Looking for classes to take this spring? Here are some options that will help you explore Latinx and East Asian digital media cultures, learn about technologies for archaeological imaging, gain proficiency in a new coding language, and more. Course offerings range from theoretical considerations of technology and DH to hands-on practice with digital methods.

For more detailed information about prerequisites and enrollment, please see the full course descriptions at courses.yale.edu.

If you are teaching a course connected to DH and would like it included in the list below, please email the DHLab.

Digital War
AMST 305, EP&E 247, ER&M 330, FILM 298, SAST 262
Madiha Tahir

From drones and robots to algorithmic warfare and virtual war gaming, digital war has become a key issue of our times. Not only has warfare been shaped by digital technologies; technologies such as GPS, stealth technology, personal computing, and the Internet also have been conditioned through conflict. This class provides a critical overview of these links. Drawing on visual media, fiction, art, and scholarly texts, students will examine digital war’s connections to colonialism and imperialism, as well as its effects on those targeted.

Platforms and Cultural Production
AMST 365, EP&E 399, ER&M 295, FILM 268
Julian Posada

Platforms—digital infrastructures that mediate between end-users and complementors—have emerged in a range of economic sectors, from social media (Instagram) and video streaming (YouTube) to digital labor (Uber) and e-commerce (Amazon). Through case studies from around the world, this multidisciplinary seminar examines how platforms have transformed connectivity, labor, creativity, and democracy, and considers how contemporary capitalism and digital economies intersect with inequality, surveillance, decentralization, and cooperation.

Militarism, Technology, Empire
AMST 610, ER&M 610
Madiha Tahir

Scholarship on empire has yet to substantially inform studies of “digital war” or “digital militarism”—the digitally mediated technologies of war and militarism, including so-called “autonomous” weapons, data and algorithms, and biometrics. This graduate seminar aims to connect these areas of study, paying special attention to how technology enables and complicates militarist imperial formations. Students will pursue a variety of readings on contemporary militarism and war, considering how fields such as anthropology, STS, and media studies analyze contemporary militarist techno-formations.

Imaging Ancient Worlds in Museum Collections
ANTH 492, ARCG 492, NELC 321, NELC 585
Agnete Lassen and Klaus Wagensonner

This class explores the merits, challenges, and best practices of the digitization of cultural heritage. Through hands-on engagement with the archaeological artifacts in the Yale Babylonian Collection, students will learn how new computer graphics technologies, including 3D imaging, can be used to document and interpret archaeological artifacts, and will consider ways that these technologies can support current research in archaeology and anthropology.

Python Programming for Humanities and Social Sciences
CPSC 110
Sohee Park

Designed for non-STEM majors, this class provides an introduction to computer science and Python programming and discusses practical ways to apply computing techniques to the humanities and social sciences. Topics will include abstraction, algorithms, data structures, web development, and statistical tools. No previous programming experience required.

YData: An Introduction to Data Science
CPSC 123, PLSC 351, S&DS 123, S&DS 523
Ethan Meyers

Computational, programming, and statistical skills are no longer optional in our increasingly data-driven world. YData is an introduction to data science that emphasizes the development of these skills while providing opportunities for hands-on practice. Focusing on the widely used computing language Python 3, the class is designed to be accessible to students with little or no background in computing, programming, or statistics, as well as to those who are more technically oriented.

Intellectual Property in the Digital Age
CPSC 184
Cecillia Xie

This seminar focuses on the evolving and often vexing intellectual property regime of the new digital age. Topics include copyright, fair use, remix culture, access to knowledge, technological innovations, the increasing relevance of trademarks in the new information society, the tension between creativity/creating and the intellectual property rules that foster or inhibit it, and the new information culture of the digital age.

Prerequisite: CPSC 183 or permission of instructor.

Decentering Computer Science: Transpacific Computing History across U.S., East Asia, and Beyond
CPSC 190, EAST 201
Yoehan Oh

Semiconductor manufacturing and its advanced uses, such as artificial intelligence, play a key role in mediating relationships between China, Taiwan, and the U.S. This seminar examines how these transpacific relations between the U.S. and East Asian countries transcend simple “friend or foe” rivalries, revealing how they have shaped the history of computer science. Topics include China-born first-generation digital computer pioneers, the digitization of Asian characters, the development of transpacific computer and labor networks, and transpacific work to build CS fundamentals. The course will culminate with a discussion of exclusionism, trade protectionism, and “friendshoring” across the Asia-Pacific region.

Telling Stories With Maps: From Ancient Times to the New York Times
CSTD 200
Aaron Reiss

From ancient mariners’ best guesses of what exists beyond the known world to high-tech visual journalism in modern war zones, maps have been used to construct narratives, make arguments, and find sense in the abstract. How do maps play a role in border conflicts or colonial occupations? How can maps change our understanding of where we come from? How can we read the biases and points of view inherent in a given map, or put forward our own? Students tackle these questions through academic texts, investigative visual journalism, close readings of maps, and making maps of their own. By employing the cartographic and narrative strategies studied in class, students become visual journalists and digital storytellers in their own right.

