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MA program in Digital Studies Online Information Session
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Thomas Ott
02:30:57 PM
Welcome to our webinar everyone!
Well hello my name is David flung I'm the faculty director of the Master of Arts program in digital studies of language culture and History at the University of Chicago. I'm also professor of archaeology and a member of the Department of near Eastern languages and civilizations so in my other life. I'm doing excavations and archaeological research. But I have a strong interest in the digital Humanities in computation the application of computers.
To humanistic research and also to conversations about the impact of the digital from the perspective of the humanities with me is doctor. Michael Fox Senior Lecturer in academic director of digital studies here at the University of Chicago and we're going to tell you a little bit about the program fairly new program here and then answer questions that you might be sending our way.
First, let me say something about where this program originate 'Ed, a number of the faculty members of the University. Chicago have a strong interest in computation in the application of digital methods and digital modes of analysis in the humanities and we're talking about in the division of the humanities, a very strong aspect of University, Chicago a world leader in many of the fields of the humanities as well as him what we call a humanistic social Sciences history.
Anthropology and so on, so there's been a strong sense of of interest and commitment to the application of these exciting new digital techniques in the classical topics of the Humanities language study literary study historical studies cultural studies of various kinds.
And so several years ago as these things develop overtime. There were a number of committees and number of discussions and of course, any University that embarks on a new Masters program on a new curriculum like this wants to answer the question well. What do we have to offer? What is it that we can do that. Other places can't do and I would say.
Quite strongly and I'm convinced of this, the University. Chicago has a unique combination of talents in this area that students can really benefit from we have a number of people who are leaders in various aspects of language literate literary, cultural historical studies who are knowledgeable about computing interested in computing and see the need for really solid technical training in some aspects of computing or many aspects of you.
Programming skills sufficient knowledge of statistical methods and analytical methods. But to do that in the context of the humanities like why is this relevant to the humanities as a mode of discourse as a motor research not just 'cause we want to be engineers, but because as Humanists. We want to know the history of computing. Where did it come from? What is the cultural impact of? What is the potential for advancing our own research using these methods?
And so we have a very tight connection between the technical and engineering aspects of computing in our curriculum and this kind of critical reflection on the role of computing.
In the humanities and in a humanistic kind of discourse and I think other programs may aspire to this we've really thought carefully about how to construct a curriculum a one year curriculum that will allow students who have a BA.
In the humanities to pursue this and to come out with really solid marketable skills in terms of technical programming ability. But even more importantly, an ability to relate computing as a cultural phenomenon as a historical enterprise computing itself as something that human beings have created is part of our modern culture relate that to the classic questions that humanists have always struggled with about meaning what is it?
For something to mean something and how do we understand our communications as human beings one with another so that's my sort of 30,000 foot pitch for this? what I think is really exciting enterprise were very committed to it here. This is the second year of operation for us in the Masters program in digital studies of language culture and history and we have a number of curricular requirements and courses.
That we can tell you about let me just.
Show your names here again, I've David flown and with me is Michael Fox and I'm going to turn it over to a doctor Fox to say a little bit more about the components of our program.
Yeah, so the as David, intimate ever said or intimated that digital studies and main program is very rigorous will come out of it with serious programming skills in languages like our JavaScript and Python.
As well as the ability to discern problems in humanistic inquiry that may be explored or a solved using digital methods.
Uh and most important you'll be able to apply. These these methods. The program will make you highly competitive in relevant academic and industry settings.
Up.
The coursework considered the requirements for coursework.
Or 11 courses there are 7 core courses 3 electives. You'll taken one introductory programming course and you'll be on campus from the beginning of September to the middle of June. You'll have until the middle of June to complete your thesis. Let me just give you a rundown of the details of the coursework.
He will develop the technical skills and critical abilities in conjunction with each other throughout your coursework your first your first course will be a crash course in Python, which is a language useful for doing statistics. An natural language processing among other sorts of data analysis relevant to the program.
Uh in one of the courses you'll take in the fall. You will learn about the history and theory of computing.
And applying digital methods to cultural and historical studies you will also learn about debates in the humanity of digital humanities and about social and ethical issues involved in producing an using digital media and in our basic math and statistics for the Humanities course you will learn the essentials of Statistics, an linear algebra that are very useful for human communities studies and in this course, too.
We will extend your Python skills that you acquired in the September crash course.
Uh you will also take data management.
In which you will learn such things as digital encoding of text and images database models. Querying languages and the basics of Geospatial Data Management. All the while, managing your own data set from a humanities field of your choice in the winter. You will learn to do sophisticated analysis on this sort of data in our data analysis course.
Uh.
The data analysis course will teach you how to use the R.
