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Fall 2019 DH classes
Fall 2019 DH classes
Monday, June 24, 2019
Looking for classes to take this fall? Here’s a list of options that will help you collect, analyze, and visualize humanities data! Course offerings range from theoretical considerations of the digital humanities to hands-on practice with the latest tools and languages. Identify trends in French literature at scale, study the history of digital media, create web applications for humanities research, and more.
If you are teaching a course connected to DH and would like it included in the list below, or if you would like someone from the Yale Digital Humanities Lab to speak with your class, please email the DHLab.
Advanced Web Application Development in the Digital Humanities
CPSC 376
Benedict Brown
Advanced 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. Meets with CPSC 376. Students may earn credit for CPSC 276 or 376; not both.
Prerequisite: CPSC 223 or equivalent, or permission of the instructor
Ancients and Moderns
FREN 822
Chrisophe Schuwey
What does it mean to be new, original, or innovative in literature? On the contrary, what does being traditional imply? What socioeconomic, ideological, and aesthetic issues lie behind those concepts and questions? This seminar addresses these questions at the time they first became central for France, when literature and arts became a market as well as a major political issue. Through literary and metaliterary works (Molière, Desjardins, La Bruyère, Scudéry, Guéret, Perrault) we reconsider our own relationship to novelty, tradition, and literary creation. In order to get hands-on with the most modern evolutions in the field, we also develop a critical edition of La Bruyère’s Les Caractères, a canonical work that looks reactionary in terms of its content and extremely modern in its printing technique. This edition is backed by a Rosenkranz grant for digital humanities in the classroom that will allow us to work with a professional designer.
Prerequisite: French reading, speaking, and writing
Close Analysis of Film
FILM 320, HSAR 490
Oksana Chefranova
The goal of this intensive seminar is to develop tools of close analysis of film as a significant art form by learning to identify elements of cinematic representation (mise-en-scène, cinematography, editing, sound, and the basic vocabulary associated with each aspect) and to demonstrate how these constituents combine to create meaning. Through developing a deeper understanding of a particular film, we transition from specific instances to broader considerations such as aesthetic and historical context or ideological critique. The course also traces the history of the close analysis method from structural semiotics and neoformalist analysis to digital humanities. We study films ranging from Hollywood and American filmmaking (Alfred Hitchcock and David Lynch) and European modernism (Robert Bresson and Jean-Luc Godard) to films that use expressive codes and cultural conventions less familiar to us (Lars von Trier and Hou Hsiao-hsien). Topics include genre, the digital image, landscape, body and face, gesture and screen performance, and cinematic atmosphere.
Prerequisite: FILM 150
Computational Tools for Data Science
AMTH 262, S&DS 262, CPSC 362, S&DS 562
Roy Lederman
Introduction to the core ideas and principles that arise in modern data analysis, bridging statistics and computer science and providing students the tools to grow and adapt as methods and techniques change. Topics include principle component analysis, independent component analysis, dictionary learning, neural networks and optimization, as well as scalable computing for large datasets. Assignments will include implementation, data analysis and theory. Students require background in linear algebra, multivariable calculus, probability and programming.
Prerequisites: after or concurrently with MATH 222, 225, or 231; after or concurrently with MATH 120, 230, or ENAS 151; after or concurrently with CPSC 100, 112, or ENAS 130; after S&DS 100-108 or S&DS 230 or S&DS 241 or S&DS 242
Computer Science and the Modern Intellectual Agenda
CPSC 150
David Gelernter
Introduction to the basic ideas of computer science (computability, algorithm, virtual machine, symbol processing system), and of several ongoing relationships between computer science and other fields, particularly philosophy of mind.
No previous experience with computers necessary. Enrollment limited to 25
Data and Information Visualization
CPSC 446, CPSC 546
Holly Rushmeier
Visualization is a powerful tool for understanding data and concepts. This course provides an introduction to the concepts needed to build new visualization systems, rather than to use existing visualization software. Major topics are abstracting visualization tasks, using visual channels, spatial arrangements of data, navigation in visualization systems, using multiple views, and filtering and aggregating data. Case studies to be considered include a wide range of visualization types and applications in humanities, engineering, science, and social science.
