Syllabus 2024-2025
About
Praxis meets for four hours weekly during the academic year. Students are expected to put in roughly ten hours of work total each week.
Praxis follows the schedule of the academic calendar. So first meetings will be the first week of classes, we will observe holidays and reading days, and we’ll end each semester the last week of classes. We’ll aim to start out in the Scholars’ Lab common room but can move elsewhere if that’s not working.
Goals and Outcomes
Two tracks running simultaneously: PraxisGeneral and CodeLab
- PraxisGeneral contains three units: Communities of DH, DH Teaching and Learning, and DH Research and Administration.
- CodeLab runs yearlong a year and consists of an introduction to humanities programming fundamentals, design, and Python.
Each of these tracks contains a variety of deliverables:
- A group charter, a statement of values and practices we will adhere to as a community
- A personalized plan for self-study throughout the year meant to take advantage of the resources in the lab
- An individual teaching plan for a DH workshop based around the students’ interests
- A DH teaching statement
- A speculative personal project proposal for what comes next for them to be workshopped by the group
- Activities meant to exercise technical and design thinking as they relate to humanities problems
- Spring Hackathon as a group
- Final presentation to a local audience
- Two blog posts
These discussions and outcomes encompass a variety of different definitions of what it means to “do DH.” DH is capacious enough that it is quite difficult to design a program that can both introduce a broad range of approaches but also engage individual paths. Accordingly, the outcomes and units offer a mix of individual and group activities, but each student will need to supplement this work with self-study around their particular interests. We frame the year with twin sessions directed at this: in the fall, we spend time with each student design jamming their interests to help design a plan for the year and, in the spring, each student shares back where their interests have developed and next steps for them.
By the end of the year, students will have a portfolio of experiences and work directed towards the following goals. Students will:
- Practice DH in the following areas using appropriate technologies, methods, and activities:
- Community building
- Teaching
- Research and project design
- Administration
- Programming
- Design
- become capable of pursuing their own interests in the above areas moving forward;
- see digital humanities as a field and career path available to them regardless of their background;
- come to see themselves as experts in digital research with experiences worthy of sharing with others as scholars and teachers;
- and prepare themselves to pay it forward, early and often.
CodeLab and DesignLab
Description generated by GPT3:
In Codelab, you are a raccoon who is a master of digital humanities heists. You are tasked with stealing data and information from various sources in order to help your criminal organization. You must use your skills of hacking to bypass security measures and get your hands on the valuable data. Be careful though, as you are not the only one after the data. The police and other rival gangs will be hot on your tail. Can you outwit them all and become the ultimate digital humanist?
CodeLab is a semester-long introduction to the foundations programming and computational thinking for Digital Humanities. You will gain experience using a variety of technologies (Python, git/github) relevant to technical work in DH and exercise these new skills with some focused activities relevant to DH work.
DesignLab is a 10-week primer on critical approaches to design for Digital Humanities work, that includes conceptual and application work in the following areas:
- HTML, CSS, JavaScript;
- Information architecture/organization
- Graphic/Visual design elements and concepts
- Accessibility + Usability
- Scoping/Strategizing approaches for design projects;
By the end of this, students should have a better understanding of how to approach design for advocacy and intervention work in Digital Humanities.
Schedule
August 28, 2024 | Plan for the Year
First Hour
- Praxis and the plan for the year, Brandon
Second Hour
- Intro to Charters workshop, Ronda
Pre-Readings
- Scholars’ Lab charter
- Scholars’ Lab student program charter
- Praxis Program charter - (overlaps a lot with the previous one, so I’d just look for the different bits)
- A Digital Boot Camp for Grad Students in the Humanities by former SLab director Bethany Nowviskie
- The Shape of DH Work by Brandon Walsh
August 29, 2024 | CodeLab Fundamentals
CodeLab Fundamentals: Introduction
Pre-Readings
- Paul Ford, What is Code?
- Benjamin Schmidt, Do Digital Humanists Need to Understand Algorithms? - Don’t get caught up in the technical details; there’s absolutely no need to understand a Fourier Transform in any depth.
