Digital humanities

Maintained by: David J. Birnbaum (djbpitt@gmail.com) Last modified: 2018-03-13T19:57:19+0000

Syllabus: Spring 2018 (2184)

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 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, 01-08	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, 01-10	Types of markup: descriptive, presentational, procedural Introduction to DH eXam Center	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, 01-12	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
Mon, 01-15	Dr. Martin Luther King’s birthday observance (University closed)
Wed, 01-17	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
Fri, 01-19 Add/drop deadline	Test #1 (XML markup, in-class) Relax NG	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 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 300–400 word reflection paper on the experience, outlining your troubles, successes, and questions about Git and Github. Don’t get frustrated if you run into problems (we did, too!); by the end of the semester you’ll have professional-quality Git and GitHub expertise. Read Karl Stolley’s Lo-Fi Manifesto and think about why Lo-Fi matters.
Mon, 01-22	Project guidelines GitHub for project management Markdown	Sample GitHub repo: Sample GitHub repo	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 Post, as a new issue to the course GitHub site, a 300- to 400-word tentative/exploratory project proposal: text, 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.
Wed, 01-24	Relax NG	The Rossetti archive The Blake archive	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? Read everyone else’s project proposals and be prepared on Fri, 01-26 to form project teams.
Fri, 01-26	Relax NG (Pliny) Form project teams, appoint a project owner (typically the proposal author)	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 regex mini-tutorial at http://www.regular-expressions.info/quickstart.html All students should read Github for project management, but if you are the project owner, follow along with and complete the following tasks: Add all members and all instructors as project collaborators (Settings → Collaborators; instructor GitHub userids are amk231, djbpitt, 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.
Mon, 01-29	Regular expressions (Recipe)	Multipurposing	Regex exercise 1 Standing assignments beginning today: Project Issue: (due Wednesdays) Each project team must post at least one project update per week in the form of a GitHub issue on their project repos (at least one posting per team, not per person, although more are welcome) before Wednesday’s class. These postings should be brief 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 on the GitHub project board. Project comment: (due Fridays) 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 Issue status report (comment, question, observation, suggestion, etc.) by the following Friday’s class. 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 Mondays) Each person must read the new postings on the course GitHub site and make at least one thoughtful contribution before Monday’s class each week. 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.
Wed, 01-31	Relax NG: antigone.xml and antigone.rnc Regular expressions: word list	Text analysis and data mining	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) Regex exercise 2 Project comment: Visit the GitHub repos for other class projects, read their main page (which is their README.md file), and post a brief comment about their proposed research.
Fri, 02-02	Digitization	The Text Encoding Initiative (TEI)	Regex exercise 3 Read one chapter from the text body of the TEI guidelines (except Chapter 2, TEI header, which is assigned separately later) and submit a 300- to 400-word response paper Class discussion post
Mon, 02-05	The Web, part 1: HTML, XHTML, HTML5, CSS, Unicode	Metadata	Read HTML basics Read Putting content on line 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, information about the document that is not part of the document itself. How will you handle metadata (what type of information, how will be it be encoded or represented) in your project? Utilize the DH eXam Center as a study tool before the Relax NG test on Fri, 02-09 Project Issue
Wed, 02-07	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 Musicality of phrase	Read Introduction to cascading stylesheets (CSS) 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 at http://site.ebrary.com.pitt.idm.oclc.org/lib/pitt/detail.action?docID=10684890) 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. 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 Project comment
Fri, 02-09	The Web: review		Test #2 (Relax NG) Read Learn CSS layout 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. Explore Orbis, designed to explore the geography of the ancient Roman world with attention to more than distance. Submit a 300- to 400-word response paper addressing both research and design aspects of the site. Class discussion post
Mon, 02-12	Geographic information systems (GIS)	Links TBA	Read Introduction to Javascript Project Issue
