Digital humanities

Maintained by: David J. Birnbaum (djbpitt@gmail.com) Last modified: 2019-02-16T15:44:29+0000

Syllabus: Spring 2019 (2194)

Getting started

Download and install the following software on your home computer (Windows, Mac, or Linux).

All users:

The University has purchased a site license for the <oXygen/> XML editor and IDE (integrated development enviroment). The software is installed in all CSSD labs, and the license also permits students enrolled in the course (and only those students) to install the software on their home computers (for course-related use only). The license key needed to register <oXygen/> on your personal computer is available in the Announcements section of CourseWeb. Please do not share the license key with anyone not enrolled in our course.
This course uses Github for project management and class discussion. Create an account (choose the free options) at the preceding link and download and install the GitHub client software for your operating system (Windows, MacOS, or Linux) on your own machine. We’ll explain how to use Git and GitHub later.

Windows users:

Download and install SSH Secure Shell Client 3.2.9 (free).
Launch SSH Secure Shell and open Edit, then Settings, then navigate in the outline through Global settings, then File transfer, and then Advanced. In the Upload section of the Advanced page, set the Default file permissions to 664 and the Default directory permissions to 775 and click OK to save the changes. You only have to do this once, after which SSH Secure Shell will remember the configuration settings.

Mac users:

Download and install Fetch (students may obtain free licenses at http://fetchsoftworks.com/fetch/free).

Linux users:

Nothing; all necessary tools are preinstalled.

