Autumn 2023
Core Courses
TXTDS 402: Book Arts: Proseminar in Printing, Bibliography and Special Collections
Credits: 5
GE: A&H
For info and an add code, contact Professor Geoffrey Turnovsky
Description: This small seminar will offer students interested in the Textual Studies and Digital Humanities minor a chance to discover Special Collections and to get hands-on experience working with historical and archival materials as well as printing with a letterpress.
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TXTDS 403: Archives, Data, and Databases: Early Chinese Texts and Their Datafication. Offered jointly with: ASIAN 498 D
Credits: 5
GE: A&H and SSc
Instructor Professor Gian Duri Rominger
Description: This course combines the study of early Chinese texts, stemming from the pre-imperial and early imperial periods (up to 220 CE), with digital humanities tools and methods. It will provide an overview of a selection of the most classical pieces of premodern Chinese philosophy and literature. Additionally, this course will serve as an introduction to computational methods and digital tools in the study of Chinese texts. We will cover the challenges and rewards of working with premodern Chinese language materials using computer systems originally designed for contemporary Western languages and consider ways that digital humanities methods can lead to fresh insights in Chinese literature.
This course has three goals: it familiarizes students with early Chinese texts and some of the most pertinent trends in the study of early Chinese textuality; it teaches computational techniques applicable to other topics and fields; it proposes ways to think through premodern textual heritage in novel ways.
While this class will be taught in English, students will require some background knowledge of Chinese. No technical skills or programming experience are necessary for this course. For questions or an add code, contact text@uw.edu
Electives
TXTDS 267 A: Data Science and the Humanities
Offered jointly with: ENGL 267 A
Credits: 5
GE: A&H
Instructor: Professor Anna Preus
Description: Do humanistic questions have a place in the field of data science? Conversely, are methods from data science useful for the study of literary classics, famous works of art, or historical debates? And how can humanities approaches help us address issues of bias and exclusion in an increasingly technology-driven world? This course tackles such broad issues while offering an introduction to a range of approaches and methodologies within the growing field of humanities data science. Topics will include data bias, text digitization, digital archiving, data visualization, modeling, and computational analysis. During the course, we will work with and analyze a broad range of digital resources, including online libraries, digital editions, data visualization platforms, text analysis packages, and creative projects. We will use and analyze these digital tools and work with datasets. The final project will involve conducting an original analysis of a dataset using digital tools. This course will take place in person.
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ITAL 262 A: Dante’s Divine Comedy
Offered jointly with: C LIT 361 A
Credits: 5
GE: A&H
Instructor: Professor Beatrice Arduini
Description: Introduces Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy. Covers Dante’s journey through the afterlife. Explores questions about the nature of evil, the possibility for spiritual improvement, and the experience of true happiness. Identifies parallels with the modern day. Taught in English.
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AFRAM 360 A: Black Digital Studies
Credits: 5
GE: SSc and DIV
Instructor: Professor LaShawnDa Pittman
Description: Bridges and intersects two interdisciplinary fields – black studies and digital humanities. Attention to knowledge production. Role of archives, collections, research centers, the black press, and digital technology. Ideas related to power, memory, resistance, perspective and respectability politics in storytelling and control of the vehicles used to do so.
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ART H 400/500: Art History and Criticism — Re-Reading American Photographs
Credits: 5
GE: A&H
Instructor: Professor Juliet Sperling
Description: This seminar-style, discussion-based course surveys new scholarship work to untangle the history of US photography from these ideologies of nationalism, imperialism, and exceptionalism.
Courses on special topics, frequently by visiting faculty, which cannot be offered on a continuing basis. Consult art history office for subjects offered.
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ASIAN 498 D: Special Topics — Early Chinese Texts and their Datafication
Credits: 5
GE: A&H
Instructor: Professor Gian Duri Rominger
Description: This course introduces students to early Chinese texts, stemming from the pre-imperial and early imperial periods (up to 220 ce). It will provide an overview of some of the most classical pieces of premodern Chinese philosophy and literature, and introduce students to some of the most pertinent trends in the study of early Chinese literature.
Additionally, this course serves as an introduction to applying computational methods to study Chinese literature. It will familiarize students with various digital tools, algorithms, and datasets that have been recently developed, and we will utilize those to gain fresh insights into premodern Chinese literature.
We will cover the challenges and rewards of working with premodern Chinese language materials using computer systems originally designed for contemporary Western languages, and ways computational methods can expedite research in this area. No technical skills or programming experience are necessary for this course.
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Graduate Sections
TXTDS 503: Introduction to Data Science: Applications in Library Science and Humanities Research
Offered jointly with: LIS 572
Instructor: Professor Melanie Walsh
Description: Textual archives and databases; their historical construction and role as mediators to the past, bringing light to and obscuring/reshaping the past. Digitization of archives and repositories. Transformation of historical texts into data, which can be searched, processed, and analyzed in new ways. Techniques for building, organizing, and analyzing archives and databases.
