Kurzus nemzetközi vendég- és részidős hallgatóknak

Kar

Bölcsészettudományi Kar

Szervezet

BTK Történeti Intézet

Kód

BA-ERA-IHS-S-12

Cím

Digital Humanities

Tervezett félév

Tavaszi

Meghirdetve

2023/24/2

ECTS

6

Nyelv

en

Tantárgy tartalma

Intended courses Digital Humanities       Short Description Can we work with digitized versions of documents? Why digital books are different than printed ones in terms of historical sources? Should historians still go to the archives? Throughout our course, we will work with various methodologies concerning digital primary sources. Primary sources do not necessarily mean only written archives, but as this course will show, the conversations, Whatsapp talks, Instagram posts, funny letters and diaries can equally be considered as valid sources for historians. We will cover a broad range of questions related to thinking in historical narratives in relationship with digital humanities(e.g. how to contextualize, contrast and colligate sources; what are the possible forms of relationship between events; why it is important to reflect upon our own biases in the digital context). Students will have to prepare for the close reading and analysis of selected digital source texts for each session. No prior knowledge in programming is needed. As well, students are not expected to have an expertise in any historical discipline.   Learning Outcomes and Teaching Materials. This course aims to scrutinize the main directions in Digital Humanities. As a premise, the course will start  with the assumption that Digital Humanities is the nexus between methods (oral history, literary history, gender history, for instance), epistemologies and practical approaches (public history). As learning outcomes, by the end of the course, students will be able to distinguish between the main scholarly direction in Digital Humanities; understand the different levels of data management in DH:  textual mining, data representation, data dissemination, data archival. Understand the back-end principles of a digital collection. understand the archival principles and metadata creation for  types of primary sources, such as oral history interviews, archives, fanzines, autobiographies. Acquire the skills in using AI ethically in public history. Foster a critical understanding of the ethical implications of digital technologies in the humanities, as well as their limits. Cultivate the skills acquired to enhance their existing project. In what concerns teaching materials, we will explore different platforms and apps that directly focus on digital humanities. Throughout the sessions, students should come with their laptops or mobile phones. In case of access-related issues, the students should reach out to the instructor for additional support. In what concerns literature, throughout the sessions we will heavily relate to the works edited in Anglo-Saxon academia in the past years. The intention is not to provide a comprehensive bibliography, as the scholarship on this topic is weekly updating. Besides the linguistic advantage, using this extensive scholarship will help students understand the debates from a broader perspective. In terms of access, we will try to favour as much as possible Open Access sources. Structure   Week 1. Documenting the dribs and drabs: Coptic Old Testament In this session, we will discuss the relationship between written documents and digitalization. The digital turn opened new ways to work with a written document: working with written testimonies does not always mean only to read the text. At the same time, essential information might hide around in hidden places. In order to understand the primary source, we need to understand how it was created, who created it, as well as  its main purpose, as well as the ways in which AI reads it. This session will map how the digital turn affected the different types of documents:pergaments, books, manuscripts, images, magazines, music sheets, objects, audio and video recordings, maps, legal documents. We will also focus on the specific tools needed to work with them by focusing on the case of the Coptic manuscripts. Virtually pieces from the same page were archived in different collections- we will see how the digital turn managed to give new meanings. Primary sources: https://coptot.manuscriptroom.com/  Required readings: Primary Sources- An Introductory Guide, Seton Hall Libraries, Seton Hall Universities- available at https://library.shu.edu/primarysources How and Why We Read: Crash Course English Literature (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSYw502dJNY ) Introduction, The Art of Reading in the Middle Ages in  