Course Book

Digital humanities

Course Book

Lecturer(s) :

Language:

English

Learning outcomes

At the end of the teaching, students will be able to:[br/][br/]a) understand the history, trends and core concepts of the Digital Humanities approach (distant reading/close reading/social reading, ontologies, regulated representations, metadata/paradata);[br/]b) master basic aspects of Digital Humanities technical skills (digitalization processes, historical GIS, image analyses, text mining, stylometrics, 3D modeling, procedural algorithms, digital publishing, social network analyses, project management);[br/]c) understand the most important representations and document formats and standards (XML, TEI / MEI, ePub, DublinCore, Collada, ...);[br/]d) have developed a hands-on experience on some of the Digital Humanities tools (Wordpress, Zotero, Omeka, Weka, R, Voyant, Scalar, Neatline, ...);[br/]e) understand the logic and uses of the most important global databases and resources (Google Books/Maps/Street view, Hathi Trust, Gutenberg Project, Freebase, Wikipedia / DBpedia);[br/]f) have conducted a personal Digital Humanities project.

Content

[b]Fundamental concepts and skills[/b][br/][br/]1. Digital Humanities have emerged, first in the US and now in Europe, as an interdisciplinary field applying computational methods to humanities research problems. The growing success of this domain is now impacting and reshaping research in "traditional" humanities in various ways. This course is an introduction to the fundamental concepts and skills of this new domain. Through concrete examples, hands-on work, site visits and personal projects, the students will acquire core competences to conduct Digital Humanities research. These skills will be useful if he/she wants to continue research on this field or work in a company dealing with Digital Humanities technologies (Google, Facebook, etc.), [br/][br/]2. The Digital Humanities field is very large and still unstructured. This course will give a general overview of its diversity: Digital Scholarship, Digital Publishing, Digitalization processes, Digital Libraries, Text Mining, Historical Geographical Information Systems, Procedural architectures, Just-in-time sociology, Digital Theology, Digital Art and New Aesthetics. [br/][br/]3. Organization of the course [br/][br/][b]Semester 1[/b] : 14 sessions (courses + visits + project presentation)[br/][br/]1. (19.09) What are Digital Humanities? Historical introduction to the field. Introduction to the course. Introduction to the tools of Digital Scholarship, Social reading/learning technologies. [br/]2. (26.09) Evolution of the book as a machine. Regulated representations. Text Encoding standards. XML, TEI, ePub. [br/]3. (03.10) [b]Visit of a Digital Publishing company[/b] : Hand-on session how to compose an ebook and distribute it in the main diffusion channels (Apple's iBookstore, Amazon, etc). Creative usages of print and digital media. Video: Etienne Mineur, Editions Volumiques.[br/]4. (10.10) Digitalization processes: Techniques for digitizing books, precious documents, paintings, sculptures, buildings, cities. Intervention on Digital Photography: Sabine Süsstrunk, EPFL. [br/]5. (17.10) [b]Visit of a Digitalization company[/b] : Presentation of different scanning technologies and document workflow. [br/]6. (24.10) Digital Libraries : Google Books, Project Gutenberg, Gallica, Europeana, Rero.doc. Intervention: Alain Jacquesson, former director of the Geneva Library. [br/]7. (31.10) Close reading/distant reading. Stylometrics. Examples of Tools : Voyant. Text Mining, Semantic bases (Freebase, DBPedia). [br/]8. (07.11) Historical Geographical Information Systems. Representation of time and space. Video : Ian Gregory, Lancaster University. [br/]9. (14.11) 3D models and procedural architectures. Paradata and intellectual transparency. Video: Pascal Mueller, ESRI R&D, Zurich. [br/]10. (21.11) Digital sociology. Just-in-time sociology. Flux mining. Concrete case study on how to acquire data from Twitter streams. Short introduction to R. Video : Antonio Casilli, Telecom ParisTech[br/]11. (28.11) Digital Theology. Network of religious texts. Intervention: Claire Clivaz, UNIL. [br/]12. (05.12) Digital Art. New Aesthetics. Video : James Bridle. [br/]13. (12.12) What are Digital Humanities? Reflections on the practices and methods of the field. Intervention: Dominique Vinck. UNIL [br/]14. (19.12) Research project presentations by the students[br/][br/][b]Semester 2 [/b]: Projects in co-direction

Keywords

Digital Humanities, Digitalization processes, Digital publishing, Digital Libraries, Digital Art, Historical Geographical Information Systems.

