The Doctoral Certificate Program in Digital Humanities offers an opportunity to currently enrolled Ph.D. students interested in adding expertise in digital methodologies and techniques to their research portfolio.

Brown University Library’s Center for Digital Scholarship and the Cogut Institute for the Humanities are pleased to partner together to offer the doctoral certificate, which will provide students with a foundation in digital methods and skills for their research, as well as an understanding of the broader theoretical questions that digital approaches to scholarship offer. The certificate is aimed at Ph.D. students in the humanities and humanistic social sciences though Ph.D. students from all disciplines are welcome to apply. Visit the Center for Digital Scholarship’s Doctoral Certificate page for complete information including how to apply.

Spring 2023 workshops that count towards the doctoral certificate:

Copyright and Image Use

When:

• Wednesday, February 8 at 4 p.m. REGISTER
• Tuesday, March 14 at 12 p.m. REGISTER
• Thursday, April 13 at 10 a.m. REGISTER

Where: Online via Zoom
Instructor: Karen Bouchard, Scholarly Resources Librarian, Art & Architecture
Description:
This class will focus on the use of copyrighted images in an academic setting, including teaching, presentations, and publication. We will also discuss how to locate Creative Commons and public domain images and how to obtain permission to publish. Attention will be paid to such topics as dissertations and image use, how to track down copyright owners, and how to make judgement calls based on the principle of fair use.

Intro to GIS with QGIS

REGISTER
When: Saturday, February 25 at 10:15 a.m. – 5:30 p.m.
Where: Digital Scholarship Lab, Rockefeller Library
Instructor: Frank Donnelly, Head of the GIS and Data Program
Description:
This day-long, hands-on workshop provides a thorough introduction to geographic information systems (GIS) using the free and open source software QGIS. You will learn how to navigate a GIS interface, perform geographic analyses, and create thematic maps. Participants must bring a laptop and install the software prior to the workshop day. More details.

Recording, Editing, and Publishing Podcasts

REGISTER
When: Tuesday, March 28 at 1 – 2:30 p.m.
Where: Digital Studio, Rockefeller Library
Instructor: Patrick Rashleigh, Head of Digital Scholarship Technology Services
Description:
Come to the Library’s digital studio to get an introduction to recording, editing, and publishing a podcast in the Library’s own recording room (which you are free to book for your own projects). It’s not hard to get started, and in 90 minutes we’ll get you up and running, even if (ESPECIALLY if) you are a complete beginner.

Wikidata for Digital Humanities

REGISTER
When: Wednesday, April 5 at 1 – 2 p.m.
Where: Online via Zoom
Instructor: Mairelys Lemus-Rojas, Head of Open Metadata Production and Initiatives
Description:
The Wikidata for Digital Humanities workshop will offer attendees an opportunity to learn about Wikidata — an open platform of structured linked data. This crowdsourced, language-independent knowledge base stores a wide range of subjects and releases its data under an open license, allowing their reuse. The low barrier for interacting with the Wikidata platform makes it a great candidate for linked open data (LOD) representation and facilitates collaboration from the global community of users. This session will provide an overview of Wikidata as well as selected tools and services that can be used to explore, contribute, and export data.

Gathering and Analyzing Social Media Data for Research

REGISTER
When: Wednesday, May 3 at 3 p.m.
Where: Online via Zoom
Instructor: Ashley Champagne, Director of the Center for Digital Scholarship and Lecturer in Humanities
Description:
This workshop will offer attendees an overview of scraping social media posts on Twitter and Facebook, as well as how to download the information in csv format, clean it, and do basic analysis such as word frequency.

Applying

Please apply to the Digital Humanities Doctoral Certificate Program using UFunds. To access the application, log in to UFunds, and select Doctoral Certificates, then Digital Humanities. Applications are accepted and reviewed on a rolling basis throughout the year. (Deadlines in UFunds are administrative: a new application cycle will open as soon as the previous one comes to end.)   

The applicant’s home department DGS approval is required. Please note that the program is open only to Ph.D. students currently enrolled at Brown University. For more information, please contact Professor Steven Lubar.

The DH Salon series is a regular, informal presentation series bringing together digital humanities work across the Brown University campus.

Spring 2023 Schedule

Select Tuesdays at 3 p.m. on Zoom or in the Digital Scholarship Lab at the Rockefeller Library.

February 14 – Register here

“Using Scalar to Illuminate the Fragments Controversy”

• Jonathan Fine, Lecturer in German Studies

The Fragments Controversy was the most significant theological conflagration of the German Enlightenment. This Scalar project is the first introduction to the controversy that pairs commentary with digital copies of the main texts. It features texts digitalized previously by European libraries as well as digitalizations especially commissioned for this project. It takes advantage of numerous features available to users of Scalar to display the many intertextual networks in operation. It additionally includes visualizations such as timelines and maps that show the longevity and wide dissemination of Lessing’s polemics.

Jonathan Fine is a lecturer in the German Studies Department at Brown. He studied German, comparative literature, and critical theory at New York University and the University of California, Irvine. He previously taught at Gettysburg College and Pacific Lutheran University and held a postdoctoral fellowship at the Freie Universität Berlin.

February 28 – Register here

“Digital Herbarium Project (HerbUX)”

• Patrick Rashleigh, Head of Digital Scholarship Technology Services
• Rebecca Kartzinel, Lecturer in Biology, Interim Director of the Plant Environmental Center, Director of the Brown University Herbarium

The Herbarium User Experience (HerbUX) project is designing an interface to critical digitized herbarium collections with non-expert audiences (such as students, museum visitors, and the general public) in mind, for use in classrooms, museums, and other public spaces. This interface will be easy to use, encourage non-directed exploratory browsing, directly support pedagogical methodologies and learning outcomes, and be aesthetically engaging.

