The remainder of your grade will be determined through a semester-long research project. The goal of this project is to expose you to how computing in the humanities research is created and evaluated. Working in groups OR individually you will select a humanities research question and relevant datasets. Example projects include exploring character networks in a set of novels to understand gender disparities, or correlation analysis of place names in historical documents to analyze spatial imaginings. Using your skills in Python and your knowledge from the course weekly materials, you will experience the lifecycle of a project, from planning the project and collecting data to analyzing and communicating your results, and finally reflecting and outlining future directions.

Initial Topic Selection 5% 💡

FEBRUARY 8, 2022

DUE FEBRUARY 10, 2022

How to select an initial topic is difficult since most of you likely have little experience with humanities. We will be discussing the best practices for this in our second meeting of our first week.

The first step in the project is to select an initial topic that you will be researching and working on for the rest of the semester. Choosing a topic is tricky since you are just starting to learn about the types of questions and projects that are popular in the humanities. For more examples you can look at the syllabus, but rather than try and fit a second degree in, don’t worry so much about whether your topic is really Humanities™️ enough or not. Instead, try and find a topic that interests you about some area of culture or society (think music, literature, arts, history, community dynamics, etc…), and then think of ways you might study it using computing.

Computing here could mean finding or creating data to explore the relationship between certain phenomena (music genre and streaming for example) or it could mean creating a tool or website to help users explore a topic (like a museum’s collections). The choice is really up to you and your interests.

For submitting you initial project topic, please follow the format below and paste the topic into our #final-project channel on discord. You are also welcome to work in groups, and so if you are interested in working with others, please indicate that when you post your topic. If you have already formed a group, then only one of you needs to post your topic in discord and just be sure to @ the other members of your group. There is no limit on the number of people in a group.

Example Initial Submission Format:

For my final project, I want to explore the [insert topic or question here – could be relationship between X and Y or building Z website]. I think this topic is interesting for the following reasons: [insert reasons here, could be that I really like X topic or I’ve always wanted to learn more about Y topic]. I plan to work [either individually or am open to working in groups] to explore this topic.

Project Proposal 10% 🎨

DUE MARCH 8, 2022

For more detailed information, see the project proposal guidelines.

Your initial project proposal should be a combination of outlining your proposed focus for the final project (what are your initial project goals, what are you trying to create or study, and why this topic?), outlining the work you propose to undertake (how will you tackle this project and why have you organized it as such? What methods and data do you plan to use and how will you communicate your results?), and explaining your initial goals of this project in relation to the readings and topics we have discussed in class (what are the scholarly goals of your project and how would you situate your project in relation to research in computing in the humanities? Who are your audiences and what scholarship does your research draw upon and further?).

The proposal should be 2-3 pages double spaced and can contain tables, graphs, bullet points, or any other format that will help you outline the goals and plan for this project. Ultimately, this proposal should lay the groundwork for your project and will serve as your blueprint for the next few weeks of research.

Project Update Presentation 5% 🔁

DUE APRIL 7, 2022SEE UPDATED GUIDELINES HERE

You will demo your project and explain how much you have completed from the initial proposal. Then through feedback from the instructor and your peers, you will assess how much progress you have made and whether you need to change directions or revise any goals. You should be prepared to speak for 5-10 minutes and are welcome to create slides, as well as show code or figures (though these are not required).

Final Presentation 15% 🎉

DUE MAY 3, 2022 DUE MAY 10, 2022 -- SEE UPDATED GUIDELINES HERE

Detailed Guidelines Forthcoming

In 10-15 minutes, introduce your project through summarizing your initial proposal (including your initial research questions, planned datasets, and methods). Then you’ll demonstrate your initial data collection or study through giving us a brief biography of your dataset and methodologies. Outline what you plan to do next in the project and whether you need to change course from what you outlined in your initial proposal.

Final Project 15% 🌟

DUE MAY 13, 2022 DUE MAY 16, 2022 -- SEE UPDATED GUIDELINES HERE

Detailed Guidelines Forthcoming

This final project is intended to provide a space to reflect on the process of building your final project, as well as your intellectual forays into computing in the humanities. Shifting from the “so what” question of the demo presentation, your main question here is ‘how’. How have you worked on this project over the course of the semester? How have your ideas about data and working with data changed (or not) in this course? How have our readings and example projects inspired your final project? How would you build this project now knowing what you do know? How much of your initial project proposal were you able to complete? How well were you able to estimate the work involved for this project? How likely are you to continue working on this project and how might you change course in the future?

In academia, we often like to focus on the why, and it is important here as well. But most of this course has been focused on exploring how computing in the humanities work happens and especially if that work involves ‘data’ in some form or another. To help support this assessment of your process, you should plan to include any relevant datasets, documentation, or code that you developed as either part of your paper (where you might detail aspects of these objects through a combination of figures and explanatory text) or as an appendix which you reference in your paper. While you might not have achieved everything you initially set out in your proposal (and you should directly address this rather than paper over it), the goal of this paper is not to judge whether you achieved certain milestones. The goal is to articulate how the act of making, curating, collecting, and interpreting data has shaped both your project and your knowledge of what it means to do computing in the humanities.

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