Date	Coding	Scholarship	Homework and tests due next time
Mon, 01-07	Introduction to XML: hierarchy, well-formedness, elements and attributes The <oXygen/> XML editor and IDE Gazpacho recipe	What is Digital Humanities?	If you haven’t done so already, install <oXygen/> on your personal computer, and described in the Getting started list at the top of the page Read An even gentler introduction to XML XML exercise 1: Copy the text of one letter by either Oscar Wilde or Anton Chekhov and mark it up in XML using <oXygen/>, employing whatever markup you consider appropriate. In this and all other assignments, follow our file-naming conventions.
Wed, 01-09	Types of markup: descriptive, presentational, procedural	Sample projects: Exploring speech in Russian fairy tales Galician-Portuguese secular lyric: philology and historical linguistics	No prior programming experience? You’re in good company! Read Can humanities undergrads learn to code? by two former undergraduate instructors in this course. XML exercise 2: Mark up a text of your choice (any genre, manageable size, foreign languages welcome) Write a 300- to 400-word response paper to either Exploring speech in Russian fairy tales or Galician-Portuguese secular lyric: philology and historical linguistics, discussing the site’s 1) utility as a tool for exploring the text, 2) identification and treatment of specific research questions, and 3) effectiveness of overall user experience (design, interface, interaction, etc.)
Fri, 01-11	Document analysis: Kubla Khan	Sample projects: Aesop’s fables My immortal Karolina Pavlova	XML exercise 3: Mark up a different text of your choice (any genre; manageable but reasonable size; foreign languages welcome) 300- to 400-word response paper to Aesop’s fables or My immortal, following the same guidelines as for the previous response paper Read Karl Stolley’s Lo-Fi Manifesto and think about why Lo-Fi matters.
Mon, 01-14	XML review	Sample projects: Perseus project Melville’s marginalia	300- to 400-word response paper to Perseus or Melville, concentrating on the user experience (UX). What sorts of research does the site support, and how effectively does it provide that support? Read Introduction to Relax NG Prepare for the XML in-class test on Wed, 01-16
Wed, 01-16	Test #1 (XML markup, in-class) Relax NG: Pasta recipe		Relax NG exercise 1: Write a Relax NG schema for one of the XML documents you created for an earlier assignment (XML exercise 1, 2, or 3) and upload both your XML and your schema file
Fri, 01-18 Add/drop deadline	Relax NG	Sample projects: The Rossetti archive The Blake archive	Relax NG exercise 2: Choose a small text, perform document analysis, write a schema, mark up the text according to the schema, and upload both your XML and your schema file Read and follow along with Rebecca Parker’s Guide to Git shell, which will likely be your first experience at the command line. Submit a 300- to 400-word reflection paper on the experience, outlining your troubles, successes, and questions about Git and Github. Don’t be disheartened if you run into problems (we did, too!); by the end of the semester you’ll have professional-quality Git and GitHub expertise.
Mon, 01-21	Dr. Martin Luther King’s birthday observance (University closed)
Wed, 01-23	Project guidelines GitHub for project management Markdown	Sample GitHub repo: dh-course	300- to 400-word response paper to Blake or Rossetti. These are primarily archive or portal sites, designed to provide enhanced access to materials, rather than to support specific research questions. How well do they achieve their goals? Post, as a new issue to the course GitHub site, a 300- to 400-word tentative/exploratory project proposal: text (which must be free of copyright restrictions), approach, research question, and (if known) possible participants (use the Label feature on GitHub to label it as a project proposal). Note the Styling with Markdown is supported link at the bottom of the Issues interface, where you can look up Markdown formatting (it’s fine to keep it simple for now). All course projects must be undertaken by teams of two or more persons, but this initial, exploratory proposal is an individual assignment.
Fri, 01-25 Extended drop deadline	Relax NG (Pliny)	Text analysis and data mining Sample projects: The UNIT dating crisis Names of Crime and punishment	Relax NG exercise 3: Choose a small text of a different type or genre than last time, perform document analysis, write a schema, mark up the text according to the schema, and upload both your XML and your schema file Read everyone else’s project proposals and be prepared on Mon, 01-28 to form project teams. Read regex mini-tutorial at http://www.regular-expressions.info/quickstart.html
Mon, 01-28	Form project teams, appoint a project owner (typically the proposal author) Regular expressions (Recipe)	Multipurposing	Regex exercise 1 Read Regex tips (ignore the XSLT section for now, and read the rest to acquaint yourself with what’s there, but don’t try to memorize it all at once) All students should read GitHub for project management and, if you are the project owner, follow along with and complete the following tasks: Add all project team members and instructors as project collaborators (Settings → Collaborators; instructor GitHub usernames are danakaufhold, djbpitt, enb34, gabikeane, and zme1) Add a descriptive README.md file to your repo. Create an issue on our course GitHub site that describes and links to your project repo.