https://www.europeana.eu/en/exhibitions/the-art-of-reading-in-the-middle-ages/introduction  Optional Video Materials What is paleography and why study it? Available on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poRR09Jwtz8  [Basic-Optional] Chapter 1.2: Induction and background theories. Philosophies of Humanities [Advanced- Optional] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRx3jvC918&list=PLPeStI124dee1ByfcDzRvPxKDNb0GQjmo&index=2 Codicology and Paleogaphy, available on     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_r3EQtyYSCw [Advanced-Optional] Week 2. Documenting the War: Analogue and Digital What means talking about past? Is there a way to fully reconstruct what has happened during a conflict? Throughout this session, we will compare and contrast two conflicts: the Peloponnesian war with the war between Russia and Ukraine. By comparing and contrasting how data gathering happened during the two conflicts, we will consider how historical thinking is situated in its broader social context. We will talk about the subject matter and the production of history-writing as well as the reasons for producing historical narratives. Primary source to discuss: Thucydide, Hammond, Martin., Rhodes, P. J. (2009). The Peloponnesian War. Oxford, Oxford University Press. Book I, 1-22, pages 3-12. https://www.lvivcenter.org/en/updates/documenting-the-war-2/  Required readings: Alun Munslow (2007) Why should historians write about the nature of history (rather than just do it)?, Rethinking History, 11:4, 613-625 Ginzburg, C. (1991) ‘Checking the Evidence: The Judge and the Historian’, Critical Inquiry, 18(1), pp. 79–92. Optional Video The Persians and the Greeks: Crash Course World History 5, available on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-mkVSasZIM [Basic Level-Optional]   Week 3. Documenting the Cold War: Knowledge Production The previous sessions revealed the importance of the source materiality and the impact of Digital Huamnities. This session we will focus on the we will move to the interpretation of sources, another key topic. The question at stake will be: To what extent the digital humanities changed the way we investigate the historical sources? Are there multiple ways to interpret the facts? This session will use as case study the Cold War studies. Through the analysis of autobiographies and letters, the aim is to understand how sources can contradict each other. One of the core discussions will be around the notion of objectivity.  Based on this, we will also make a distinction between the truth of the sources — and how historians interpret the facts of turbulent times by documenting the various pieces of information.   Primary Sources: https://modernidadesdescentralizadas.com/home/ http://cultural-opposition.eu/ Stephen Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 221–22, 349–50; Sarah Davies, Popular Opinion in Stalin’s Russia (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 39, 72, 134–35, 139, 173–74. Irina Kakhovskaya, “Memories" (Original in "Our Fate” in An End to Silence, translated by George Saunders and edited by Stephen Cohen (New York: Norton, 1982), 81–90; ) Required reading: Dorothy Kim, Adeline Koh (eds.), Alternative Historiographies of the Digital Humanities (New York: Brooklyn, 2021), available here: https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/49672  Week 4. Documenting the Voices: Oral History (I) To check facts, historiography insisted on written sources until the 20th century. Starting from the 1920s, different fields noted the colossal importance of oral testimonies. Disciplines like sociology and anthropology began to investigate cultures that had no written sources (slums, various tribes, prisoners, punkers, hippies, boxers etc.). Initially, historians were reluctant to this approach, but starting from the 1960s, oral history became a valid way of historical investigation. In our meeting, we will discuss how to interpret these sources, how to deal with the data inconsistency, and to what extent the issue of orality in the discourse is relevant. The aim is to discuss three key components of oral history: co-authoring stories, establishing trust, and sources and misremembering. Primary Sources: Veronica Parochi, Itzhak Grossman. Interviewers: Gay Block, Malka Drucker. Oral history interview with Itzhak Grossman and Veronica Parochi - Collections Search - United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (1987 July 01). Check first the interview, available at: https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn506515  (Links to an external site.) Then, the summary, https://collections.ushmm.org/oh_findingaids/RG-50.012.0032_tcn_en.pdf  Readings Luisa Passerini, Work ideology and consensus under Italian fascism (53-63) in Ritchie, D. A. et al. (2011) The Oxford handbook of oral history. Oxford University Press. (53-63) Alessandro Portelli, What makes oral history different in Ritchie, D. A. et al. (2011) The Oxford handbook of oral history. Oxford University Press. (63-75)   Optional Videos Alessandro Portelli – Speaking of Oral History. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEToq3T_LZQ  (Links to an external site.) Week 5. Documenting the Voices: Oral History (II) While a considerable part of digital humanities deals with data created around written texts, sound and visual records are equally important talking about past. The birth of oral history was doubled by the creation of a systematic recording databases. Throughout this session our focus will turn to sounds as well as videos. We will investigate how oral history repositories were created and how the digital turn reacted to the vast amount of sound recordings. Throughout the session, we will discuss how to deal with movies in obsolete formats, to what extent can we restore the colors of moving images. On an equal base, we will also discuss ethical issues opened by this topic. The question at stake is: to what extent should repositories be accessible to the large public? Where data protection starts and historical dissemination ends? Required Reading: Collections Search - United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Search Results (no date). Available at:  https://collections.ushmm.org/search/?f%5Bavailability%5D%5B%5D=digitized&f%5Bavailability%5D%5B%5D=english&f%5Bf_cities%5D%5B%5D=Budapest&f%5Bf_ghettos%5D%5B%5D=Budapest&f%5Brecord_type_facet%5D%5B%5D=Oral+History&page=5  (Links to an external site.) Madison, K. S. (2017) ‘“Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story”: The Use and Representation of Records in Hamilton: An American Musical’, The American Archivist, 80(1), pp. 53–81. https://meridian.allenpress.com/american-archivist/article/80/1/53/24471/Who-Lives-Who-Dies-Who-Tells-Your-Story-The-Use Week 6. Documenting Hippies [visit at the Vera and Donald Blinken OSA] Where are the historical documents gathered? Why are archives important for historians and how did the digital turn changed the access? To answer this apparently very easy question, we will focus on the archives and go to the Open Society Archives. The source under discussion will be a series, consisting of the correspondence received by Géza Ekecs, the long-time editor of a very popular musical program of the Hungarian Broadcasting Department called Teenager Party. The program, which he led under the pseudonym of Cseke László, existed between 1959-1992. In most of the cases the letters, which were sent by listeners from all over Hungary and the neighboring countries and somehow found their ways through the Iron Curtain, contained requests for certain pop-rock musical pieces to be broadcast in the program. The aim is to understand the relevance of an archive, and the discussion will revolve around the question: ‘Why are these letters historical materials?’ [please read/view it in this order, essential for the archival visit] How Radio Won the Cold War, The Cold War Channel, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhDxsbDmYSY [Basic-Mandatory] Arch Puddington,. The Cold War Triumph of Radio Free Europe (University Press of Kentucky, 2000): Chapter 4,The Iron Curtain Was Not Soundproof in Broadcasting Freedom:pages 135-141. Elhunyt a Szabad Európa Rádió legendás szerkesztője: Cseke László (1927-2017) | OSA Archivum (no date). Available at: https://www.osaarchivum.org/press-room/announcements/Elhunyt-Szabad-Eur%C3%B3pa-R%C3%A1di%C3%B3-legend%C3%A1s-szerkeszt%C5%91je-Cseke-L%C3%A1szl%C3%B3-1927-2017  (Links to an external site.) Optional Reading Sonja Luehrmann, Religion in secular Archives. Soviet Atheism and Historical Knowledge (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), Chapter 4: 134-161, Optional Videos: This Is Radio Free Europe (1964),https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jyqEB5Q6Xg  (Links to an external site.) [Basic-Optional]   Week 7. Creating an Archive To what extent can we create historical sources? Who creates them and what is their stake? This session will encourage the participants to change their position of historians and researchers to that of archivists. The first part of the discussion will focus on the Hungarian case, a country where the archives became a question of strong political debates. We will focus on the case of the György Lukács archive. Throughout this meeting, we will discover why these archives became ‘harmful’. Interviews, as the previous session has shown us, can offer us a good historical insight. This session will be dedicated to recording interviews and discussing how to create a historical source. This session will also put us in a different perspective: the one of an archivist. The question at stake is—how are archives created? To what extent are the categories perennial especially in the digital format?   