Homework to be completed before next CodeLab session
- Schedule a 1 on 1 with me in the next 2 weeks to talk about your dreams, your discontents, and your computer. We’ll also use this time to set up your development environment.
- Afterward, complete Ian Milligan and James Baker, “Introduction to the Bash Command Line,” The Programming Historian 3 (2014). This is an introduction to the Bash shell, which will serve well enough as an introduction to other shells like Zsh as well.
- For Windows users, skip the “Windows Only: Installing Git Bash” section. Instead, use the VSCode Terminal or Windows Terminal, as recommended in the Code Lab environment setup.
- Set up an account at Github and post your username on the Slack praxis channel so I can add you to our organization.
- Hopefully I’ll have passed out copies of Julia Evans’s lovely So You Want to be a Wizard zine. That’s something written for someone who is already a programmer, but it’ll be useful for you to skim through now to gleen some meta-strategies for navigating tech. Review it again once you have a few for loops under your belt.
- For a bit of counter-programming, Miriam Posner’s “Some things to think about before you exhort everyone to code” is good to think about (and perhaps even to critique).
September 04, 2024 | Conversations About Praxis Collaboration and Community
First Hour
- Discussion facilitated by Oriane and Gramond
- Brandon, Ronda, and Amanda present as discussants
Second Hour
- Facilitated by a Kristin, Emmy, Amna
- Brandon, Ronda, and Amanda present as discussants
Pre-Readings Pt 1
- Miriam Posner, Here and There: Creating DH Community
- Bethany Nowviskie, Capacity Through Care
- Roopika Risam, Navigating the Global Digital Humanities: Insights from Black Feminism
- Colored Convention Project Principles (might be helpful to poke around the site to see what the project is as well, since the principles don’t explicitly state as much)
- Brandon and Amanda, Building Community And Generosity In The Context Of Graduate Education - Also be sure to check out and peruse the three readings/tools linked in the “practices section”
Pre-Readings pt 2
- Other Praxis cohort charters, available on the Praxis site - http://praxis.scholarslab.org/charter/. Explore to your heart’s content, but they repeat each other a fair amount. So no need to go overboard - I might pick one or two.
- And then, if you have time, you might check out one or two of the resources here - http://praxis.scholarslab.org/resources/toward-a-project-charter/. Those are all related to charter development and very worthwhile. Explore at your interest, but the Collaborators’ Bill of Rights and Bethany’s piece are probably the most widely cited.
- DevDH- there is a ton there, no need to look at everything. You might just take a look at one or two things and only do a deeper dive if you’re interested.
- Praxis Alum Blog posts. Make sure you read them in order, as they respond to one another. There was also some discussion in the comments that got lost when we shifted platforms, but you’ll get the idea.
- ”…but I don’t like programming,” Claire Maiers
- “Gendering Praxis,” Cecilia Márquez
- “Gender and computing ctd,” Shane Lin
September 05, 2024 | Code Lab Fundamentals
Code Lab Fundamentals: Introduction to Data
Homework to be completed before next CodeLab session
Do:
- Write out in plain English an algorithm to sort a deck of cards.
- Write out in plain English an algorithm for a cashier to find exact change.
Read:
- Posner, Miriam (2015), Humanities Data, a Necessary Contradiction
- Horgan, John (2017), Profile of Claude Shannon, Inventor of Information Theory
September 11, 2024 | Lightning Talks on DH Method
First Hour
- Lightning Round 1 - Archives (Jeremy - Confirmed), Texts (Alison - Confirmed)
Second Hour
- Design jam student interests
- Presenter - Emmy
- Respondent - Oriane
- Presenter - Kristin
- Respondent - Gramond
Pre-work
- Draft a first blog post; consider introducing yourself or take any other topic you wish.
- If you want to take the route of pitching/submitting a formal piece of writing to an outlet this year let Brandon know and make a time to talk about plans.
