Goals: get UVM students and faculty exploring applied HC, including e-texts (and understanding why), get UVM in HC loop (IATH without the $$?)

A Humanities Computing Curriculum

HUM 095A: Intro to - a survey course that looks at how humanities computing is currently defined, what people who do "humanities computing" are actually doing, what projects are out there, what works, what doesn't, and what happens to humanities scholarship when IT is added to the mix

HUM 095B: Intro to Applied HC - Doing the computing in humanities computing. Current technologies, word processing, desktop publishing, web publishing, structured documents, text analysis. How do you do it? What impact does "how" have on "what"? (The "CS-2" of HC)

HUM 195: Texts and Contexts in HC - (a take on the ENG course of the same name), closest to the course currently under construction at http://www.uvm.edu/~hag/etext

HUM 295A: HC and Text Analysis - high granularity with multiple tools. Directed towards English majors. How do deep encoding and text analysis differ? How do they complement one another? Does quantitative analysis change the questions we ask of literature? Is that a good thing? Projects will focus on taking a text of the students choice and approaching it through both methods, then asking how each impacts "how we know what we know."

HUM 295B: HC and Historic Documents - the trick with this one is melding the actual: how do we preserve the historic record; documentary editions: their creation and role; what works now; how do we create something now that will work later; MEP extension of TEI; what about non-text, non-paper materials; with the theoretical: what is a historical document; how do current e-docs fit with modern historic practices; how does late 20th century historiography shape the IT choices we are making in regards to how we view and preserve historic documents.


A CTL Lunch/Tea Series

1) E-texts: what's good, what's bad, how do you know?
The MLA recommended Text Encoding Initiative's scholarly electronic texts, the Gutenburg Project of online public domain texts, handheld e-book readers, online journals, and thousands of web-based projects: the choice is bewildering. Can you use electronic texts in your courses? Will your students be happy? Or is assigning an e-text unleashing a nightmare for all? This session will look at the useable and the useless in current e-texts and explore ways to take advantage of the good while avoiding the bad.

2) Humanities Computing: What is it, who is it?
A quick search on the web turns up thousands of uses of the phrase "Humanities Computing." But what is it? Who's doing it and, more importantly, who's defining it? This session will look at current best practices in HC and explore ways UVM might benefit from and contribute to this developing discipline.

Proposed Dates/Times
Tuesday, 2/22; 2/29; 3/7: 3:30-4:30
Wednesday, 2/23, 3/1, 3/8: 12:15-1:15


(Previous iterations/drafts)
1) E-texts: what's good, what's bad, how do you know?
Michael Hart started the Gutenburg Project to get large quantities of public domain texts online. But many humanities scholars point out that these texts, while perhaps sufficient for general reading, are not good for scholarly work because they are not proofed, not always based on good editions, and contain no apparatus for printing or searching. Attempting to stake a claim in the ebook market, companies like Rocket Books, Librius, and MicroSoft are developing downloadable electronic texts that can be purchased, then stored and read on a PC or special device. In the Humanities Computing world, the Text Encoding Initiative has been developing the scholarly apparatus needed to both ensure that electronic texts are useable and shareable, and that they are appropriately documented so that they can be integrated into current library systems. And then there are the movements towards workable online journals. Meanwhile, faculty and students are left with a bewildering array of choices.

2) Using e-texts in class: what works, what doesn't
So you decide to integrate electronic texts into your course. You find an online copy of a work you've assigned and tell the students to use it rather than purchasing the paper variety. Will it work? Will your students be happy? Or have you just unleashed a nightmare for all? This session will look at the useable and the useless in current e-texts and explore ways to take advantage of the good while avoiding the bad.

3) What is Humanities Computing and Who is Doing It
A quick search on the web turns up thousands of uses of the phrase "Humanities COmputing." But what is it? Who's doing it and who's defining it? This session will look at Current Best Practices in HC and explore ways UVMers might benefit from and contribute to this developing discipline.

4) Why the Web Fails
The web a failure? By most measurements it's been a roaring success. Yet for scholars, especially those in the humanities who work with documents, web offerings leave quite a bit to be desired. In this session we'll find out why the MLA has to say about electronic editions, why they have chosen the direction they have, what are some of the marks of a "scholarly" document, how they are created, and what we can do with them. (More specific than #1 or #2 above--we'll actually look at some markup and talk about document analysis.

5) Counting the Text
(well, first I'd have to get some updated tools and do a bit more. The only thing I have right now is an old copy of TACTWeb and a couple of docs. Primarily this would be a look at quantitative text analysis, what is it, how does it work, what kinds of questiuons is it good for, and how does framing questions quantitatively change how we look at literature)


An "Outside Speaker" Series (none of whom are librarians- content and theory scholars)

1) Allen Renear of Brown's Scholarly Technology Group, particularly on his fun theoretical stuff
(http://www.stg.brown.edu/stg/staff_pages/allen.html)

2) Willard McCarty on "What is HC" and on deep encoding (Ovid)

3) Stuart Lee - web and TEI-texts for teaching literature

4) Julia Flanders and the WWP folks: creating a big, rich textbase

5) Ken and Mary - non-techie scholars and how they leverage grad students to do some great history/lit stuff

6) C. Michael -- Mr. TEI, Mr. XML - nah, he's too expensive for us now!

7) Jeri McGann - Rosetti, or just about anyone from IATH projects

8) Anyone from IATH's series
(http://www.iath.virginia.edu/hcs/people.html)


Fun with DMDL

1) Yet another faculty web site series? Are they doing why or just what?

2) TEI (XML flavor) for the novice - a how to as well as why to, directed at faculty who want their students to try it. Comes with a promise of working with students

3) XML how to. Not necessarily directed at faculty. Would probably be too well attended but by the wrong people--scratch that one.


The HC web site

1) What is HC, who is defining it

2) Calendar of HC offerings

3) What's Happening in HC at UVM, outside UVM

4) Generally useful site links

5) How to's

 


hope.greenberg@uvm.edu, cf. 1999_activities.html, Last update: 1 December 1999
http://www.uvm.edu/~hag, http://etext.uvm.edu