments, bereavement, family emergencies, or jury duty will not count toward these ‘free’ absences. For absences that will make you miss more than 3 or more consecutive days of class for the same reason, you can consult with the Dean of Students office regarding an advocacy letter. If you are absent for any reason, your work is still due on time, and you must keep up with future assignments.
Participation
This is primarily a discussion-based course, which means active participation is crucial to your success. However, I understand that participation looks different for everyone, and in a hybrid class, it may be different for you whether you’re in person or on zoom. For all class sessions, you are expected to arrive on time, remain for the full session, be prepared by having done homework assignments, and have all relevant materials. And, of course, then you must actually participate in and contribute to the class meeting to earn full participation points.
On in-person days, participation looks like being present with necessary materials, actively listening to others, and speaking in whole class and/or small group discussions. On zoom days, participation looks like having video on, actively listening to others, speaking verbally or contributing via the chat feature during whole class discussions, and speaking in assigned breakout rooms.
Missing classes also affects your daily participation grade, as you cannot participate if you are not in class. Arriving late to class (after class has begun) or leaving early from class also affects participation grades.
Because of our hybrid learning environment and the course texts being online, technology will be a regular part of our class sessions. In order to remain focused and to respect everyone in the class, please refrain from using any technology, regardless of whether it is silenced, for communication during class, including texts, emails, social media, or any other form of communication yet to be developed. You should have only the class readings, your notes (if you take notes online), and zoom (on your virtual days) open during class on any device you use. Distractions are difficult to avoid, so it’s important to actively remove them (close windows, quit programs, turn off notifications, use focus mode, etc.).
Resources for Student Success
Students in this course are invited to reach out to one or more of our student support offices for support in this course, other courses, or any aspect of their FDU experience. In addition, any student with a concern who does not know where to turn may reach out to the Chief Student Experience Officer on the relevant campus. On the New Jersey campuses, our Chief Student Experience Officers are:
Metro: Rashard Mills, rmills@fdu.edu, 201-692-2045
Florham: Traci Banks, tlbanks@fdu.edu, 973-443-8935
University and Course Policies
Students in this course are advised to click on this link to see all the academic and other policies relevant to this and every course offered at FDU. To save paper, these policies are not published in each course syllabus. These policies include:
Academic Honesty and Integrity
Attendance
Chosen Name Policy
Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Accessibility Commitment
Grade Appeal Procedure
Policy on Prohibited Discrimination, Harassment, and Related Misconduct / FERPA
Statement on Sexual and Gender Identity
University Statement of Accommodation
Please note that, for the purposes of this class, the university’s Academic Honesty and Integrity policy applies to many uses of machine learning and artificial intelligence (like ChatGPT) to complete assignments, as this can be considered cheating according to the university’s definition. These incredible tools may be valuable in your planning or research for written assignments or class, but the output from the tool must be revised into your own style and must be accompanied by a note disclosing how you used artificial intelligence to support your learning. Any undisclosed uses of artificial intelligence or machine learning may be penalized with failure of the assignment or failure of the course.
Literature and Humanities Major Objectives
This course counts toward requirements for the Literature and Humanities majors. As such, and in general, it supports progress toward the learning objectives for those two majors, which are as follows:
Literature: When students graduate from FDU with a major in Literature, they should be able to…
(1) identify and describe formal, rhetorical, and aesthetic features of texts, and apply this understanding through “close reading” and cognate forms of literary reading.
(2) produce engaging writing with the formal features and academic rigor expected in the field of literary studies. (“Formal features” include thesis, documentation of sources, discipline-specific terminology, evidence of sufficient revision and editing with an academic audience in mind. “Academic rigor” includes judicious selection of appropriate primary and/or secondary sources, explication of source material.)
(3) situate texts in space and time; analyze texts and authors in a way that demonstrates understanding of how they function in historical, social, cultural, political, philosophical, and other relevant contexts (including reception history, movements, times, and genres), and an ethically aware engagement with issues of human and nonhuman diversity.
Humanities: When students graduate from FDU with a major in Humanities, they should be able to…
(1) employ humanistic, critical methodologies, possibly including complementary quantitative or scientific methodologies, either drawing on 2 or more distinct disciplines, or working in an interdisciplinary way, or both.
(2) analyze texts (broadly defined, to encompass works, artifacts, ideas, and discourses) and creators (authors, artists) in a way that demonstrates understanding of how they function in historical, social, cultural, political, philosophical, and other relevant contexts (including reception history, movements, times, and genres), with an awareness of diversity.
conduct research and write papers involving analysis of primary texts, supported by appropriately chosen secondary sources, appropriately documented and written in an appropriate scholarly genre (a holistic judgment of the writing’s suitability as academic discourse).