- Come prepared to talk about your research interests for 10-15 minutes (if you have DH areas that interest you that’s great but the point will be to guide you towards things to follow up on throughout the year)
September 12, 2024 | CodeLab Fundamentals
CodeLab Fundamentals: Structured Data
Homework to do before the next CodeLab session
-
Do or review the Programming Historian command line tutorial because we’ll be doing a lot of stuff in the command line next week!
-
Let’s continue to practice algorithmic thinking. Write out in plain English an algorithm to guess whether a text represents English, French, Portugese, Urdu, Simplified Chinese, or “other”.
-
Manually write out an XML document that contains the data in your CV.
-
Watch “Git Explained in 100 Seconds” without paying too close attention for now to all the commands that get brought up. We’re going to do way more Git stuff next week, so don’t worry about the details for now!
September 18, 2024 | Lightning Talks, Design Jams
First Hour
- Design jam student interests;
- Presenter - Oriane
- Respondent - Amna
- Presenter - Gramond
- Respondent - Kristin
Second Hour
- Lightning Round 2 - Makerspaces (Ammon - Confirmed); Maps (Chris/Drew - Drew and Chris Confirmed but need to go second)
Pre-Work
- Convert your blog post to MarkDown: Blogging documentation.
September 19, 2024 | Code Lab Fundamentals
CodeLab Fundamentals: Version Control
Homework to do before the next CodeLab session
- Add an icebreaker question (or questions) to the icebreaker git practice document and check back on it every few days to answer all the previous, unanswered questions.
September 25, 2024 | Lightning Talks, Design Jams
2:00-3:30 - attend Victoria Szabo talk in the lab.
Pre-Work
- Draft a second blog post
- Come prepared to talk about your research interests for 10-15 minutes (if you have DH areas that interest you that’s great but the point will be to guide you towards things to follow up on throughout the year)
September 26, 2024 | Design Lab: Design Elements + Principles
Part One Introduction to DesignLab; Design Elements + Principles;
Reading
- Frank Chimero, Shape of Design
Part Two
Tinkering with the tools of web development. We’ll each make a copy of this CodePen snippet titled ”Introduction to the Web Stack”.
October 02, 2024 | Charter Discussion and Review
First Hour
- Discuss charters
- Facilitated by Oriane and Amna
Second Hour
- Discussion of readings and charter
- Facilitated by Kristin, Emmy, Gramond
Pre-Work
- Charter due
- Convert your second post into MarkDown: Blogging documentation.
Pre-Readings
- I need to write a blog post, Drew MacQueen
- Project Reviews, Alex Gil
- Owning Up the Praxis Program, Alex Gil
- Giving Thanks, Alex Gil
- Progamming for Prism, Joanna Swafford
- The Pleasures of Programming, Lindsay O’Connor
- Preliminary Praxis Charter Ideas, Ed Triplett
- Processing Praxis, Brooke Lestock
- A Disclaimer and a Declaration, Sarah Storti
- Done is the Engine of More., Sarah Storti
- The Beautiful Truth about Praxis, Sarah Storti
October 03, 2024 | Design Lab: The Elements of UX
Part One
Adapting and aligning the elements of user experience for Digital Humanities work;
Reading
- Jesse James Garrett, The Elements of User Experience
Part Two
Typography and layout; Using Visual Studio Code for web development.
October 09, 2024 | Blog Posts
- Design Jam Student Interests
- Presenter - Amna
- Respondent - Emm
- Presenter - Emmy
- Respondent - Oriane
Time remaining:
- Students present their blog posts to each other and we discuss
Pre-work
- Finalize one of your posts and send to Brandon to publish Monday before
October 10, 2024 | Design Lab: Narratives and Storytelling
Reading
- Ursula K. Le Guin, “Mazes”
- Frank Chimero, Shape of Design
October 16, 2024 | Hackathon Conversation
Full session
- Shane will also share a small bit about what a hackathon is, what our goals are for you, etc.
- Discuss hackathon ideas
Pre-work
- Get together as a group to compare your interests. Can you find a common place where they overlap? Not thinking objects of study or materials at this point - those will come later. Just subjects/topics. We’ll discuss and help narrow as a group. We’ll open with students presenting to the staff on their shared interests. Try to come with ten points of intersection and commonality if you can, organized by how passionate you are about them.
