Courses

Core Courses

All core courses are offered in Session A (May 27 - July 3, 2025) 

Required Core Course

DigHum 100 - Theory and Methods in the Digital Humanities

Instructor TBA
Session A, MTuWTh 10:00am-12:00pm, Online.

In this course, we will evaluate a variety of digital humanities projects through theoretical scholarship in the field, in order to critically assess the value of the new knowledge that is being generated, and to weigh that knowledge in terms of traditional humanities methods.  We will explore the fundamental arguments that are being advanced about these new methods and how they interact with humanities’ interpretive underpinnings. This course will prepare students to apply digital methods in ethical, reflective, and responsible ways—understanding the potentials of the digital within the humanities.

Required Core Course

DigHum 101 - Python Programming for Digital Humanities

Instructor TBA
Session A, MTuWTh 1:00-3:00pm, Online.

This hands-on course introduces foundational approaches in data science through a lens of Digital Humanities, emphasizing practical application. Students will gain proficiency in Python programming within Jupyter Notebooks, leveraging key data science libraries like Pandas. Utilizing various datasets, we will explore web scraping, social network analysis, computational text analysis, and machine learning. 

Elective Courses

All elective courses are offered in Session D (July 7 - August 15, 2025). 

Three electives are required for completion of the Minor or Certificate in Digital Humanities.

Elective Course

DigHum 150A - Digital Humanities and Archival Design
Immersive Digital Archives: Cultural Heritage and the Future of Digital Humanities 

Instructor TBA
Session D, MTuWTh 3:00-5:00pm, Online.

Archival Design can make rare sources accessible to a broad audience in ways that offer conceptual structure, critical analysis, and user flexibility. In this area, students learn to transform traditional primary sources into dynamic digital archives, receiving dual training in conducting scholarly research and designing digital projects.

Online archival resources for cultural heritage are at the forefront of developing public digital humanities. How can the past be captured in digital form? Can advanced media visualization, such as augmented and virtual Reality, give new insights on ancient data? Can public dissemination of research using gamification positively impact our lives in the present? How can we ensure that our digital cultural achievements last as long as pyramids built in stone?

This course will pair readings on the theory and practice of visual and public digital humanities cultural heritage projects. The digital archive resources used in class will be used to critique current offerings and trends in digital data capture and open access resources. The final project will be the creation of a new digital cultural heritage resource, presenting content created by students through a digital platform: augmented or virtual reality, location-based games, or a combination of both. Students will be offered a choice of visual and textual archival data from the UC Berkeley Hearst Museum of Anthropology, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, and the National Museum of Sudan, or can identify their own open-access archival source of interest.

Elective Course

DigHum 150B - Digital Humanities and Visual and Spatial Analysis
Visual and Spatial Analysis: Maps, Graphs, and Letters

Instructor TBA
Session D, MTuWTh 9:30-11:30am, Online

This course will explore how the power of digital tools to create complex and interactive visual representations can help us investigate problems in the humanities. Visual analysis allows for large collections of texts, artifacts and data to appear as form, distilling and presenting information in ways that are computational as well as conceptual. Spatial analysis, especially the geospatial, applies advanced digital cartographic tools to historical maps, geographically based events, demography, migration, textual production, and movement over time. As with all digital humanities, these visual and spatial formats are user-responsive and open to a broad range of use

An introduction to visual and spatial questions and tools in the humanities. Ourprimary focus will be on visualizing the social data contained within literary correspondence; other areas of emphasis will be in network theory, color theory, data visualization tools, geographic information systems, and the way these might illuminate literary and cultural objects.

Elective Course

DigHum 150C - Digital Humanities and Textual and Language Analysis
Introduction to Computational Literary Analysis 

Instructor TBA
Session D, MTuWTh 12:00-2:00pm, Online.

Textual and Language Analysis addresses a range of language use, spanning from the literary to the informal. Computational programs allow for humanistic inquiry and support critical analysis of texts. Students in this area learn to understand linguistics, genre, style, comparative analyses and literary interpretation through the digital.

Computational literary analysis is the quantitative study of literature using computational tools. This course serves as an introduction, and presumes no background in computer science. We will learn techniques of text analysis such as stylometry, topic modeling, and word embeddings, using the Python programming language. Novels to be read and analyzed include Wilkie Collins's mystery novel The Moonstone, and two short story collections: James Joyce's Dubliners and Katherine Mansfield's The Garden Party and Other Stories.

Learn more about DigHum 150C

Elective Course

DigHum 160 - Critical Digital Humanities: Digital Hermeneutics: Analyzing Platform Communities 

Instructor: Tom van Nuenen
Session D, Asynchronous Instruction

Critical Digital Humanities evaluates how information-age technologies influence and impact humanistic inquiry.  Digital capacities allow us to ask new questions, but they also shape how we organize and receive knowledge. Training a critical eye on the field allows us analyze the impact of the digital on the study of the humanities, and the culture at large. Fulfills L&S Philosophy & Values breadth.

This course places the tradition of hermeneutics--the study of interpretation--in the context of contemporary, data-driven society. Based on a historical overview of hermeneutics, it asks: how can we critically assess the algorithmically driven and often controversial claims to knowledge to be found in online communities? Using text analytics, we will analyze how knowledge is generated and negotiated on social platforms such as Reddit. In doing so, we will build skills in both natural language processing and close reading, in order to push back against problems of filter bubbles, post-truths, and alternative facts.  
Elective Course

DigHum 161 - Decolonial Digital Humanities

Instructor TBD
Session D, M,TuWTh, 9:00-11:00am, Online

Critical Digital Humanities evaluates how information-age technologies influence and impact humanistic inquiry.  Digital capacities allow us to ask new questions, but they also shape how we organize and receive knowledge. Training a critical eye on the field allows us analyze the impact of the digital on the study of the humanities, and the culture at large. Fulfills L&S Philosophy & Values breadth.

This course places the tradition of hermeneutics--the study of interpretation--in the context of contemporary, data-driven society. Based on a historical overview of hermeneutics, it asks: how can we critically assess the algorithmically driven and often controversial claims to knowledge to be found in online communities? Using text analytics, we will analyze how knowledge is generated and negotiated on social platforms such as Reddit. In doing so, we will build skills in both natural language processing and close reading, in order to push back against problems of filter bubbles, post-truths, and alternative facts.  
Elective Course

DigHum 162 - Data Science for Social Justice

Instructor TBD
Session D, M,TuWTh, 12:00-2:00pm, Online

This interdisciplinary course equips students with essential tools and methods for data analysis while introducing critical frameworks to design projects with a focus on social impact. By combining technical skills with ethical considerations, the course challenges the "market-first" mentality prevalent in data science and fosters an understanding of how data-driven solutions can advance social justice.

Through a combination of hands-on workshops and guided discussions, students will engaeg with ideas of leading thinkers in areas such as data feminism, data activism, ethics, indigenous technologies, and critical race theory. Topics such as data gathering, surveillance, bias in machine learning, and the ethical dimensions of data science will be explored.