Wed, 01-30	Relax NG: antigone.xml and antigone.rnc Regular expressions: word list	Text analysis and data mining	Regex exercise 2 Read the TEI header section (Chapter 2) of TEI P5 and submit a 300- to 400-word response paper. The TEI header is about metadata, that is, information about the document. How will you handle metadata (what type of information, how will be it be encoded or represented) in your project? Standing assignments beginning today: Project Update: (due Fridays) Each project team must post and label at least one project update each week as a New Issue in their project repo (at least one posting per team, not per person, although more are welcome) before Friday’s class. These postings should be brief but informative status reports about your projects: what you accomplished in the preceding week, what you learned, where you got stuck, etc., as well was what you plan to do in the upcoming week. Reports should address both the state of the project in general and the specific weekly contributions of each of the individual team members. All postings should reference (and, where appropriate, link into) content from the team's GitHub repository. Project Comment: (due Mondays) Each person must read all of the new project Issue postings and responses each week and post at least one thoughtful Project Comment per week in response to another team’s weekly Project Update status report (comment, question, observation, suggestion, etc.) by the following Monday’s class. To post your Project Comment, navigate to the update posted by the other team in their project repo (not in our general course repo). Click on the issue, and you’ll be able to post a new comment so that it will be attached to the issue itself. These responses can be brief, but they should be thoughtful, something more than nice job! or very interesting! You might make a suggestion, offer a critique, ask (or answer) a question, discuss how something in someone else’s blog posting gives you an idea of something to do on your own project, report on a resource you discovered that might be useful for the other team, etc. Class Discussion Post: (due Wednesdays) Each person must review all new postings on the course GitHub site and make at least one thoughtful contribution before Wednesday’s class each week, either in the form of an Issue response or the creation of a new Issue. Ask a question, answer a question, make a suggestion, pass along a link to a site that showed you something you could use in your project (and explain what it is and why it was useful), etc. On a few occasions during the semester, you will be asked instead to participate in a single-issue discussion on GitHub, which will fulfill this requirement for that week. These single-issue discussions must reflect thoughtful and original consideration of both the subject at hand and responses by other students. Project Updates and Project Comments go on the project-specific repo. Class Disccusion Posts go on our course GitHub site.
Fri, 02-01	Digitization The Declaration of Independence	The Text Encoding Initiative Toscana raw XML	TEI exercise 1 Read HTML basics Read Putting content on line Project Comment: Visit the GitHub repos for all of the other class projects (the project owners will have posted links at course GitHub site ), read each project description (the README.md files), and post a brief comment about one of the research proposals as a new Issue in their repo.
Mon, 02-04	Obdurodon accounts The Web, part 1: HTML, XHTML, HTML5, CSS, Unicode	Metadata	Read Introduction to cascading stylesheets (CSS) HTML/CSS exercise 1: Create and upload your first HTML and CSS pages to Obdurodon (note the additional instructions about formatting, naming, and uploading your files); focus on style Single-Issue Class Discussion Post: Since your first encounter with the command line and GitHub, how has your understanding of these technologies changed? What obstacles still affect your understanding of its use? On GitHub specifically, which features stand out as useful tools for your project team? How would you plan to implement them? Which features do you want to learn more about?
Wed, 02-06	Guest lecture by Shea Higgins (UHC) on web design and user experience (UX)	Web design	Read Learn CSS layout Read one chapter from either Part I or Part II of Visual usability: principles and practices for designing digital applications by Tania Schlatter and Deborah Levinson (available on-line through the Pitt library) and submit a 300- to 400-word response paper. Concentrate in your response paper on how you might apply what you’ve read to the design of your own project site. Prepare for the Relax NG test on Fri, 02-08 Project Update
Fri, 02-08	The Web, part 2: SSI, JavaScript, PHP, database servers	Human factors and interface design Sample projects: A linguistic analysis of Game of thrones: A song of ice and fire Member Activity in the Lega Toscana	Test #2 (Relax NG) Read Introduction to JavaScript Project Comment
Mon, 02-11	JavaScript: a drive-by lesson Candidates example	Sample projects: Letter (from Digital Mitford: The Mary Russell Mitford archive) Galician-Portuguese lyric	HTML/CSS exercise 2: Enhance and expand your HTML web page and associated CSS from the last assignment (focus this time on structural elements) and upload them as new files with new names (see the additional instructions about formatting, naming, and uploading your files). Do not overwrite your files from the first HTML assignment. Single-Issue Class Discussion Post: Explore Orbis, designed to explore the economic geography of the ancient Roman world, with attention to more than distance. Contribute to the GitHub Issue in response to both research and design aspects of the site.
Wed, 02-13	Geographic information systems (GIS)	Leaflet Stanford Spacial history project	Read Mining the Dispatch: introduction (the whole page under the Introduction tab; not just the few paragraphs headed Introduction) and submit a 300- to 400-word response paper. Topic modeling is a tool that operates on plain text to provide descriptive statistical information. How might it play a role in your project? Prepare for the Regex test on Fri, 02-15 Project Update