October 17, 2024 | Design Lab: Collections and Archives
Reading
- Jorge Luis Borges, “The Library of Babel”
- Library of Babel
- Mitchell Whitelaw, “Generous Interfaces for Digital Cultural Collections,” Digital Humanities Quarterly 9:1 (2015).
October 23, 2024 | Workshop on Workshops
First Hour
- Workshop on workshops (Brandon); Framing of Workshop assignment.
Second Hour
- Facilitated discussion by Amna and Oriane on critical digital pedagogy
Pre-work
- Send Brandon 3-4 sentences from a text related to your research by Tuesday of this week’s session.
Pre-Readings Pt. 1
- Sentiment Analysis Passages
- A Way In: Digital Pedagogy Training with Speculative, Low-Tech Workshops
Pre-Readings Pt. 2
- Reading: Critical Digital Pedagogy: A Definition;
- Beyond Buttonology: Digital Humanities, Digital Pedagogy, and the ACRL Framework;
- Jentery Sayers on Low-Tech Approaches to Digital Research;
- Brandon Walsh, Frustration is a Feature; It’s behind a paywall but UVA has access to the journal if you go through virgo and login.
October 24, 2024 | Design Lab: Workshops and Syllabi
October 30, 2024 | Mind Mapping and Design Jams
First Hour
- Mind mapping and DH pedagogy
Second Hour
- Design jam workshop concepts
Pre-Readings
- “What’s a pedagogy and how do I find mine?” - Brandon Walsh
- “DH is Teaching” - Brandon Walsh
- Past outcomes for the unit might also be helpful for getting ideas (just pick what seems interesting to you - no need to read all of them):
- “To be out in the world, to be free!” Janet Dunkelbarger
- “String Theory, or: Let’s Explore Social Networks with String,” Chris Whitehead
- “Thinking about [Art] Collections as Data”, Chloe Downe Welles
- “Unmaking and Remaking the Archive”, Natasha Roth-Rowland
- “Mapping Alone, Together”, Crystal Luo
- “Content Moderation Workshop”, Grace Alvino
Pre-Work
- Explore 2-3 things in Digital Pedagogy in the Humanities: Concepts, Models, and Experiments
- Come in with one or two ideas/topics for a workshop you might run. To prep, Explore Digital Pedagogy in the Humanities or talk to Brandon. Come in with one or two topics for a workshop you might run to introduce yourself or others to a flavor of DH you are interested in. We’ll discuss in smaller groups.
October 31, 2024 | Design Lab: Personal Portfolios
Reading
- Your Name Here, 2021-2022 Praxis Fellows.
- Kathleen Blake Yancy, “ePortfolios”, Digital Pedagogy in the Humanities: Concepts, Models, and Experiments, 2016.
November 06, 2024 | Teaching Statement Workshop
Workshop Teaching Statement with Ashley Hosbach Confirmed
If Time Allows
- Timed writing prompts on DH pedagogy
Pre-Readings
- Sean Michael Morris, Technology is not Pedagogy, Say No to Best Practices, On Silence: Humanising Digital Pedagogy - Sean talks mostly in the context of online learning in these pieces, so abstract them a tad to be applicable to digital methods and teaching more generally.
- One Concept: Ten Ways to Teach
Pre-Work
- Discuss the current state of your workshops with each other:
- what are your goals?
- what are you excited to teach?
- what low-tech ways do you have for meeting those goals?
- Make time with someone on staff to talk about your teaching ideas - Brandon works, but also could make sense to talk to people who work on the kind of method you’re interested in!
November 07, 2024 | Design Lab: Accessibility + Inclusivity
Reading
- Introduction to Web Accessibility
- Constructing a POUR Website
- George H. Williams, “Disability, Universal Design, and the Digital Humanities”, Debates in Digital Humanities 2012.