A powerful our programming language and it will cover topics such as exploratory data analysis and network image. Geospatial data and text analysis and you will also become conversant. In some cutting edge. Humanities research going on in these areas today.
Alongside this course you will learn to digitally edit kuraan publish.
Such a analysis as well as the primary historical materials that Cumulus work with every day and in this course while you'll learn web technologies like JavaScript CSS S in HTML. You will also learn a bit about the history and theory of scholarly editing and textual criticism being able. I think most scholars, Digital Humanists would agree that being able to critically think about digital editing editing and publication.
Requires knowing a little bit about the history of the book and the longstanding tradition of philology.
You finish your course work in the spring with natural language processing. This is a program program programming heavy course that will extend the?
Text analytics portion of the data analysis course.
And in it, you will learn to use Python to employ common text processing techniques such as named entity recognition. Stylo metrics and sentiment analysis.
And in your final semester, you will boost your work on your thesis under the guidance of your primary advisor and me, and of course, your thesis will be a culmination of your studies here and it will have a software component and a written component.
And I think I mentioned you'll have at least until mid. June actually in and in cases where the thesis is taking a bit longer. We do have the option.
Uh that one can participate in the graduation ceremonies in the middle of June and continue work on the thesis until the end of July in cases where the advisors have approved that and where you really have a case to make that you just need a bit more time to finish up the thesis project. Let me say a word about the thesis project, which is something that we encourage all students to think about from early on in the program. It really should be something that.
Pursues a passion of yours on interest that you may have in the Humanities. Some aspect of Humanities research or it's called Lake communication or publication of.
But combining that interest in traditional humanities topic with some innovative computational implementation. So the thesis has both a programming component and you will be guided and helped by the faculty of the program in developing your software at whatever level you're able and with whatever tools are most appropriate but also there's a written component. Because this is an MA in the Humanities. Let's not forget you were going to come out.
Well prepared with the University of Chicago Masters of Arts degree in the humanities and for that. We require you to have a written component to your thesis, giving something about the history of the methods used the rationale for the methodology being used an really the humanistic pay off? What is it that will contribute to scholarship to our understanding of what it means to be human historical human beings in the culture in which we live and that's very much part of?
What we're offering you here is that combination all the way through from the very beginning until the end of the thesis thinking about those things together and not separately computing in Humanities in one.
In one.
Integrated fashion.
I should say a little bit about the instructors of this program. You've already heard from doctor. Fox, who is one of the primary instructors and Senior Lecturer and academic directed the program. I am also an instructor in the program. We have other lecturers. Another faculty involved in this both for the core courses that have been described to you, but also for the elective courses and let's not forget that in your 11 courses in this one year. MA these quarter length.
Versus 10 we quarter length horses and those 11 courses. Three of them are free electives in the sense you can choose.
Uh whatever topic you want in whichever branch of the Humanities.
Whatever part of the University you want to study but at least one of those, 3 courses has to have a strongly digital orientation or have some point of contact with.
With digital methods, so this allows you if you're in English lit person, maybe to do more work in the English Department or if you're a cinnamon media studies person to do something in media studies or if you have historical interests. Something in the history Department, etc that or linguistics. Some people are very strongly interest in computational linguistics and the electives are the place where you can build on the core program, the core courses of our program to supplement that with.
With classes taught by world leading scholars in these various fields of the humanities.
Uh I myself just to give a bit of personal background have a degree in computer science and math, but then it went on to do a PhD and in the humanities as did my colleague here doctor Fox. So we feel that we understand both sides of the equation here, but you'll notice that our pH. DS are in the humanities were were really telling you that this is something crucial for the humanities for thinking about the humanities and not just something alien to that, so I make these points because sometimes there's a misunderstanding about what the digital humanities really.
You ought to be or could be and I'm trying to articulate in this little presentation what we're passionate about in this in this regard.
I think we had a few more points to cover here.
Well.
Well, you, you might want to say a little bit about this, yeah, well. The crash course in this, this next slide. Here is telling you about the crash course in Python in September. That's that's taught by Adam Shaw right and just just to make clear we have on our faculty board and teaching some of our classes computer science, faculty, so for example, doctor Adam Shaw Senior Electric Computer Science, one of the.
Mainstays of the computer science major here at University Chicago is teaching our introduction to programming and that's the way we want it we want the first introduction to programming to be taught by someone who is really an expert and as he is in programming languages and how to teach them with a PhD in computer science and we want to make sure that you get off on the right foot in that regard it's a 4 days a week intensive.
Program equivalent to 1/4 length 10 week course, but compressed into 3 weeks in September, so that students can come in.
Get that background knowledge and then start in the regular autumn quarter, which starts usually at the end of September. Here in University of Chicago and start right in with this prerequisite under their belts go ahead and put in this course will prepare you for some of the programming projects in the other courses, especially natural language processing in the spring. And if you come with experience in Python or programming, even better. You have the option of opting out of this.
