Digital Humanities in the Classroom

How do we integrate DH into the classroom in ways that are substantive, critical, inclusive, and acknowledge the confines of the four walls of the room? How do we navigate the always unique and often complex challenges posed by DH instruction in a semester? This course will focus on strategies for balancing curriculum and technology with the needs and expectations students have of a class.

Each day will pair classroom-tested tools with critical approaches, through readings, discussions, and hands-on exercises with a particular focus on teaching pedagogy. Central to our approach will be addressing issues of accessibility, sustainability, and the labor required to create a digital object, as well as the political dimensions of our tools and infrastructure. Participants will learn about common tools for digital exhibits, web-mapping, emergent technologies, and collaboration. Moreover, participants will leave with concrete strategies for incorporating these tools into their own contexts and curricula. For example, we will show you how to design project charters and work plans to document your project. This course will be particularly beneficial to those starting to explore DH but are unsure how to implement these technologies and methods in the classroom.

Instructors:
Amanda Licastro (she/her) is the Head of Digital Scholarship and Visiting Associate Professor of English at Swarthmore College. Amanda also serves as the pedagogical director of the Book Traces project, and is an Andrew W. Mellon Senior Fellow in Critical Bibliography. Her research explores the intersection of technology and writing, including book history, dystopian literature, and digital humanities. The grant-funded project on integrating Virtual Reality across the curriculum that Amanda developed and executed at Stevenson University was awarded the Paul Fortier Prize at the 2017 Digital Humanities conference. Composition and Big Data, her collection co-edited with Ben Miller, was published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in September 2021, and you can find her work in journals such as Communication Design Quarterly, Hybrid Pedagogy and Kairos, as well as collections such as Critical Digital Pedagogy and Digital Reading and Writing in Composition Studies.

Roberto Vargas is the Head of Research and Instruction at Swarthmore College. He is also responsible for supporting, developing and maintaining digital scholarship projects. Originally from Ciudad Juarez, Mexico and now residing in Philadelphia, he moves from English to Spanish on a daily basis and from Mexico to the US regularly. He has an MLIS from Drexel university and he is currently pursuing a Masters of Philosophy, Art, and Critical Thought from the European Graduate School with a focus on the ideas of Fred Moten. Wish him luck.

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