Introduction

Foundations for the fresh digital humanist.

Digital humanities can be defined as a scholarly community of practice in which humanists use computational methodologies to solve a range of research problems.

Typically, humanists are scholars in fields such as history, literary studies, religious studies, music, archaeology, philosophy, and linguistics.

They are trained in the qualitative research methods of these humanistic disciplines and then adopt computational methods that require an expertise in computer programming.

This suite of workshops is designed to introduce humanists to computational methods. The goal is for participants to gain an understanding of the role that computer programming can play in completing a number of basic humanistic research tasks and the capacity to begin to use a core set of computing platforms.

Participants will not learn to be computer programmers–– these skills require extensive training and experience to acquire. However, participants will be able to use some basic tools and to have preliminary conversations about computational methods and tools, conversations that may enable them to decide whether they wish to further integrate these strategies into their own work.