Digital Humanities

Spring 2019

This seminar will help faculty and graduate students develop expertise in the tools and methods necessary to incorporate digital humanities projects and concepts into their classes. We expect faculty and graduate students to come to the seminar with their own expertise and interests, and rather than asking them to rewrite their entire syllabi, we will work with them to build DH projects into existing classes.

The seminar begins with an overview and history of the field, along with some exemplary digital humanities projects and assignments. Participants will then discuss techniques for incorporating digital humanities projects into the classroom, including how to match pedagogical goals with existing tools, how to evaluate tools for use in the classroom, how to manage a range of skill levels, how to scale up student support, and how to assess digital projects.

Throughout, we’ll interrogate the existing lecture/seminar structure at UCLA and discuss ways that we might adapt or transform it. As we address the needs and desiderata of our participants, we’ll examine how existing infrastructure might be brought to bear, how current classrooms might be utilized, and which new spaces and technologies might be necessary to stage these courses in future. We imagine participants will emerge from the seminar with two tangible outcomes: a revised syllabus that includes digital humanities-inflected assignments; and a collaboratively authored whitepaper that identifies gaps, resources, and opportunities in the university’s current support for digital humanities pedagogy.