Upcoming Courses, Spring 2018
Looking for classes to take this spring? Here are some exciting DH-related courses that will be offered!
If you are teaching a course connected to DH and would like it included, please email the DHLab.
Digital Humanities Apps
CPSC 276
Benedict Brown
Introduction to applications of computer and data science in the humanities, including web technologies, visualization, and database design. Students work in teams to develop a variety of applications proposed by faculty and staff from the Digital Humanities Lab, the Institute for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage, and the Computer Science department.
Prerequisite: CPSC 110, CPSC 112, equivalent programming experience, or permission of the instructor.
American Public Sculpture
WGSS 815
Laura Wexler, DH Fellow Amanda Chemeche
Building on a new partnership between the Smithsonian Institution and Yale University, this course offers a broad-based and multidisciplinary exploration of public sculpture in the United States. Course work includes field trips and digital projects as well as readings in the scholarship of public memory, cultural heritage, conservation, and aesthetics.
Spatial Humanities and Social Justice
WGSS 717
Angel Nieves, DH Fellow Joseph Plaster
Spatial humanities relies upon geospatial technologies and methods to explore the relationship of space (physical, imagined, or otherwise) to human behavior. It bridges disciplines and may take into account African American studies, history, archaeology, literary studies, women’s studies, queer studies, ethnic studies, and cultural studies, to name but a few. This seminar introduces students to the theory and methods of the spatial humanities, while examining the tools, theories, and methodologies of social justice. Engaging with spatial theory and applying technical methodologies, students develop an understanding of the research questions and tools available in this new field of scholarly and applied inquiry while grappling with issues of social justice. Students engage throughout the term in project-based learning grounded in spatial, intersectional, and critical race theories.
Performing American Literature
AMST 475 and 775 / ENGL 438 and 838
Wai Chee Dimock
A broad selection of short stories, poems, and novels, accompanied by class performances, culminating in a term project with a significant writing component. “Performance" includes a wide range of activities including: staging; making digital films and videos; building websites; game design; and creative use of social media. Readings include poetry by Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Yusef Komunyakaa, and Claudia Rankine; fiction by Herman Melville, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Junot Diaz.
Runaways, Rebels, Wenches, Rogues
HIST 112J
Joseph Yannielli
This seminar examines the history of fugitive slaves and other kinds of freedom-seeking migrants. It pays special attention to new digital tools and methodologies and their impact on the study of the past. Although focused on enslaved laborers in early America, students look at a broad range of runaways in comparative perspective. Readings are a mix of academic texts, original sources, and websites. The major goal of the course is to produce a public, digital database of runaway advertisements for use by students and researchers.
Digital Media in Performance
THST 376
Nathan Roberts
Practical and theoretical innovations in contemporary theater and performance brought about by new technologies and forms of information exchange in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Exploration of how the live body on stage is reconfigured and reimagined through technological intervention. Priority to majors in Theater Studies, in Art, and in Computing and the Arts. Students must preregister during the reading period of the preceding term.
Advanced Readings in Japanese Docs
HIST 881
Daniel Botsman
The class provides students who already have some grounding in Japanese paleography and sōrō-bun texts from the Tokugawa period with the opportunity to further develop their reading skills using original materials from Yale collections. This term we focus primarily on the “Kyōto Komonjo” collection at the Beinecke Library, which contains documents pertaining to the urban history of Kyoto in the early nineteenth century. Students also develop a website to make this material accessible to students and scholars elsewhere and explore the uses of a variety of digital humanities tools for facilitating documentary research.
The Russian Short Story
LITR 312 / RUSS 391
John MacKay
Examination of the hugely important, but often ignored short story form, primarily in Russia from the early nineteenth-century onward. Reading of important works by major artists of the short story like Karamzin, Turgenev, Pisemsky, Tolstoy, Leskov, Chekhov, Bunin, Zaitsev, Gorky, Babel, Zoshchenko, and Pilnyak, as well as lesser known work, using tools from the digital humanities. Knowledge of Russian useful but not required.
Visual Kinship, Families, Photography
WGSS 746 abd 462 / ANST 729 and 484 / FILM 810 / HSAR 493
Laura Wexler
Exploration of the history and practice of family photography from an interdisciplinary perspective. Study of family photographs from the analog to the digital era, from snapshots to portraits, and from instrumental images to art exhibitions. Particular attention to the ways in which family photographs have helped establish gendered and racial hierarchies and examination of recent ways of reconceiving these images.
Introduction to Media
ENGL 196 / FILM 160
R. John Williams
Introduction to the long history of media as understood in classical and foundational (and even more recent experimental) theories. Topics involve the technologies of modernity, reproduction, and commodity, as well as questions regarding knowledge, representation, public spheres, and spectatorship. Special attention given to philosophies of language, visuality, and the environment, including how digital culture continues to shape these realms.
American Architecture and Urbanism
AMST 197 / ARCH 280 / HSAR 219
Elihu Rubin, DH Fellow Nichole Nelson
Introduction to the study of buildings, architects, architectural styles, and urban landscapes, viewed in their economic, political, social, and cultural contexts, from precolonial times to the present. Topics include: public and private investment in the built environment; the history of housing in America; the organization of architectural practice; race, gender, ethnicity and the right to the city; the social and political nature of city building; and the transnational nature of American architecture.
Special Topics in Music, Multimedia Art, and Technology
MUSI 450
Konrad Kaczmarek
Live audio and video processing using the visual programming environment Max/MSP/Jitter. Topics include human computer interaction (HCI), instrument design, alternative controllers, data mapping, algorithmic composition, real-time digital signal processing, communication over the network, and programming for mobile devices.
Geographic Information Systems
F&ES 290 / EVST 290
Charles Tomlin
A practical introduction to the nature and use of geographic information systems (GIS) in environmental science and management. Applied techniques for the acquisition, creation, storage, management, visualization, animation, transformation, analysis, and synthesis of cartographic data in digital form.
See it, Change it, Make it
CPSC 078
Julie Dorsey
Hands-on introduction to the theory and practice of digital capture, modeling, and fabrication. Topics include digital representations of shape, 3D scanning, shape modeling and editing, and physical production, including 3D printing, milling, and laser cutting. Architectural forms at a variety of scales used as vehicles for exploration and experimentation.
There are no course prerequisites. Students are expected to be proficient in high school-level algebra, trigonometry, and geometry. No prior knowledge of architecture is expected. Enrollment limited to freshmen. Preregistration required; see under Freshman Seminar Program.
Intercultural Literary Hoaxes
AFAM 440 / FREN 421
Christopher Miller, DH Fellow Shanna-Dolores Jean-Baptiste
Study of literary works that test the bounds of propriety by borrowing or stealing an alien identity and passing the imposture off as authentic. Cases in Anglo-American and French-Francophone literature, ranging from the hilarious to the reprehensible. Attention to issues in the ethics of representation. Works include Diderot, Mérimée, George Eliot, pseudo-slave narratives, Camara Laye, Romain Gary, Forrest Carter, JT LeRoy, Paul Smaïl, Margaret B. Jones, Misha Defonseca.
