Definitions & Disciplines

What Is Culture As Data?

In-Class Agenda

• Review slides available here.
• Discuss assigned readings. Focus on the questions of what is culture as data? Where does it come from and who works with it? What does it mean to focus on cultural data versus other disciplinary approaches to data?
• Discuss and define “What is computing in the humanities?” versus “What is culture as data?”
  • Visit What is Digital Humanities? and refresh a few times
  • Also visit Open Syllabus Project
• Start discussing possible group themes and individual project ideas for the semester-long project and visit the Responsible Datasets in Context website here.

Assigned Materials

• Manovich, Lev. “Types of Cultural Data.” In Cultural Analytics. MIT Press, 2020. Available on Canvas. For instructions on how to annotate PDFs, please see our course guide on annotating PDFs.
• Posner, Miriam. “Humanities Data: A Necessary Contradiction – Miriam Posner’s Blog,” June 25, 2015. https://miriamposner.com/blog/humanities-data-a-necessary-contradiction/.

Additional Materials (Not assigned for reading, but useful for context)

• Walsh, Melanie, Sylvia Fernandez, Miriam Posner, Anna Preus, and Amardeep Singh. “Mission.” Responsible Datasets in Context (blog), n.d. https://www.responsible-datasets-in-context.com/mission.html.
• Milligan, Ian. “The Transformation of Historical Research in the Digital Age.” Elements in Historical Theory and Practice, August 2022. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009026055.
• Liao, Zhehui, Maria Antoniak, Inyoung Cheong, et al. “LLMs as Research Tools: A Large Scale Survey of Researchers’ Usage and Perceptions.” arXiv:2411.05025. Preprint, arXiv, October 30, 2024. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2411.05025.

Assignments

• Complete Initial Interest Survey (link available on Canvas) due by August 31 at midnight.