Digital Humanities
Stanford Now Offers Minor in Digital Humanities
In
September, Stanford
University launched a new
minor in digital humanities, intended to combine digital tools with
research
and exploration of history, literature, languages and other humanities
topics.
Students
in the minor can choose one of three focuses:
geospacial humanities, text technologies or quantitative textual
analysis. Each
track has a corresponding introductory class that is partly
method-based but
also incorporates the larger themes of the digital humanities.
The
minor requires students to complete 20 units,
including one core class of five units and five other courses with a
minimum of
three units each. Examples of course titles include "The Digital Middle
Ages," "Poetry
and the Internet" and "Technologies of Enlightenment." More than 70
courses
throughout the university satisfy requirements for the minor, including
those
offered by the linguistics, history, management science and Earth
sciences
departments.
The
plan to introduce the minor was motivated by the fact
that students were working with faculty on digital humanities projects
outside
of the classroom, but there was no formal way to acknowledge the field
as part
of the undergraduate curriculum. For instance, faculty and students
were applying
computational criticism to the study of literature and combining
historical and
digital analysis in the investigation of Chinese grave relocations.
Much
of this work was being done at Stanford's Center
for
Spatial and Textual Analysis (CESTA).
"The
timing is right for a digital humanities minor at
Stanford," said CESTA Director Zephyr Frank. "The intersection of
faculty
research and teaching and student interest and capacity makes digital
humanities a natural place to grow and sustain our shared commitment to
the
humanities."
Unlike
traditional computer science programs, the minor
does not require computer coding knowledge. Instead it focuses on
teaching
students how to use existing digital tools and methods to expand their
research.
One
of the first students to enroll in the
digital humanities minor was current sophomore — and computer science
major —
Angelica Previte.
"Computer
science courses provide a set of tools
and ways of solving problems," Previte said, "and digital humanities
provides
an opportunity for a more diverse field of uses for those tools."
About the Author
Michael Hart is a Los Angeles-based freelance writer and the former executive editor of THE Journal.
