How it works?

This course will be in person. Every day you will have one or two readings (aprox. 10 pages) OR a hands-on tutorial to be done before class. Readings will be available in Blackboard and they come together with a reading guide with a set of questions. Also, they will be annotated in Blackboard through Hypothes.is, and then discussed in class. The hands-on exercises are mostly done at home, while class time will be devoted to troubleshooting and discussion.

Technology: the course has many technical components, but no previous computer programming or web design experience is required. However, it is crucial that you demonstrate willingness to engage with technology, meaning that you are willing to experiment, try, and fail. Sometimes you will get stuck and maybe get frustrated because “things don’t work” in your machines, but you don’t have to despair: Investigate for yourself, try to fix it on your own (google it, youtube it), ask for help from your peers, etc. This is a very particular course and maybe you have never taken a course such as this one, but it is ok. It is ok, for example, to not always understand the readings; in fact, at some point, you will ask yourself how the use of certain technologies are connected to literature or to a Spanish course. Our work as a groups needs to be the catalyst to overpass these feelings. It is ok as well if you don’t success at once with the hands-on exercises, as we say in Spanish, nadie nace sabiendo.

Infrastructure: All the information, updates, assignments and due dates of this course will be in Blackboard. Materials are organized by weeks and days, and it is always clear what you need to do before every class. Finally, for all your writing assignments we will use Google Drive. I will add you to the folder and you will have to sign in with your UM CaneID and password.

Grading

Grade Breakdown:

  • 5% - Attendance - Come to class! (see Policy)
  • 20% - Participation - Do the readings, prepare your answers, discuss them in class, engage in debates, give feedback AND do the hands-on tutorial and exercises
  • 20% - 4 Essays (min. 750 words) - The essays are delivered via Google Drive. The instructor gives you feedback and corrections, and the final grade is given upon correction of the essay. If you don’t do the corrections, you get the original grade which is always less.
  • 20% - 6 Digital Assignments - When you have a hands-on tutorial to complete, you will normally deliver the outcome as the digital assignment.
  • 15% - 4 Oral Presentations - Templates and specific rubrics will be given and you will use an slide show
  • 20% - Digital Portfolio - The portfolio serves to document your work, to reflect on the topics we have seen in class, and to showcase your outcomes.

Deadlines:

  • Essays: For every one of these essays you will be given specific instructions and you will deliver them in our Google Drive Folder. They will be written in Spanish, and the final grade will be set after you have completed the corrections.
  1. September 8, 2021: Describe a data experience OR Imagine a digital humanities project of your won?
  2. October 18: Narrate on your experience with encoding and close reading
  3. November 10: Reflections on distant reading (preparation for Essay 4)
  4. December 1: Digging and formulating a research question in a COVID-19 corpus
  • Oral Presentations:: Oral presentations must not exceed 8-10 minutes and need to stick to the items that you will be asked to analyzed.
  1. August 30, 2021: Presentation of a Digital Humanities project following the template.
  2. September 27: Presentation of a Digital Edition project following the template.
  3. October 13: Imagine a digital edition for Leonor López de Córdoba’s Memoires.
  4. December 6: Digging and formulating a research question in a COVID-19 corpus.

  • Digital assignments are also indicated in the calendar and they normally are the final outcome of the previous exercises that you will be required to do.

  • Portfolio: The first version will be created on September 15 and the final version will be submitted before December 11. The Portfolio will require you some more writing (e.g. About section). During the course you will need to update the portfolio and upload your essays as entry blog posts. During my weekly office hours I will be available to troubleshoot with you.

Late assignments

During this course you will have different types of assignments. Some of them will require more time, such as the essays; others are hands-on and digital exercises that will be delivered through GitHub. They are due at the beginning of the class or as it appears in the rubric for every specific task. If you need more time for the assignment, you should notify me 24 hour before the deadline. If you deliver it late with no notice, you will lose 10% of the assignment grade.

Attendance and participation

Attendance is mandatory: you must come to class and come prepared. Since this course will be mainly a discussion-based class and there will be hands-on work, your presence is essential. If you don’t come to class, you are missing the essence of the course and you probably will have issues advancing with the following topic, which eventually might disrupt the collective work of the group.