Course counts towards the Graduate Certificate in Textual and Digital Studies.
Winter 2024
Core Courses
TXTDS 401: Text Technologies: Textual Trails — Archival Legacies from Medieval and Early Modern Iberia
Offered jointly with: SPS 491
Credits: 5
GE: A&H and SSc
Professor Juan Pablo Rodríguez Argente
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Course counts as a Core Course in Textual Studies and Digital Humanities Minor
Description: The Iberian Peninsula has, throughout its history, been the stage for encounters and clashes of a long list of cultures, a province of empires, and the origin of empires. As a crossroads, it has also been a privileged setting for textual encounters, a unique stage for the production and storage of documents.
This course aims to trace the path of some episodes of this history. From the lush Caliphate of Cordoba to the cultural project of Alfonso X. From the establishment of the Archivo de Indias, where the first European movements in America are recorded, to the project of Hernando Colón, the son of Christopher Columbus, to build the largest library of his time.
Sometimes, the paths lead to the United States. How is it that we find extensive collections of parchment and medieval Iberian documents in its universities? Other times, the archives vanish in smoke or in the stomachs of rats and worms, reflecting the dire consequences of the Napoleonic occupation or collateral damage from the desamortización process undertaken in the 1800s with the intention of modernizing Spain.
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TXTDS 404/TXTDS 504: Texts, Publics, and Publication
Credits: 5
GE: A&H and SSc [for TXTDS 404]
Professor Geoffrey Turnovsky
View in MyPlan: TXTDS 404 and TXTDS 504
TXTDS 404 counts as a Core Course in Textual Studies and Digital Humanities Minor
TXTDS 504 counts towards the Graduate Certificate in Textual and Digital Studies
Description: This course offers a hands-on exploration of the nature of texts, of the complexities of transforming and working with historical texts as data; of the practice of editing in a digital environment using historical printed sources, and of issues connected to publication, visualization, interface, reading, and access. Students will work in teams to develop digital editions based on printed or manuscript sources, potentially working with items or collections in UW Special Collections.
In the course, we’ll learn the essentials of digital text editing and encoding, including transcription in XML using the widely-adopted guidelines of the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) along with protocols for collaboration. We’ll also look at text processing using XML-based languages like XPath, XSLT and XQuery, and basic techniques for web publishing. No prior experience with any of this is required or expected.
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Electives
ITAL 354 A: Travels, Migrations, and Exile. Encounters with the Other in Textual and Digital Archives
Offered jointly with: C LIT 361 A
Credits: 5
GE: A&H and DIV
Professor Beatrice Arduini
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Course counts as an elective in Textual Studies and Digital Humanities Minor
Description: This course examines a variety of attitudes toward poverty in the Italian Middle Ages, from traditional ‘negative’ views of poverty as a disgrace, to the recognition of the value of poverty as ‘unrecognized wealth’ in the Christian tradition and its political implications, to the shame and humiliation associated with incarceration and slavery. In addition to gaining historical background on the 14th and 15th centuries, students will engage in a digital project exploring how to archive the literary and visual tradition associated with these themes.
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NEAR E 351A/MELC 351 A: Royal Literature in the Bible and the Ancient Near East
Credits: 5
GE: SSc and DIV
Professor Kathryn Medill
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Course counts as an elective in Textual Studies and Digital Humanities Minor
Spring 2024
Core Courses
TXTDS 413: Texts, Data, and Computation: Introduction to Cultural Analytics
Offered jointly with: INFO 498
Credits: 5
GE: A&H and RSN
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Course counts as a Core Course in Textual Studies and Digital Humanities Minor
Electives
TXTDS 224: Histories and Futures of the Book, Texts, and Reading: Copies, Copyright and Plagiarism
Offered jointly with: FRENCH 224
Credits: 5
GE: A&H and SSc
Professor Geoffrey Turnovsky
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Course counts as an elective in Textual Studies and Digital Humanities Minor
TXTDS 267 A: Data Science and the Humanities
Offered jointly with: ENGL 267 A
Credits: 5
GE: A&H
Professor Gian Duri Rominger
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Course counts as an elective in Textual Studies and Digital Humanities Minor
MELC 340: Translation Studies: Gulliver’s Travels Among Muslims and Jews
Credits: 5
GE: A&H
Professor Canan Bolel
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Course counts as an elective in Textual Studies and Digital Humanities Minor
Capstone — offered all quarters (including summer)
TXTDS 405: Capstone in Textual Studies and Digital Humanities
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Description: Capstone (culminating experience) for the Textual Studies and Digital Humanities minor.