Fri, 02-15	XPath: overview, paths, axes (fables.xml)		Test #3: Regex Read What can XPath do for me? XPath exercise 1 Project Comment
Mon, 02-18	XPath: predicates Namespaces	Sample projects: Politics and language of Turkish rock music The nonsensical Seuss	Read The XPath functions we use most XPath exercise 2 Review the Turkish project or the Seuss project, with particular attention to the overall site organization, and submit a 300- to 400-word response paper Class Discussion Post
Wed, 02-20	XPath: predicates and functions	Digital Humanities associations and conferences	XPath exercise 3 Bring Michael Kay book to class on Fri, 02-22 Project Update
Fri, 02-22	XPath: predicates and functions Looking stuff up: XPath functions and operators in Michael Kay	The XML family of standards	XPath exercise 4 Read Schematron tutorial Project Comment
Mon, 02-25	Schematron		Schematron exercise 1 Read one chapter from Designing web interfaces: principles and patterns for rich interactions (available on-line through the Pitt library) and submit a one-page response paper. (If appropriate, see the note about accessing articles, electronic books, and electronic journals from off campus.) Class Discussion Post
Wed, 02-27	Schematron		Prepare for the XPath test on Fri, 03-01 Schematron exercise 2 Project Update
Fri, 03-01	Schematron		Test #4 (XPath) Read XSLT basics Project Comment
Mon, 03-04	XSLT and XPath Overview		XSLT exercise 1 Class Discussion Post
Wed, 03-06	XSLT templates XPaths and XPath patterns	The digital workstation	Read Thinking in algorithms XSLT exercise 2 Read XSLT, part 2: conditionals and push and pull Prepare for the Schematron test on Fri, 03-08 Project Update
Fri, 03-08 Withdrawal deadline	XSLT program structure and design XSLT push and pull Take-home midterm instructions		Test #5 (Schematron) due Mon, 03-18 Read Attribute value templates XSLT exercise 3 Bring Michael Kay book to class on Mon, 03-18 Take-home midterm will be due Mon, 03-25 Project Comment due Mon, 03-18
Mon, 03-11 Wed, 03-13 Fri, 03-15	Spring recess
Mon, 03-18	XSLT Looking stuff up: XSLT elements in Michael Kay		Read Modal XSLT XSLT exercise 4 Class Discussion Post
Wed, 03-20	XSLT	The digital workstation	XSLT exercise 5 Read about `<xsl:analyze-string>` and the XPath `tokenize()` function in Michael Kay and Using `<xsl:analyze-string>` Read Spectacular intersections of place in Southey’s Thalaba the destroyer and submit a 300 to 400-word response paper. In your response, reflect on the network analysis represented here and how it works, what patterns it might be revealing, and what questions or ideas it raises for you regarding digital methods to analyze texts. Project Update
Fri, 03-22	Guest lecture by Elisa Beshero-Bonder (Pitt Greensburg) on social networks	Social networks	XSLT exercise 6 Project Comment
Mon, 03-25	Midterm due XSLT Review		Read Developing an XSLT stylesheet Read José Nilo G. Binongo’s Who wrote the 15th book of Oz? An application of multivariate analysis to authorship attribution and submit a 300- to 400-word response paper. Learning about stylometric analysis helps many people to broaden their understanding of how writing styles can be distinctive. What are the potential benefits and the limitations of the methods? Class Discussion Post
Wed, 03-27	Guest lecture by Patrick Juola (Duquesne University) on stylometry	Stylometry	Prepare for the XSLT test on Fri, 03-29 Project Update
Fri, 03-29	SVG	Sample project: Twilight Princess	Test #6 (XSLT) Work through the w3schools SVG tutorial to complete the SVG basic and SVG shapes pages. Filters, gradients, examples, and reference are optional. SVG exercise 1 Project Comment
Mon, 04-01	SVG	Sample project: The Milton project (see especially War, creation, and ego)	SVG exercise 2 (Remember that you should be uploading the XSLT stylesheet that you used to transform your document, not the raw SVG) Single-Issue Class Discussion Post: Read The hermeneutics of screwing around or In praise of pattern and contribute to the Discussion Issue. These essays describe how research methods in a digital environment may differ from research methods elsewhere in humanities scholarship. In what ways are Steve’s arguments persuasive (or not)?
Wed, 04-03	SVG	Sample project: La Lega Toscana di Protezione (key members and anglicisms)	SVG exercise 3 300- to 400-word response paper to Zelda, Rap, or Lega that focuses on visualization. Are the graphic representations suitable for the data? If yes, why? If not, what could they have used instead? Project Update
Fri, 04-05	XQuery	Sample project: Print media usage of marked features in Serbian and Croatian	Read Getting started with XQuery Project Comment
Mon, 04-08	XQuery and databases		Read XQuery tutorial at http://www.stylusstudio.com/xquery_primer.html XQuery exercise 1 Class Discussion Post
Wed, 04-10	Comparing XQuery and XSLT	Sample project: Comparing Blake’s Innocence and Experience	Read XQuery tutorial on FLWOR expressions at http://www.stylusstudio.com/xquery_flwor.html XQuery exercise 2 Prepare for the SVG test on Fri, 04-12 Project Update
Fri, 04-12	XQuery		Test #7 (SVG) XQuery exercise 3 Project Comment
Mon, 04-15	Project Workshop		Class Discussion Post (last one)
Wed, 04-17	Project presentations		Prepare for the XQuery test on Fri, 04-19 Project Update (last one)
Fri, 04-19 Last day of class	Project presentations		Test #8 (XQuery), due Mon, 04-22 Project Comment (last one; please take this opportunity to reflect on, make suggestions for, and bounce ideas off your classmates on their project Issue Boards based on their presentations)
Mon, 04-22, 10:00a.m.	XQuery test due
Fri, 04-26, 11:59p.m.	Projects due