March 14 – Register here

“Unsettling Boundaries: Envisioning a Database for Caribbean Feminist Creative Writing from the 1990s”

• Warren Harding, Diversity in Digital Publishing Postdoctoral Research Associate (2022–2023)

In this discussion, Warren Harding will share insights and progress on creating a digital database of Caribbean feminist creative writing from the 1990s. He will reflect on the central questions, structure, scope, and challenges to coordinating this collaborative project.

Warren Harding (he, him) is currently the Diversity in Digital Publishing Postdoctoral Research Associate at Brown University Digital Publications. He holds a Ph.D. in Africana Studies from Brown, and is working on his manuscript tentatively titled, “Migratorial Reading: Black Caribbean Women Writers and the Work of Literary Cultures.” In Fall 2023, Dr. Harding will begin his appointment as an Assistant Professor in the Department of English, General Literature, and Rhetoric at Binghamton University.

March 21 – Register here

“Interpretive Frameworks and Visualizations of Historical Vietnamese Texts and Drawings”

• Cindy Nguyen, David Laidlaw, and Kailiang Fu

How do digital humanities and computational methods open up alternative interpretive frameworks for historical texts? This will be a conversation sharing how collaborative humanities visualization contributes towards critical and transparent research analysis and communication. As a case study, Nguyen, Fu, and Laidlaw examine a 1909-1910 multilingual visual encyclopedia of Vietnamese crafts, cultural practices, and technologies using a hybrid methodology of close reading, content analysis, and vector space models. As a focused case study, we conducted a layered analysis of visual-textual representations of gender and labor, with a focus on childbirth and female childcare. This project envisions decolonial interpretive frameworks that center historically marginalized agency, invisible authorship, and non-linear narrative forms.

Cindy Nguyen is a Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, San Diego in the departments of Literature and History. She specializes in the history of Southeast Asian print culture, digital humanities, and libraries. She was a Brown University Cogut International Humanities Fellow from 2019 – 2021. To learn more about her historical scholarship, teaching, and digital humanities work, see her website cindyanguyen.com.

David H. Laidlaw is a professor of computer science at Brown University. His research interests revolve around visualization and modeling applications of computer graphics and computer science to other scientific disciplines. He is working with researchers in, for example, archaeology, developmental neurobiology, evolutionary biology, medical imaging, neuropathology, orthopedics, art, cognitive science, remote sensing, and fluid mechanics to develop new computational applications and to understand their strengths and weaknesses.

Kailiang (Kail) Fu is a senior at Brown studying Applied Math – CS and History. He is interested in Asian culture, data visualization, and virtual reality.

April 18 – Register here

“New Frameworks to Preserve and Present on Born-Digital Multimedia Art”

• Ashley Champagne, Director of CDS
• Patrick Rashleigh, Head of Digital Scholarship Technology Services
• Cody Carvel, Digital Scholarship Technologist
• John Cayley, Professor of Literary Arts
• Hilary Wang, Digital Archivist
• Andrew Majcher, Head of Digital Services and Records Management

This project is developing new frameworks for the long-term preservation and presentation of born-digital art with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts. Preserving born-digital work can be challenging because platforms, hardware, and software are often updated or replaced, changing and even degrading how the original art is displayed. Through “containerization” — a portable, low-cost method of preserving and presenting the code, operating system, and text for experimental, born-digital art — future readers will still be able to view, distribute, collaborate on, and experiment with the original work even if its infrastructure has been altered or discontinued. In this presentation, we’ll share a project update on the models we’re drafting to preserve innovative, experimental born-digital and born-computational art.

April 25 – RESCHEDULED – Register here

“Building GeoPACHA, A Collaborative Digital Platform for “Virtual” Survey in Archaeology”

• Parker VanValkenburgh, Associate Professor of Anthropology

The Geospatial Platform for Andean Culture, History and Archaeology (GeoPACHA) — see geopacha.org — is a tool developed in collaboration with Dr. Steven Wernke of Vanderbilt, designed to facilitate the identification of archaeological sites and features over extensive areas of South America through “virtual survey” of satellite and historical aerial imagery. In this presentation, I will briefly discuss the project’s problem orientation and design, before moving on to reflect on how its implementation during the global pandemic created both new challenges and opportunities for collaborative research and pedagogy. While virtual archaeological survey is no replacement for conventional field-based methodologies, it offers new possibilities for collecting data at scale, while also scaling up international collaboration and student learning in ways that are nearly impossible to emulate in the excavation trench and the laboratory.

Parker VanValkenburg is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at Brown. His research and publications employ archaeological methods to address anthropological research questions, with a particular focus on the long-term impacts of colonialism and imperialism on Indigenous people and environments in Andean Peru. In this work, he draws amply on digital methodologies, including the tools of geographic information systems (GIS), to map and analyze social, political, and environmental change in space and time. He also applies a critical lens to the study of digital media and methodologies, asking not just how these techniques facilitate archaeological scholarship, but how digital mediation transforms the ways we work with collaborators, research subjects, students, and public audiences.

May 9 – Register here

Roundtable: “Artificial Intelligence in Humanities Research”

• Lindsey Caplan, Assistant Professor of History of Art and Architecture
• Holly Case, Professor of History
• Kiri Miller, Professor of American Studies
• Sydney Skybetter, Senior Lecturer in Theater and Performance Studies

New AI tools hold out the promise of new techniques for research, writing and presentations in the humanities, as well as new challenges to originality and ethics. A group of Brown faculty will consider some of the history and future of AI in the humanities.