Required Reading [please check in this order]: „Meghatároz az, amire emlékezünk", Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOOhDBsdCcM&t=5s Michel Duchein, History of modern archives, American Archivists, Vol.55, Winter 1992, 14-26. ML Caswell, “’The Archive’ Is Not an Archives: On Acknowledging the Intellectual Contributions of Archival Studies” Raimund E Goerler, "Archives in Controversy: The Press, the Documentaries and the Byrd Archives," The American Archivist 62, no. 2 (1999): 307-324. Research Data Management, https://www.osaarchivum.org/research-data-management  Optional Reading Madison, K. S. (2017) ‘“Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story”: The Use and Representation of Records in Hamilton: An American Musical’, The American Archivist, 80(1), pp. 53–81. . https://meridian.allenpress.com/american-archivist/article/80/1/53/24471/Who-Lives-Who-Dies-Who-Tells-Your-Story-The-Use  (Links to an external site.) Week 8 Data and metadata At this point, we saw the strong implications of digital humanities in archival studies, oral history, classics and media studies. This session will be dedicated to the uniting-core of all these items: metadata. The second line of this session will focus on the impact of digital humanities as a method. We will unfold topics such as data visualization, coding, collections, spatial geometry, big data, based on our previous sessions.  By now, we will be able to see patterns and classify based on distinctions. Documents: Arcanum https://maps.arcanum.com/hu/map/pest-1785/?layers=here-aerial%2C78&bbox=2118072.442439237%2C6022504.881925061%2C2125157.199498419%2C6025481.148713915 Using Wikipedia, Crash Course Navigating Digital Information. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ih4dY9i9JKE European TIme Machine- Eine Digitale Zeitreise durch Europa, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2iyMNWQAfA [the whole documentary about DH, important to check for those speaking German] The Programming Historian | Programming Historian (no date). Available at: https://programminghistorian.org/ Johnny Ryan - A History of the Internet and the Digital Future-Reaktion Books (2010), Web 2.0 and the Return to the Oral Tradition, 139-150.   Required Reading Toni Weller, Introduction in ‘ Toni Weller (editor) - History in the Digital Age-Routledge (2012) , 1-21 Week 9. Incubator for DH Projects Throughout this session each student will present their project and ideas. Task: Each student will have to take one document and propose a methodology of processing it [OCR, transcription, text mining, etc.] by providing the justification and need for this measure. Each student then will expand the project based on the follow-up.   Week 10. Ethical considerations Is the digital information a distinctive category of historical sources or is it just another medium? What are the stakes of going digital? This session will discuss several tools and will make a clarification between the main categories of Digital Humanities, now a focal point of discussion: data visualization, coding, collections, spatial geometry, big data. Finally, it will refer to one controversial ambitious case study—the Venice Time Machine.   Required Reading [please check in this order] Time Machine Europe, A Common History for our Continent://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlvTARiC5fM&t=248s https://www.openculture.com/2019/03/the-venice-time-machine.html A virtual time machine for Venice. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQQGgYPRWfs Castelvecchi, D. (2019) Venice ‘time machine’ project suspended amid data row, Nature. Available at:  https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03240-w Toni Weller, Introduction in ‘ Toni Weller (editor) - History in the Digital Age-Routledge (2012) , 1-21.   Week 11-13. Project Presentations Assessment Tasks. Evaluation: The evaluation will consist of two parts. 40% of the final grade will be based on active participation and active reading of the materials provided in the syllabus. 60% Final Project, as follows: 20% of the final grade will be given fom the mid-term pitching idea presentation. 20% of the final grade will be given for the final project, uploaded on Moodle. 20% of the final grade will be given for the presentation of the project.

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