Crash course that's right so we do, we are aware that students entering this survey program in some cases have had a programming course in their background or statistics and on a case by case basis were able to give you an exemption from doing it with us. If you've already had it before and you have the right level of knowledge. Then you can have an extra elective in the program.
So that's something to keep in mind for those of you who say Oh, I've already got programming. Why do I need to do it again with a gun?
Well, I think I've already mentioned the electives and perhaps we should have shown this slide. We're talking about like? What do we mean? When we say a digitally oriented elective course?
It turns out.
Just by looking at what people are already offering as I said there's a strong interest in computation on the part of Humanities. Faculty here in the music Department, we have people who do computer.
Of music or in this case, an interesting course called musical robotics in the Department of visual art. We have visual artists who create are using software using algorithms and there's a great course very popular in the Department of visual art on data, an algorithm of Art.
In the history Department, we have a couple of colleagues who are very.
Expert on the history of media the history of the book as a phenomenon from.
You know, Gutenberg until now, the history of scholarship scholarly publication, which is what doctor Fox alluded to as part of our data publication course and you can see here a history class on censorship information control and revolutions and information information technology from the printing press to the Internet.
And then one thing we shouldn't neglect to mention is in the Department of Senate cinema and media studies. We have a colleague Professor Jagoda, who's a great expert on electronic literature. Video games and looking at that both in terms of its theoretical structure as a form of creative expression games and digital media as creative forms in the modern day at also at how these things are produced and how video games can be.
The Chieftain analyzed.
I think we should perhaps move on to some questions if any of come in.
Thomas Ott
02:49:35 PM
Feel free to type in any questions you have here in the chat box.
Not yet over the other thing I wanted to mention about the elective courses is that your thesis topic will likely come out of one of these courses, but it doesn't have to but you'll have plenty of opportunity to learn about the various kinds of things that are going on in digital Humanities Digital Studies from these courses.
Hum.
That's it.
We talked about the go ahead at these if you want to move on to yeah.
There are various projects that you can get involved in here.
Sarah Rose
02:50:23 PM
Thanks for taking time to speak to us about the program. What kind of careers have graduates pursued upon graduation? What scholarships/funding opportunities are available for this program?
I am the senior lecturer in academic director of the program. But I also serve as the assistant editor of the William Blake Archive which is the headquarters of which is at the UNC Chapel Hill. But if you were to come here, you would have the opportunity to participate in actual publication, editing and publication projects going on at the William Blake Archive Archive is a digital archive of critical editions.
Of works by William Blake, the early romantic artist and poet.
Including both visual materials, including visual materials that are very materials and one other thing to be, said about the blank archive is that?
It employs all sorts of technologies web technologies like XML HTML JavaScript. You'll learn if you were to participate in an actual publication project with the archive you would learn all of these things like.
How to mark up text? How to do diplomatic digital transcriptions etc?
And textural objects. I'll say a word about that. This is the name of a very exciting.
Tian Li
02:51:19 PM
Do all students in the program can engage in faculty projects?
Project or group of projects that inherits a decades of research and digitization.
Involving romance language texts from the 18th century until now French language Italian and others art. Full is an acronym, referring to the Treasury of the French language project that started in 1980s as a digital project involving cooperation between French.
Scholars and French government indeed and University Chicago Department of Romance languages and literatures and textual optics has grown out of that because there's a large base of code of software and techniques that have been developed by these scholars over the years and so anyone with an interest in shall we say.
Junyi Han
02:52:04 PM
Thank you for the presentation. How does this program prepare students for a Ph.D. track in a specific field, such as European history?
Early modern printed literature 18th, 19 century, especially romance language. Text is tremendous amount of experience and they do have the option for bringing students involved and they've expanded beyond just Romance languages in recent years to include other literatures.
Involving some natural language processing techniques and other methods.
The game changer lab, we've referred to already professor Patrick Jagoda and this is the lab that he founded at our University looking at video games, electronic literature, another new media.
And their impact.
And then the last 2 that are listed Cedar critical editions for digital analysis and research is when I'm involved in.
Thomas Ott
02:53:04 PM
Hello Sarah, regarding your funding question: We offer partial tuition scholarships to all students who are admitted to the MA program. There is no separate application for this aid, and students are considered for funding as part of the admission review process. In addition to this, there are many Fellowships and on campus employment opportunities for students who would like to supplement financial aid offered by the program. My office sends these additional opportunities out within one week of admission decisions being released, so you will not need to seek them out on your own.
