Topic: Digital Humanities
Seminar Leader: Jon McKenzie, Department of English, jvmckenzie@wisc.edu
PRELIMINARY DESCRIPTION — FULL SYLLABUS TO BE POSTED BY NOVEMBER 1
Digital humanities is an emerging academic area that draws on such fields as media studies, humanities computing, and new media arts, as well as a wide range of more traditional fields. It brings together scholars working “on,” “with,” or “through” digital technology, whether it be studying computers’ role in society, inventing electronic research tools, creating multimedia work, or incorporating the web into teaching. The National Endowment for the Humanities recently upgraded their Digital Humanities Initiative into a standing Digital Humanities Office, thus signaling the area’s importance to 21st-century scholarship.
This Faculty Development Seminar focuses on enhancing and developing digital humanities across the UW campus. The seminar is developmental in two respects: it seeks to develop faculty knowledge of digital humanities, while applying their knowledge and experience toward the formal development of digital humanities at UW–Madison. Thus the seminar’s twin goals:
• to enable a critical understanding of digital humanities proper and, more broadly, of the historical relation between the humanities and technology through readings of classic and contemporary texts; and
• to forge a network of faculty to spearhead the development of digital humanities at UW, including research projects, pedagogical initiatives, the creation of labs and collaborative media spaces, and other ideas proposed by seminar participants.
The seminar is conceived with the hope that it will be the first of a series of digital humanities seminars that together will allow as many interested faculty to participate as possible. To facilitate our individual and collaborative efforts, we will be joined by staff from the UW Libraries and the Division of Information Technologies. The seminar will also contribute to UW’s participation in Project Bamboo, a national initiative to advance arts and humanities research through technology.
Please direct immediate inquiries to:
Lara Kain
Assistant Director
The Center for the Humanities
University of Wisconsin–Madison
608.263.3409
kain@wisc.edu