Digital Humanities II: Integrating computational thinking into the humanities curriculum

Principal Investigator
Dr. Anthony Schiappa, Comparative Media Studies/Writing; Prof. James Paradis, Comparative Media Studies/Writing; Kurt Fendt, Comparative Media Studies/Writing
Fund: d'Arbeloff Fund
Funding Period: AY2019
Department/Lab/Center: Comparative Media Studies/Writing

This proposal seeks to develop, teach, and assess Digital Humanities II (DHII), a new project based subject in CMSW over the course of 18 months. DHII extends and refines the existing Digital Humanities I subject (CMS633/833) to form a two semester long core Digital Humanities curriculum in SHASS. Goal is to familiarize MIT students with computational thinking within a humanities context and engage them in algorithmic reasoning while also developing critical analysis and reasoning skills in the humanities.DHII uses a combination of collaborative class projects using real world humanities data and tailored theoretical readings to help students develop an understanding of new modes of computationally driven humanities scholarship, practice data manipulation, representation, and communication to diverse audiences, and stimulate a multidisciplinary approach to solving real-world problems.