2. About the Course
Museums, maps, network graphs and datasets reflect and
shape the work of scholars in the humanities.This course
provides an overview of the way that literary and historical
scholars have organized, analyzed, and presented their
research to each other and the public.The course includes
theoretical, historical and practical work. It combines
traditional humanities and digital humanities, academic and
public humanities. It includes significant lab work, with
students undertaking projects in their fields of study.
Monday, 3-5:20, in the Digital Scholarship Lab in Rockefeller
Library
Lab session to be determined.
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3. About the Course
How do humanists make sense out of
the material they study? How do they
organize that material to present it to
other scholars, and to the public? How
do digital methods change that?
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4. • Visualization is a place where public
and academic humanities intersect
• Interface design and use as interpretive
act
• Changing role of visual as subject and
tool in the humanities
• Changing role of the digital as subject
and tool in the humanities
• Practical and philosophical
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5. Before and After
• Technical background
• Humanities background
• A project that you want
to explore further
• Appreciation of new
technologies of digital
humanities
• Deeper understanding of
nature of visualization,
interpretation, interface
design
• Some skills in a range of
DH methods
• A DH project
conceptualized
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6. Class Work
• Each week, read *‘d readings and others that seem
interesting; write a short post to the class blog about
a reading or project that you find interesting or
useful.
• Participate online:Twitter hashtag #amst2661, Zotero
group, google doc class notes
• Participate in class discussions
• For one week: Write a 5-10 page paper that
summarizes the arguments in the reading and
discussion for any class of the course.
• Choose a project: preliminary outline due Week 7,
final project due end of term
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7. Labs
Once a week students will meet for a
separate lab on DataVisualization. These
labs are designed to introduce you to the
principles of data visualization (also known as
Computational Information Design) and
allow you to play with several simple tools
for data visualization.
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8. Course Outline
• Part 1: Foundations
• Week 2:Visualization
• Week 3. Introducing Digital
Humanities
• Part 2:Types ofVisualization
• Week 4: Chronologies
• Week 4: Chronologies
• Week 5: Space and Place
• Week 6: Relationships and
Influences, historical and
literary
• Part 3:Visualizing texts, images,
and collections
• Week 7: Collections
• Week 8:Texts and
ImagesReading:
• Part 4: 3-DVisualizations
• Week 9: 3-D Modeling and
Printing
• Week 10: Immersive 3-D
• Part 5: Presentations
• Weeks 11 and 12: Student
presentations
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9. Viewshare
“Creating and manipulating an interface to a
digital collection is fundamentally an
interpretive act.”
“Visualization is thought of as a process for
revealing and illustrating knowledge.“
—Jefferson Bailey and Trevor Owens,
”From Records to Data withViewshare: An
Argument, An Interface, A Design”
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10. Viewshare for class 1
collections data:
go to http://viewshare.org/profiles/profile/GalleryArchives/
click on views – first one in list
explore this view: 4 widgets on left, a choice of views in center
use widgets on left to shape views (cmd to choose more than 1)
look at different views (piechart, timeline, map, etc.)
look at sorting
what interesting questions can you ask out of this?
What makes them interesting?
What can’t you ask of this?
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11. Now log in
Click on “all users” tab
Search for galleryArchives – click on “data”
Choose first data set – “with source” (1st thing in list)
Click Build (far right) to create a new view
Pick one of the canvases (can’t change later)
Probably best to pick the three column view – easiest to play with
Click on Add a view and add list, map, timeline, gallery, whatever
Each of these has settings – look at them, but no need to change now.
Use the green arrows to look at the data
At top – add a widget –
Select several – tag cloud, list, slider, range good.
For each, select what variable to show
Click show preview to see, then save if you want to save it
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12. Things to think about - what historical questions does this help you answer?
Change over time? Kress taste? Taste of various galleries?
Can you talk about change in style? In medium?
How might it serve as a teaching tool? A public teaching tool?
How would you use this in research? Teaching? Public presentation?
What makes this a good or bad interactive?
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13. Uploading this data
Download it from table, use Google Refine to clean up data column
Delete c., date ranges, etc.
Think about how to make medium more useful
Then ask questions about purchase date and date of artwork
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