Politics of East Asian Digital Media Culture
EALL 298, EAST 302, FILM 345
Tian Li

East Asian digital media has reshaped global, national, and regional imaginings of East Asia. What role do these screen cultures play in the border-crossing interplay among languages, ideologies, aesthetics, and affect? How do we understand East Asian screen cultures’ storytelling and politics in relation to sociohistorical context? How do they capture local and global desires? Through discussions of (trans)nationalism, (un)translatability, locality and globality, (post)modernity, virtuality and actuality, and gender, students will learn to think and write about the screen cultures of East Asia in particular, and of our contemporary moment writ broadly.

Philosophy of Digital Media
ENGL 188, FILM 210
Hadar Levy-Landesberg

This class investigates fundamental and theoretical questions regarding media, culture, and society, from the consequences of a computerized age to what is “new” in new media. Students will consider digital media from both philosophical and historical perspectives, focusing on the past five decades. Topics of discussion will include animals, democracy, the environment, gender, globalization, mental illness, obscenity, piracy, privacy, the public sphere, race, religion, social media, terrorism, and war.

Geographic Information Systems
EVST 290, URBN 319
Charles Tomlin

This class offers a practical introduction to the nature and use of geographic information systems (GIS) in environmental science and management. Over the course of the semester, students will explore techniques for the acquisition, creation, storage, management, visualization, animation, transformation, analysis, and synthesis of cartographic data in digital form.

Information Revolutions: From the Origins of Writing to the Digital Age
HIST 061
Michael Printy

This course explores the history of information and its organization from the origins of writing to the present day. The course focuses on technologies of knowledge and information sharing (or hoarding) in relation to their social and political contexts, paying particular attention to moments when new systems of information organization replace old ones. Classes will consist of discussion of theoretical and historical readings, followed by hands-on interaction with special collection materials and site visits. The course also will introduce students to the various collections, curators, and librarians at Yale, and aims to deepen their understanding of the modern research library.

Note: This seminar is part of the First-Year Seminar Program. Enrollment is limited to first-year students; preregistration is required.

Introduction to Syriac Christianity
HIST 333, NELC 320, RLST 420
Maria Doerfler

This seminar introduces students to the literary, historical, and theological tradition of Syriac Christianity. In addition to reading key Syriac Christian authors, students will situate the tradition’s development in the context of different imperial cultures and religious interlocutors, such as Judaism and Islam, and explore topics at the vanguard of current scholarship, including distinctive approaches to asceticism, ritual, and historiography. The class will feature visits to the Beinecke and the Yale University Art Gallery, as well as an introduction to the use of digital humanities in Syriac studies through the Yale Digital Dura-Europos Archive (YDEA).

Form and Content in Digital and Analog Arts and Sciences
HUMS 392
Sayan Bhattacharyya

This interdisciplinary seminar examines the relationship between form and content in literature, visual arts, music, film, and virtual and augmented reality. In addition to considering the challenges that digital and computational perspectives present in these relationships, students will explore how a humanistic understanding of unifying metaphors from physics, neuroscience, and AI can help make sense of human life.

Thinking Digitally about the Humanities
HUMS 417
Sayan Bhattacharyya

This class explores how humanists and their associates from computational disciplines apply digital methods, broadly understood, to the kinds of questions that tend to be of interest in the humanities. Students will examine how methods drawn from information science, such as data analytics and artificial intelligence, are being applied to humanistic disciplines, especially textual understanding and analysis.

Latinx Digital Cultures
SPAN 269
Jorge Méndez-Seijas and Alexander Gil Fuentes

This course explores Latinx cultures in the U.S., focusing on language, identity formation, and cultural expression. Through class discussions, research, and creative projects, students will consider Latinx identity formation in relation to various forms of media, and will learn to use digital methods and tools to participate in the production and reproduction of Latinx cultures. Materials will include historical texts, literature, art, film, and digital media representing Latinx communities in New Haven and beyond. The class aims to empower students to become more informed and sensitive cultural interpreters, advocate for Latinx communities, and further advance their communicative competence in Spanish.

Prerequisite: SPAN 140, 142, 145, or equivalent.

Independent Group Study in Digital Humanities
SPAN 990
Alexander Gil Fuentes

Project-based learning and teams are at the heart of digital humanities pedagogy. This independent study course is designed to allow teams of graduate students to pursue a research question in the humanities, as well as to provide an appropriate research output for their scholarly project. Student teams will be mentored by an instructor and other relevant professionals at Yale. Students may either pursue their own original scholarly project or participate in projects designed by the instructor or other humanities faculty.