Professor will check on you every class (if you have doubts about your attendance, you can ask me). You can miss only 3 classes without penalty, more than 3 absences will lower your grade. You do not need to send me official notes (e.g. certificate from your physician, your mentor, etc.), I extend you the benefit of the doubt, but please be honest with yourself, with me, and with your peers. If you miss the class, please write to the instructor for further indications.

If you are late more than 15 minutes, I will mark it as half an absence. To be late in a course as this, where we are few students, lateness can hinder the group dynamic, so don’t be late!

You need to bring the materials to class and your laptop, and complete the readings, do the exercises, and be ready to discuss them. It is essential that you participate in class discussions, and that you engage with the instructor and with your peers in a thoughtful and respectful way. I insist: Participation is essential. This is a small, discussion-based and hands- on class, so you can take the opportunity to ask, express yourselves and delve in any issue you might encounter. Being respectful also means that you pay full attention to what it is done and said in the classroom and that you set aside any distractions (such as cellphones, or using your computer for answering emails, chatting, or browsing internet for issues that are not related to the class). The content of this course is progressive, so if you didn’t do step 1 and missed one class, you won’t be able to follow step 2. It is on you to catch up, it is your responsibility to ask your colleagues about what you missed.

Quarantines & Others: In case you quarantine, you must contact me right away and we will find an asynchronous solution. The class won’t be recorded, except under exceptional circumstances (e.g. five of six student must quarantine).

The Language of the Class

The course will be taught in Spanish but readings and materials will be either in English or Spanish. All the writing and oral presentations will be in Spanish. I expect you to improve your Spanish writing and oral skills, therefore you will need to engage with your writing and your oral participation in class.

Although the language of the course is Spanish, we can talk informally in class in English. The important thing is that you understand everything, even if we need to switch language to smooth the learning process. I want you to express yourself clearly and freely.

This is not a language course, however if you have language doubts (e.g. don’t understand a word, an expression, you don’t know how to use a certain word, a grammar problem, etc.), don’t be afraid to ask, I will do my best to resolve them! A tricky scenario for you will be when you are given a reading in English and you need to discuss it in Spanish. I recommend you that you will always keep an eye on the equivalences and translation of the new terms that we will be learning (e.g. encoding > codificación).

Tutorials

We will follow many online tutorials, namely from The Programming historian, available in Spanish and in English https://programminghistorian.org/es/

You will have other options, such as https://www.linkedin.com/learning/, but I will list them as we move forward within the course.

Software

Besides Blackboard and Google Drive, you will install and work with these softwares and platforms:

• Oxygen, https://www.oxygenxml.com/: UM has purchased a license that will be distributed in Blackboard. • GitHub will be used to share code, and GitHub Pages and Jekyll to create your Portfolios. • Hypothesis, https://web.hypothes.is/

Other software you will be using:

• AntConc, https://www.laurenceanthony.net/software/antconc/ • Voyant, https://voyant-tools.org/ • Anaconda - Jupyter notebooks, https://jupyter.org/install • Google Maps, https://www.google.com/maps • Palladio, http://hdlab.stanford.edu/palladio/

I am available for you

During this course you might encounter some issues and you will need to troubleshoot: I’m always available for you. You can come to my office, my door is always open, and I will be more than happy to work with you. Remember, office / student working hours: Monday - Wednesday: 11am-1pm, 5-6pm. I will also be available by appointment (Zoom or in person).

Textbook and materials

All our class materials will be available in Blackboard, so you don’t need to purchase any book. One of the texts we will use is this one:

  • Johanna Drucker, David Kim, Iman Salehian, and Anthony Bushong. Introduction to Digital Humanities. Concepts, Methods, and Tutorials for Students and Instructors. UCLA, 2014. https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/11649226

Extra Credit

You will be able to get extra credit by attending different activities at UM or by completing other online tutorials which I will recommend you during the semester.

Honor Code

For the Academic integrity and plagiarism I recommend you to check on the UM Honor Code: https://doso.studentaffairs.miami.edu/_assets/pdf/honor-council/the-undergraduate-honor- code.pdf Be serious about it, I will not accept any work that has been copied from the internet. If you use someone else’s work you must give full credit to the authors by citing them correctly.