November 13, 2024 | Pedagogy in the Liberal Arts
Note that we’ll be online the whole day! Feel free to come in if you’re on campus and want to zoom together though.
First Hour
- Talk with Mackenzie Brooks at W&L on pedagogy in liberal arts context; Confirmed
- Bring a question to ask Mackenzie based on the readings below
Second Hour
- Discuss statements/workshops
Pre-Readings
- “Launching the Digital Humanities Movement at Washington and Lee University: A Case Study”; “Minor in Digital Culture and Information” (in particular the linked PDF at the top of this post is useful context)
Pre-Work
- Reading/exercise to work through on your own time: “Free Writing About Pedagogy”
- Pick one of the twin assignments to focus on in our second hour. Keeping in mind that you will be teaching the workshop in the spring either way, either
- Narrow to a specific workshop idea and start making plans for how you’d teach it.
- Combine the kinds of thinking and writing that you did with Ashley into something approaching a more formal teaching statement.
- Pre-discuss in pairs or as a group.
November 14, 2024 | Design Lab: Open Lab
November 20, 2024 | Hackathon Pre-Discussion
Full Session
- Discuss hackathon interests
- Iterative design activity with praxathon interests
Pre-Work
- Our plan is going to be to continue to work towards an idea for what you will work on together. I would suggest you each come up with three potential mini-projects each for the first three topics on your ranked list. Keep in mind:
- Limitations of the month. Aiming for a poster.
- Keep it small, but with the hope that they could grow later.
- What will your materials be? Are they accessible?
- How will it intersect with what you are learning (the spring will be a lot of python for data analysis)?
- Your collective list will be big (rough back of the envelope math would be 335!), so embrace the iterative chaos. Discuss and rank the top three among your group. These are what you will share with the staff.
- Make appointments with each other and/or staff to peer review your workshops or statements.
November 21, 2024 | Design Lab
2-4pm
December 04, 2024 | Teaching Statement and Workshops
Full Session
- Discuss teaching statements and workshops
- We’ll do a jigsaw activity to discuss them in small groups before coming back to the whole.
- Reflections and next steps
Pre-Work
- Teaching statements and workshops due
- Prep one to be published on the blog
- As a group, vote on your selected Praxathon topic and share it in the Praxis channel. Also please share a 3-4 sentence description of the project for the staff who weren’t able to make it. Topic, question/interest, materials, methods. All of that is helpful for folks.
December 05, 2024 | Design Lab
January 15, 2025 | Return to Forever
First Hour: Introduction to the Spring
Second Hour: Praxathon check in
How do you conduct research in DH? How do you design a successful project? What do we mean when we call something a digital project, and how do we define them with an ethos that is meaningful to us? How do infrastructure and administration in the field intersect with DH research, enabling or inhibiting it? How do these questions bring us back around to the beginning of the year, by developing communities and audiences for our work? The students will explore these through project management activities resulting in individual project proposals based on their work as well as speculative activities for DH events.
Main assignment for this unit will be a two-page proposal for a project that you would work on after praxis in the style of a grant application. Try to hit on the following categories (though it’s only two pages so each one will be pretty short!):
- Project description
- Literature review
- Technical overview
- Project development timeline
- Outreach/audience strategy
- Sustainability and Copyright
- Budget
We will have in-session consults about each of your proposals, so they will be due by 9am on the Monday of the week you’ll be on deck, in weeks 9-11. Due in Mid-March. A fuller description of the assignment is available here.
Homework
- Decide tasks, deliverables, and agenda for next praxathon check in session. Start to delegate responsibility for them.
January 16, 2025 | Code Lab
January 22, 2025 | Code Lab
January 23, 2025 | Pedagogy Workshops
10-4 - pedagogy workshops!
