Digital Humanities Summer Institute May 26-30, 2008

Registration is now open. Early registration ends April 01, 2010.

Please view our fees for this year's DHSI

Please choose only one of the following week-long courses. Note that your course runs daily, throughout the week, from 9:30 - 4:00. So, you can take only one course at a time. See the Schedule page for more details.

Anticipated offerings for 2010 include the following:

Introductory

1. 1

   Text Encoding Fundamentals and their Application

   Julia Flanders and Syd Bauman

   For those new to the field, this is an introduction to the theory and practice of encoding electronic texts for the humanities. This workshop is designed for individuals who are contemplating embarking on a text-encoding project, or for those who would like to better understand the philosophy, theory, and practicalities of encoding in XML (Extensible Markup Language) using the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) Guidelines.

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2. 2

   Digitisation Fundamentals and their Application

   Robin Davies and Michael Nixon

   For those new to the digitization field, this offering conveys skills necessary to bring real-world objects -- text, image, sound, video -- into a digital space, and then employ digital tools to further explore and strengthen those objects. Participants are encouraged to incorporate their own interests and materials into the workshops and lab activities of the course, and will build a personalized online document to house their newly digitized media. Assuming only basic computing competency, a hands-on format will quickly introduce participants to digitization project planning and management, data storage requirements, archival standards, and best practices in digitization and distribution, all within in a Web 2.0 framework.

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Intermediate

For those with experience in the materials covered in our introductory curriculum.

1. 3

   Transcribing and Describing Primary Sources

   Matthew Driscoll

   This course focuses on the transcription and description of manuscripts and other types of primary sources. Topics covered will include the encoding of features such as text structure and document layout, scribal errors and omissions, scribal and editorial emendations, the expansion of abbreviations and so on, as well as the provision of metadata using the new modules available in TEI P5 for source description and the encoding of personal and place names.

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2. 4

   Multimedia: Design for Visual, Auditory, and Interactive Electronic Environments

   Aimée Morrison

   This offering highlights design issues as they relate to work with static and non-static image, textual, and auditory materials, as well as interactive media, particularly with regard to how such materials can be leveraged across social media platforms for teaching, research, and promotional purposes. Instruction will be a combination of lecture format and demonstration, with hands-on exercises and a large project component derived from student materials.

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3. 5

   SEASR in Action: Data Analytics for Humanities Scholars

   Loretta Auvil and Boris Capitanu

   This course focuses on introducing participants to The Software Environment for the Advancement of Scholarly Research, SEASR, providing humanities, arts, and social science communities a transformational cyber-infrastructure technology. Participants will have the opportunity to learn about SEASR through a comprehensive set of presentations and hands-on exercises meant to outline the key aspects of the technology and how it can be applied to solve real-world research problems. SEASR eases scholars' access to digital research materials and enhances scholars' use of them through analytics that can uncover hidden information and connections. SEASR fosters collaboration, too, through empowering scholars to share data and research in virtual work environments. SEASR technology is also designed to enable digital humanities developers to design, build, and share software applications that support research and collaboration. Developers can tailor applications both in whole and part to fit scholars' research needs---from changing the visualization landscapes that provide them with views of analytical results, to inserting new analytics that support their linguistic analysis for different time periods or languages, to readjusting entire steps in the work process so that researchers can validate results and alter their queries. The course will incorporate a variety of learning activities ranging from presentations to structured application sessions to designing specialized analyses. Topics will include: Overview of SEASR infrastructure (components, flows, applications), Introduction to text mining tools, and Using and creating Zotero flows. Bring a laptop for hands-on exercises (with admin privileges or install the following Java 1.5+ and Firefox 3.x with these plugins: Zotero 1.0.x and SEASR Analytics for Zotero). See http://seasr.org/.

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4. 6

   Geographical Information Systems in the Digital Humanities

   Ian Gregory

   The course offers an introduction to the theory and practice of using Geographical Information Systems (GIS) to research the past. It will be primarily based on using the ArcGIS software package, the use of Google Earth to disseminate humanities data will also be explored. The course will be relevant to historians, historical geographers, demographers, and others with an interest in the geographies of the past. Quantitative and qualitative approaches will both be explored. We would welcome attendees bringing their own data so that we can explore how to get it into GIS form and what can then be done with it.

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Advanced Consultations

Seminar-style offerings, with instruction provided by a seminar leader and those invited to the institute as keynote speakers and special lecturers -- allowing close contact with all involved in the seminar, and a real chance for consultation, collaboration, and building professional networks..

1. 7

   Issues in Large Project Planning and Management

   Lynne Siemens

   This course will cover the basics of project management from project definition to project review upon completion. Topics such as budget setting and controls, risk management, critical path scheduling, software tools, and related Internet resources will also be discussed. Material will be covered through lectures, discussions, case studies, and presentations. By the end of the course, participants will be able to implement the course concepts and tools in their projects.

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2. 8

   Out-of-the-Box Text Analysis for the Digital Humanities

   David Hoover

   This class will focus on using digital tools to enhance and deepen traditional ways of reading and analyzing texts. We will explore ways of answering questions about authorship, textual style and meaning; we will also raise, and begin to answer, important new questions about texts. The first sessions will provide guided investigations of text corpora for the group using some standard software packages; automated methods that are freely available on the web will also be provided. This will allow participants to continue the work they have begun in the class on their own. In later sessions, participants will use these tools (and perhaps others, depending on their interests) to explore texts of their own choosing. The backgrounds and experiences of the participants will undoubtedly differ, therefore we will aim for an intensely collegial and collaborative atmosphere. We will end by producing, for all Summer Institute attendees, a presentation of the participants' course projects.

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3. 9

   Scaling Digital Humanities, in Discipline and Interdiscipline

   Ray Siemens

   This course considers aspects of theory, method and practice, pedagogy, infrastructure, and policy related to the digital humanities broadly construed, reflecting on and projecting further their disciplinary and interdisciplinary contexts. The format for the first half of the course will be seminar-based, with readings, invited speakers, and focused discussions; the second half of the course may involve a joint project. [Note: This course is offered in conjunction with activities of a scholarly working group, with registration for members of that group to be confirmed first. It is likely there will be some additional spots; should you wish to be placed on a waiting list for those spots, please contact the DHSI coordinator at institut@uvic.ca.]

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