A Masters Degree in Digital Humanities at the University of Virginia

paper
Authorship
  1. 1. John Unsworth

    University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Graduate School of Library and Information Science - University of Virginia

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Americas culture, and its cultural heritage, is migrating very rapidly to
the World-Wide Web. To manage that migration, and to take advantage of
the new intellectual and creative possibilities it offers, we need trained
professionals who understand both the humanities and information
technology, and we need them in a number of different areas--museums,
libraries, teaching, scholarship, publishing, government, communications,
and entertainment, to name a few. We can already see that this is true:
the Library of Congress is putting millions of items in its collection
online; every major art museum now has a Web site; computers have become
part of the teaching of literature, history, religious studies, and other
disciplines; the next generation of scholarly editions of major American
authors will be electronic editions, and the next generation of paperbacks
will be E-Books.

The University of Virginias Masters Degree in Digital Humanities
(enrolling students beginning in Fall of 2002) will prepare graduate
students to meet this immediate cultural need, and it will offer them the
training to apply information technology to the intellectual content of
the humanities, and to experiment with the analytical possibilities that
information technology offers the humanities. At the end of the first
year of this program, students will have a broad but practical sense of
the challenges that one must overcome in making humanities content
tractable to computational methods. By the end of the second year,
students will be able to meet such challenges, even if doing so requires
building new tools or inventing new methods.

The Masters degree in digital humanities will provide students with
experience in recognizing and articulating problems in humanities
computing and working collaboratively to solve them, as well as providing
hands-on experience in designing and creating digital media. Students who
complete this degree might go on to further graduate work, for example a
Ph.D. in a traditional discipline of the humanities, or they might elect
to seek employment in publishing, communications, commerce, cultural
institutions, or any of a number of other areas in which their skills and
intellectual training would have immediate value.

The course of study for the MA in Digital Humanities is a two-year cycle
of core courses and electives: in order to complete the program, a student
will take at least 27 hours of coursework at the 500-900 level. In
addition, a one-credit internship and a one-credit teaching seminar are
required, and students will enroll in several non-topical research
courses, for a total of 48 credit hours. Successful completion of this MA
program requires students to have, or to acquire, a working familiarity
with major computer operating systems (PC, Macintosh, Unix) and software
more specialized than the usual office applications (e.g., visual
programming software, multimedia authoring tools, databases), as well as
with markup languages (e.g., SGML, XML) and programming languages (e.g.,
Perl, Java). Working with a faculty advisor, each student will develop a
thesis project that consists partly of work in team-based environments and
partly of individual writing and reflection. In addition to their course
work and thesis project, students are required to complete internships:
most will also lead discussion sections for Media Studies 110, an
introductory undergraduate course.

Concentration Electives: The purpose of these electives is to provide
each student with in-depth graduate course work in a humanities subject
area, as a context for that students humanities computing--for example, a
student with background and research interests in medieval literature
might choose to take these electives in medieval literature, medieval
history, and linguistics, might choose to intern with an ongoing faculty
research project in medieval studies, and might design a thesis project
that applies humanities computing tools and techniques to a research
problem with a particular medieval text. Students will complete at least
three humanities electives during the course of study for the M.A.. These
courses must be at the 500-900 level and they must be chosen in
consultation with the faculty advisor. These courses may be chosen from
approved humanities offerings outside the College of Arts and Sciences
(for example, in Architecture, Education, or Law).

Programming Language Requirement: Entering students should be able to
demonstrate competence in at least one computer programming language by
passing a ninety-minute examination, administered by the Computer Science
department at the University and designed to ascertain the students
understanding of basic concepts and principles of computer programming.
For students entering without this competence, an intensive summer course
will be offered in conjunction with Computer Science; other options for
acquiring this competence include taking an undergraduate course in the
College of Engineering, provided that prerequisites are met, taking a
course at Piedmont Virginia Community College, or learning through
project-based self-instruction. Whatever course is chosen, students must
pass the competency exam no later than the beginning of the third semester.

TITLE: The MA in Humanities Computing at the University of Alberta
KEYWORDS: teaching; humanities computing
AUTHOR: Terry Butler
AFFILIATION: University of Alberta
E-MAIL: Terry.Butler@ualberta.ca

A new course of study, leading to the degree of Master of Arts in
Humanities Computing, will be offered to students at the University of
Alberta, starting in September 2001. The programme has been created to
equip students with the critical and practical tools they need in order to
engage with new research methodologies in their academic study, and to
enter the workforce with knowledge as well as technical skills in the area
of electronic communications and digital media.