And this goes back to some of what doctor Fox mentioned when he talked about the history of Scully critical editions and a philology because the University of Chicago as some of you may know is a leading center and has been for for decades. A leading center of research on ancient and medieval and early modern literature. Ancient medieval whether it's from the Ancient Middle East.
Egyptian hieroglyphs mess, obtaining Canio Form Biblical manuscripts in Hebrew, Greek, and other languages. Classical manuscripts and then right up into a medieval Anglo-Saxon studies and so on, So what we call paleography or manuscript study, or pig refi. The study of inscriptions is something that's been done here for many years and computational methods can be very powerful aids to doing research and in this area, so we formed this.
Group involving 4 different departments and 7 different professors on campus covering everything from the Gilgamesh Epic of the ancient to Babylonians. The Book of Genesis from the Hebrew Bible.
Thomas Ott
02:54:14 PM
I should also note that international students are also eligible for the scholarships offered by the MA program.
Some sand script and S Asian texts from from India. Premodern texts and then just for fun and also to sort of prove a certain point. Some Shakespeare plays because as some of you know who studied Shakespeare printing practices in the late 16th and early 17 century when Shakespeare was first being printed and distributed. I guess that's early 17th century in the quartos and the folios. They were not settled, and what we think of as a print edition was not the same thing then.
As it is now and so you had sometimes from one print run to the next changes being made by the type compositors and you can actually see a kind of manuscript level variation from one printing to the next so it turns out that the methods of paleography of manuscript analysis actually are very relevant for looking at the production. The physical production of some of the earliest. Shakespeare so that's all under Cedar and Cedar is is powered by a platform of computational platform called?
Poker online cultural historical research environment, which I've been involved in for very long time, which stands archaeology. Ancient philology now medieval and even early modern philology for that matter as well as other topics. So this is just to give you an example of some of the faculty run long term projects of a fairly large scale in which students of our University are involved can make contribution and maybe in some cases can develop.
Their own thesis project out of them. I know that for William Brick William Blake. That's something we would be very interested in these are all very active project, so if you were to come. You could you would certainly have the opportunity to participate and it's not a complete list. I should mention there. Others that we could include on this list. So maybe move on to the next.
Yeah, there are plenty of resources on campus. If you were if you were to come and you could take advantage of there's the research Computing Center, which which?
Is off and running workshops in various technologies like our high performance computing? Whatever you might be interested in or whatever you might need for your studies in your thesis. There's a every year. There's the Chicago Colloquium on digital humanities and computer science. That's right. This is a rotates among various universities in the Chicago area this year. It happens to be in yards in Chicago every few years.
Thomas Ott
02:57:13 PM
We will address the rest of your questions shortly! : )
We host it, but every November. There is a kind of conference, which attracts quite a few faculty and students and you would certainly be able to participate in that with a with a poster or paper.
There's the DH form that's right well. The DH Forum Digital Humanities Forum was founded several years ago by.
Colleagues in literary studies, but it goes far beyond digital literary studies and it offers a regular series of visiting speakers on Friday Lunchtime Pizza lunch kind of thing informal.
We're visiting speakers can present and also where students and faculty of our own University can present their work in progress in an informal way and this is housed in our University library? Which.
You should mention also has very strong support for digital scholarship and resources so the DH forum is a kind of faculty student workshop environment that a lot of students would find useful and then finally we should mention the media arts and Design Center, a new facility. A lot of this is new as you can imagine our University is sort of adopting.
Moving in this direction and has put a lot of resources in this area and so now we have a very well equipped media arts and Design Center.
Lukas Matthews
03:01:51 PM
What archival research centers are available at UChicago (besides William Blake)? With partner institutions in Chicago? Is there a scenario where paid or volunteer work at a center informs a thesis?
Thomas Ott
03:06:22 PM
Any other questions?
Lukas Matthews
03:06:29 PM
Thanks for the info. on archives! Related, are any thesis done in direct collaboration with a Humanities professor's research interests rather than electives?
Thomas Ott
03:09:16 PM
We welcome your application, and you can apply here: https://apply-humanities.uchicago.edu/apply/
Thomas Ott
03:09:51 PM
The $90 application fee will be waived for attendees of the webinar! Apply for free using fee waiver code DIGS2020.
Tian Li
03:10:21 PM
When will be the results come out for round one?
Thomas Ott
03:12:11 PM
Hello Tian, I believe that first round admission decisions are released in March.
Tian Li
03:12:28 PM
Thank you so much.
Thomas Ott
03:12:39 PM
Michael Fox - mrfox@uchicago.edu
Thomas Ott
03:12:53 PM
Any last questions?
Thomas Ott
03:13:33 PM
David Schloen - dschloen@uchicago.edu
Benjamin Good
03:14:14 PM
Thank you!
Tian Li
03:14:37 PM
Thank you for presention.