Prerequisite: CPSC 223
Data Governance in the Digital Age
GLBL 395
Nathaniel Raymond
The information revolution is causing the rapid mass adoption of information communication technologies (ICTs) across nations, demographics, and sectors in the early 21st Century–such as mobile devices, social media platforms, “big data,” artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning, geospatial mapping applications, and the Internet of Things (IoT). However, 20th Century international data governance policies, normative frameworks, and domestic regulations are struggling to keep pace with the disruptive impacts ICTs are having on an increasingly digitally networked world. This seminar explores critical issues, trends, and events relevant to both the adaption of existing data governance regimes to meet these challenges and the creation of new regimes by international organizations, the private sector, civil society, and national governments.
Introduction to Computing and Programming
CPSC 100
Benedict Brown
Introduction to the intellectual enterprises of computer science and to the art of programming. Students learn how to think algorithmically and solve problems efficiently. Topics include abstraction, algorithms, data structures, encapsulation, resource management, security, software engineering, and web development. Languages include C, Python, SQL, and JavaScript, plus CSS and HTML. Problem sets inspired by real-world domains of biology, cryptography, finance, forensics, and gaming. See CS50’s website for additional information.
No previous programming experience required. Open to students of all levels and majors
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.
Introduction to the History of Art: Sacred Art and Architecture
HSAR 150
Jacqueline Jung
DH Fellow: Gavi Levy Haskell
A wide-ranging, cross-temporal exploration of religious images, objects, and architecture in diverse cultures, from ancient Mesopotamia to modern Manhattan. Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim, and various polytheistic traditions are represented. Thematic threads include the human body; transformations of nature; death, memory, and afterlife; sacred kingship and other forms of political engagement; practices of concealment and revelation; images as embodiments of the divine; the framing and staging of ritual through architecture.
Introduction to Web Application for the Digital Humanities
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. Meets with CPSC 376. Students may earn credit for CPSC 276 or 376; not both.
Prerequisite: CPSC 110, CPSC 112, equivalent programming experience, or permission of the instructor
Literature and Philosophy from Locke to Kant
ENGL 729
Jonathan Kramnick
This is a class on epistemology, aesthetics, and literary form. We read major works in empiricism and moral philosophy alongside poetry and fiction in several genres. We ask, for example, how do poetry, fiction, and the visual arts recruit and account for perceptual experience or consider material and natural objects? What happens when the empirical psychology of consciousness or the categories of the sublime, beautiful, and picturesque take narrative or poetic form? What sort of ethical models follow from formal or generic decisions? We focus throughout on how these topics have been discussed across the history of literary studies, and we pay close attention to current debates in the field, including those prompted by new formalisms and materialisms, critical race studies, cognitive literary studies, and the digital humanities. Authors include Locke, Behn, Defoe, Pope, Addison, Hume, Burke, Sterne, Smith, Kant, and Wordsworth.
Photography and the Sciences
HIST 949, HSAR 832, HSHM 656
Chitra Ramalingam
Does photography belong in the history of art, or does its status as an “automatic” or “scientific” recording technique and its many uses in the sciences distinguish its history from that of earlier visual media? How does photography look when we approach it from the cultural history of science? How might its role in the sciences have shaped photographic aesthetics in the arts? This course examines the making of photography’s discursive identity as an experimental and evidentiary medium in the sciences, from its announcement to the public in 1839 to the digital innovations of the present day. We take a historical and archival perspective on uses for (and debates over) photography in different fields of the natural and human sciences, grounded in visits to photographic collections at Yale.
Quantitative Linguistics using Corpora
LING 234, 634
Chelsea Sanker
Introduction to the basics of corpus linguistics. Students learn to compile and process corpora and conduct statistical tests to better understand linguistic patterns and are provided with the background and tools necessary to pursue further research in this area. Digital humanities students from other departments are welcome.
Prerequisite: one entry-level linguistics course (e.g., phonetics, phonology, syntax, and psycholinguistics) or permission of the instructor
Special Topics in Music, Multimedia Art, and Technology
MUSI 425
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.
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