The initiative for this degree programme came from Professor Susan Hockey,
at that time Director of the Canadian Institute for Research Computing in
the Arts (CIRCA) at the University of Alberta. Funding was secured from
the provincial government to initiate this new programme of study at the
Masters level. The anticipated enrolment is up to 15 students per year; the
course of studies is a two-year long, culminating in a MA thesis
(dissertation).

The development of this programme has been a model exercise in
interdisciplinarity, and the nature of the course of study broadens the
scope of Arts degree at our institution. The programme raises interesting
challenges on a technical front as well, opening up the possibility of the
development of a suite of software tools which will have interest to many
arts disciplines as well as the wider humanities computing community.

A Description of the Programme
The originating request for funding emphasised the practical outcomes for
student of this course of study. Our experience over the last 10 years has
amply demonstrated that students in arts who have worked with multimedia
and digital technologies as an ancillary to their studies have been very
successful in finding appointments after graduation, both within academia
and also in the private sector. The Orlando Project is just one such
hot-house for successful graduates from our university.

The MA in Humanities Computing proposal argued that a formal and
well-balanced set of courses, which included the commitment necessary to
conceive and complete a thesis in this field, would provide an even more
solid base for students who wished to view this as their terminal degree.
They would be well equipped to contribute in leadership roles in the very
active fields of web development and design, electronic document delivery,
knowledge and information resource management, and technical
communications.

A broadly-based group of academics at our University has been engaged in
further refinement and development of the proposal, as it moves forward to
receive final University approval and implementation. It is a striking
character of this workgroup that it includes scholars from a variety of
disciplines, inside the Faculty of Arts and beyond it (members come from
other areas of campus, including Computing Science, Library and Information
Science, and Extension). Under this impetus, the programme has been
re-visioned to strengthen its second dimension. It will be, we are
convinced, attractive to students who wish to pursue further studies (at
the doctorate level) in a conventional discipline, and who have a strong
attachment to the use of computing methodologies in their studies, and who
wish to explore the impact of the digital communications revolution on
their field.

The degree of "Master of Arts in Humanities Computing" will be offered with
the following specializations: Applied Linguistics, Arts and Design,
Chinese Literature, Classics, Comparative Literature, Drama, East Asian
Studies, English, French, German, History, Italian, Japanese Literature,
Latin American Studies, Linguistics, Music, Philosophy, Political Science,
Religious Studies, Russian, Spanish, and Ukrainian. This shows that the
term "humanities" is being very broadly read by the participating 13
departments in Arts. It also means the programme offers the very real
possibility of a intense interdisciplinary experience for its students and
instructors - something that many on our campus earnestly desire but which
is difficult to achieve within current academic configurations.

The two streams which this programme will accommodate are articulated in
the current draft of the programme description:

"The MA in Humanities Computing offers a balanced examination of both the
theoretical and practical issues that define Humanities Computing by
focusing on two dimensions of study. The first is critical thinking about
how computing is enabling and transforming humanities research and teaching
methodologies. In a set of core courses, students survey the humanities
computing discipline and its underlying technologies as they are employed
in humanities disciplines such as history, literature, languages, cultural
studies, religious studies, philosophy, arts, and music. The second focus
of the programme is the acquisition of technical knowledge through hands-on
experience with methods, technologies, and principles underlying the
creation, delivery, and analysis of both complex electronic text documents
and non-textual data and images."

Our intentions for this degree programme lead to an early decision to offer
it as a two-year MA (which is unusual in Arts, but not uncommon elsewhere
at our university). The necessity of coursework in both humanities
computing and in one other arts discipline dictates this decision.

The course of study consists of 4 required courses in Humanities Computing,
an additional 6 courses (a minimum of 2 of these must be from Humanities
Computing options courses and a minimum of 2 from courses in the home
department), and a final thesis. Home departments will determine the exact
number of courses, a minimum of 2 and a maximum of 4, a student must take
in his/her area of specialization. Home departments can approve
discipline-specific and cross-listed courses.

The nature of the proposed programme can be illustrated by the following
list of course offerings:

HUCO 500 Survey of Humanities Computing

HUCO 510 Theoretical Issues in Humanities Computing
(Relationship of computing methods to humanities research
from several theoretical perspectives.)

HUCO 520 Technical Concepts and Approaches in Humanities Computing

HUCO 530 Project Design and Management in Humanities Computing
(Design, implementation, management, and maintenance of
Humanities Computing research projects.)

HUCO 611 Computers and Culture
(Cultural implications of telecommunications and computing
technology.)

HUCO 612 Electronic Texts
(Creation, encoding, analysis, and management of
electronic texts.)

HUCO 613 Cyberspace and Networked Culture

HUCO 614 Knowledge Management and Analysis in the Humanities
(Databases, textbases, graphical and statistical analysis.)