Wed, 02-14	Javascript: a drive-by lesson Candidates example	Sample projects: Letter (from Digital Mitford: The Mary Russell Mitford archive) Galician-Portuguese Lyric Waka of the Nara period	Read both Statistical methods for studying literature using R and 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 to one of them. The R reading is a tutorial; you don’t have to do the activities, although you might find it more interesting if you do. R and topic modeling are tools that operate on plain text to provide descriptive statistical information. How might they play a role in your project? Project comment
Fri, 02-16	XPath: overview, paths, axes (fables.xml)	Sample projects: Politics and language of Turkish rock music The nonsensical Seuss	Test #3: Regex Read What can XPath do for me? XPath exercise 1 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
Mon, 02-19	XPath: predicates Namespaces		Read The XPath functions we use most XPath exercise 2 Project Issue
Wed, 02-21	XPath: predicates and functions	Digital humanities associations and conferences	XPath exercise 3 Read one chapter from Designing web interfaces: Principles and patterns for rich interactions (available on-line through the Pitt library) by Monday and submit a one-page response paper. (If appropriate, see the note about accessing articles, electronic books, and electronic journals from off campus.) Bring Michael Kay book to class on Fri, 02-23 Project comment
Fri, 02-23	XPath: predicates and functions Looking stuff up: XPath functions and operators in Michael Kay	The XML family of standards	XPath exercise 4 Class discussion post
Mon, 02-26	XSLT and XPath overview		Read XSLT basics XSLT exercise 1 Project Issue Utilize the DH eXam Center as a study tool before the XPath test on Fri, 02-24
Wed, 02-28	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 Project comment
Fri, 03-02	XSLT program structure and design XSLT push and pull Take-home midterm instructions		Read Attribute value templates XSLT exercise 3 Test #4 (XPath) Bring Michael Kay book to class on Mon, 03-12 Class discussion post due Mon, 03-12 Take-home midterm will be due Mon, 03-19
Mon, 03-05 Wed, 03-07 Fri, 03-09	Spring recess
Mon, 03-12	XSLT Looking stuff up: XSLT elements in Michael Kay		Read Modal XSLT XSLT exercise 4 Project Issue
Wed, 03-14	XSLT		XSLT exercise 5 Read about `<xsl:analyze-string>` and the XPath `tokenize()` function in Michael Kay and Using `<xsl:analyze-string>` Project comment
Fri, 03-16 Withdrawal deadline	XSLT	Encoding and representing musical information	XSLT exercise 6 Class discussion post
Mon, 03-19	XSLT Midterm due		Read Developing an XSLT stylesheet Project Issue
Wed, 03-21	XSLT review		Utilize the DH eXam Center as a study tool before the XSLT test on Fri, 03-23 Project comment
Fri, 03-23	SVG	Sample project: Twilight Princess	Test #5 (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 Class discussion post
Mon, 03-26	Visit from UHC Dean Brian Primack 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) 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? Project Issue
Wed, 03-28	Guest lecture by Patrick Juola (Duquesne University) on stylometry	Stylometry	Read The hermeneutics of screwing around or In praise of pattern and submit a 300- to 400-word response paper. 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)? Project comment
Fri, 03-30	SVG	Sample project: Exploring Homestuck	SVG exercise 3 300- to 400-word response paper to Zelda, Rap, or Homestuck that focuses on visualization. Are the graphic representations suitable for the data? If yes, why? If no, what could they have used instead? Class discussion post
Mon, 04-02	XQuery	Sample project: Print media usage of marked features in Serbian and Croatian	Read Getting started with XQuery Project Issue
Wed, 04-04	XQuery and databases		Read XQuery tutorial at http://www.stylusstudio.com/xquery_primer.html XQuery exercise 1 Utilize the DH eXam Center as a study tool before the SVG test on Fri, 04-06 Project comment
Fri, 04-06	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 Class discussion post Test #6 (SVG)
Mon, 04-09	XQuery		XQuery exercise 3 Read Schematron tutorial Project Issue Utilize the DH eXam Center as a study tool before the XQuery test on Fri, 04-13
Wed, 04-11	Schematron		XQuery exercise 4 is the same as XQuery exercise 3, except that you should choose a different text (from a different project) and do something different with it Project comment
Fri, 04-13	Schematron		Test #7 (XQuery) Schematron exercise 1 Class discussion post
Mon, 04-16	Schematron		Schematron exercise 2 Project Issue (last one)
Wed, 04-18	Project workshop		Utilize the DH eXam Center as a study tool before the Schematron test on Fri, 04-20 Project comment (last one)
Fri, 04-20 Last day of class	Project presentations		Test #8 (Schematron), due Mon, 04-23 Class discussion post (last one; please take this opportunity to reflect on, make suggestions for, and bounce ideas off your classmates on their project issues boards based on their presentations)
Mon, 04-23, 10:00a.m.	Schematron test due
Fri, 04-27, 11:59p.m.	Projects due