Type of teaching

Course, visit, intervention of external teachers, videos, projects.

Form of examination

[i]Semester 1[/i] :[br/]50 % Digital participation (Blogging, Twitter)[br/]50 % written + oral presentation of research project plan for semester 2. [br/][br/][i]Semester 2[/i] :[br/]Projects in co-direction

Bibliography and material

Introduction to Digital Humanities:[br/]- Schreibman, Susan.,Siemens, Ray, Unsworth, John, [i]A Companion to Digital Humanities[/i], Oxford : Backwell publishing. 2004. Second edition in preparation. A free version is available at http://www.digitalhumanities.org/companion/[br/]- Moretti, Franco, [i]Graphes, cartes et arbres : modèles abstraits pour une autre histoire de la littérature[/i], trad. Etienne Dobenesque, Paris : Les Prairies ordinaires, 2008.[br/][br/]Evolution of the book:[br/]- Clivaz, Claire, Meizoz, Jérome, Vallotton, François, Verheyden, Joseph. (éd.), with Bertho Benjamin, [i]Reading Tomorrow. From Ancient Manuscripts to the Digital Era / Lire Demain. Des manuscrits antiques à l'ère digitale[/i], Lausanne : PPUR, 2012. Ebook PPUR : www.ppur.org.[br/]- Grafton, Anthony. [i]La page de l'antiquité à l'ère du numérique : Histoire, usages, esthétiques[/i]. Paris : Hazan, 2012.[br/]- Robert, Pascal [i]Mnémotechnologies: Une théorie générale critique des technologies intellectuelles[/i]. Paris : Hermes Science Publications, 2010.[br/][br/]Digital Libraries:[br/]- Jacquesson, Alain, [i]Google Livres et le futur des bibliothèques numériques[/i], Paris : Éd. du Cercle de la librairie, 2010.

The library recommends

• "A companion to digital humanities / edited by Susan Schreibman, Ray Siemens, and John Unsworth". Year:2004. ISBN:1-4051-0321-3
• "Google Livres et le futur des bibliothèques numériques : historique du projet, techniques documentaires, alternatives et controverses / Alain Jacquesson". Year:2010. ISBN:978-2-7654-0980-9
• "Graphes, cartes et arbres : modèles abstraits pour une autre histoire de la littérature / Franco Moretti ; trad. de l'anglais par Etienne Dobenesque". Year:2008. ISBN:978-2-35096-046-3
• "La page de l'Antiquité à l'ère du numérique : histoire, usages, esthétiques / Anthony Grafton". Year:2012. ISBN:978-2-7541-0635-1
• "Lire demain : des manuscrits antiques à l'ère digitale / Claire Clivaz ... [et al.] (eds.)". Year:2012. ISBN:978-2-88074-958-3
• "Mnémotechnologies : une théorie générale critique des technologies intellectuelles / Pascal Robert". Year:2010. ISBN:978-2-7462-2488-9

Note

The course will be given in English. Possibility to interact in French, English and Italian. [br/][br/][b]Lecturers [/b]:[br/]Frédéric Kaplan, Professor (Digital Humanities Lab, CDH, EPFL); Interventions of several others lecturers(some in videos): Sabine Süsstrunk, Professor (IC, EPFL), Claire Clivaz, Assistant professor (IRCB, UNIL), Dominique Vinck, invited Professor (ISS, UNIL), Alain Jacquesson (former dir. Geneva Library), James Bridle (Artist,booktwo.org), Antonio Casilli (Telecom ParisTech), Pascal Mueller (ESRI R&D), Ian Gregory (Lancaster University), Etienne Mineur (Editions Volumiques).