HUCO 615 Computer Tools for Humanities Teaching and Learning
(Theory and practice of computer pedagogy in the Humanities.)

HUCO 616 Multimedia for the Humanities
(Exploration of the nature and cultural significance of
multimedia.)

HUCO 617 Topics in Humanities Computing

HUCO 618 Directed Reading in Humanities Computing

The first four courses are required Humanities Computing courses. Of
special interest is the Project Design and Management course, which
students would take in their first year. As well providing students with
formal training in project design and management, during this course
students will be expected to develop their thesis proposal, with a goal of
completing the thesis at the end of the second year.

The programme intends to take full advantage of the technologies which
enable distributed learning, and to bring experts in the field from around
the world into the learning environment.

Student Profiles
The students we expect to apply to this programme may match one of the
following profiles:
* Arts graduates who wish to get advanced computing experience and enter
the workforce
* Arts students who wish to continue with further graduate study, and who
see electronic communications and digital technologies as essential to
their research approach, or as fundamental factors in their reading of
their field of study
* students who already have some training or work experience in multimedia
and digital communications, but lack the theoretical underpinnings in this
field and wish to acquire them to prepare for more senior work

We anticipate the outcomes for students to include:
* overview knowledge of the field of humanities computing
* practical skills with the management and manipulation of digital forms of
knowledge, tempered by an understanding of their processes of creations and
the limitations of their applicability to specific research problems
* reflective awareness of the issues at the intersection of traditional
fields of study and the potentialities of digital communications

Resources for the Programme
The Faculty of Arts is hiring two new tenure-track staff to support the
teaching and student supervision that this program entails. Additional
teaching and supervision will be provided by faculty from the participating
departments, who will each teach (probably) one course. Funding has also
been provided to the English department (who is providing an administrative
home for the program) for additional clerical support. An additional
technical staff position has also been accommodated.

Assessment of Student Work
The students' thesis proposals are expected to range from traditional
academic studies using computing methodologies, to more practical
initiatives which may have a connection with computing problems outside
academia. Assessment of this work may become an opportunity for us to
partner with computing professionals elsewhere on campus and beyond it, and
with others in the business of media, communications, publishing, and
electronic commerce.

Computing Facilities
This new programme creates a difficult challenge when it comes to providing
appropriate computing resources. The University of Alberta is well-endowed
with modern computing facilities, such as computer laboratories and
technology-enabled "smart" classrooms. These facilities can be used by
programme participants effectively, we believe.

However, the variety of specializations which are involved will require the
provision of some unique, high-end computing facilities. Areas such as
* electronic music
* digital image manipulation and production
* computer animation
* text encoding
* text corpus analysis
will require specialized facilities. In these areas, instructors wish
students to work with the computer platform and software which is most
commonly used for this work in the commercial field. This means the
students of the programme will need access to both powerful and up-to-date
Windows/PC systems, Macintoshes, and Unix workstations. Partnerships with
local firms are being explored to develop a supply of appropriate computer
systems that can be refreshed in this frenetically changing technology
area.

However, beyond these specific software packages, there is a great
opportunity to establish a computing infrastructure for this programme
which is based upon principles of open source, shared software development,
and client/server architecture. These MA students will be gaining
experience with the manipulation of data from a variety of sources (text
corpora, data bases, search engines); we will want them to gain experience,
not with creating computer programs from scratch, but with an understanding
of programming concepts, and the ability to "tweak, adjust, and tinker"
with computer programs. The Unix-based software environment, using common
shared tools, is ideal for this. The programme may choose to invest its
collective efforts in the development and enhancement of existing
humanities computing software which has been built with open source
software such as:
Linux
awk, sed
perl
php
Java
The programme hopes to provide a computing infrastructure for instructors
and students which provides everyone with large capacity data storage,
access to Unix systems and common Unix command-line programs, SQL standard
servers, and web sites run with apache.

As for networking, our goal is to create a physical "hub" for the students
in this programme, as a place of social interaction as well as
collaborative work and learning. To this end we are exploring the creation
of a wireless networked space for students and instructors, to which the
participants would bring laptop computers in order to network (in two
senses of the word). Laptop computers might be loaned out to students on an
as-needed basis, or possibly leased by the students for the duration of the
programme. Smaller remote hubs could be created in one or two other
Faculty of Arts.

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Conference Info

In review

ACH/ALLC / ACH/ICCH / ALLC/EADH - 2001

Hosted at New York University

New York, NY, United States

July 13, 2001 - July 16, 2001

94 works by 167 authors indexed

Series: ACH/ICCH (21), ALLC/EADH (28), ACH/ALLC (13)

Organizers: ACH, ALLC

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