Pre-work
Let Brandon know if you have any specific people you want to invite.w
TODO: Order food! TODO: Book Shane for photos TODO: Schedule and invite folks
January 29, 2025 | Project Management and Design 1
Ronda (Confirmed)
Pre-Readings
- Sharon Leon, “Project Management for Humanists: Preparing Future Primary Investigators”
- Bethany Nowviskie, “Ten Rules for Humanities Scholars New to Project Management”
- DevDH.org (this is enormous, so you might just pick one or two things to explore in it that interest you)
January 30, 2025 | Code Lab
February 05, 2025 | Project Management and Design 2
Ronda (Confirmed)
Pre-readings
- Bre Pettis and Kio Stark, “Cult of Done Manifesto”
- Bethany Nowviskie, “Skunks in the Library: A Parth to Production for Scholarly R&D”
- Duke Wired Lab, Visualizing Objects, Places, and Spaces: A Digital Project Handbook (this is enormous, so you might just pick one or two things to explore in it that interest you)
February 06, 2025 | Code Lab
February 12, 2025 | DH Publics 1
Laura (asked)
Pre-Readings
- Bethany’s DLF Organizers’ Toolkit - Particularly the following, or other areas of your interest:
- General Facilitation & Goal Setting
- Planning for Diversity & Inclusion
- Planning Virtual Meetings and Webinars
- Debates in DH 2016 (Chapter 22 Here and There: Creating DH Community by Miriam Posner)
- Katrina Spencer’s Comprehensive Guide to Resisting Overcommittement
- Life Kit (Personal/Professional Branding, or How to Make Social Media Work for You)
February 13, 2025 | Code Lab
February 19, 2025 | DH Publics 2
Laura (asked)
Pre-Readings
A variety of Codes of Conduct
February 20, 2025 | Code Lab
February 26, 2025 | DH Funding and Administration
- Sarah (Confirmed)
- Ronda (Confirmed)
- Amanda (Asked)
- Laura (Asked)
Participatory Budgeting Activity
Pre-Reading TBD
February 27, 2025 | Code Lab
March 05, 2025 | Project Sustainability
Molly (asked)
- Digital humanities sustainability (and copyright?)
- Praxathon Check in
March 06, 2025 | Code Lab
March 12, 2025 | Spring Break
No sessions
March 13, 2025 | Spring Break
No sessions
March 19, 2025 | Student Proposals 1
Student 1 Student 2
Pre-Work
Share a two-page proposal for a project that you would work on after praxis in the style of a grant application. Try to hit on the following categories (though it’s only two pages so each one will be pretty short!):
- Project description
- Literature review
- Technical overview
- Project development timeline
- Outreach/audience strategy
- Sustainability and Copyright
- Budget
We will have in-session consults about each of your proposals, so they will be due by 9am on the Monday of the week you’ll be on deck. Plan to present your project in 5-10 minutes or so in person. A fuller description of the assignment is available here.
March 20, 2025 | Code Lab
March 26, 2025 | Student Proposals 2
- Student 3
- Student 4
Pre-Work
Share a two-page proposal for a project that you would work on after praxis in the style of a grant application. Try to hit on the following categories (though it’s only two pages so each one will be pretty short!):
- Project description
- Literature review
- Technical overview
- Project development timeline
- Outreach/audience strategy
- Sustainability and Copyright
- Budget
We will have in-session consults about each of your proposals, so they will be due by 9am on the Monday of the week you’ll be on deck. Plan to present your project in 5-10 minutes or so in person. A fuller description of the assignment is available here.
March 27, 2025 | Code Lab
April 02, 2025 | Student Proposals 3
- Student 5
Pre-Work
Share a two-page proposal for a project that you would work on after praxis in the style of a grant application. Try to hit on the following categories (though it’s only two pages so each one will be pretty short!):
- Project description
- Literature review
- Technical overview
- Project development timeline
- Outreach/audience strategy
- Sustainability and Copyright
- Budget
We will have in-session consults about each of your proposals, so they will be due by 9am on the Monday of the week you’ll be on deck. Plan to present your project in 5-10 minutes or so in person. A fuller description of the assignment is available here.
April 03, 2025 | CodeLab
April 09, 2025 | Praxathon Week 1
Shaping
April 10, 2025 | Praxathon Week 1
Shaping
April 16, 2025 | Praxathon Week 2
Doing
April 17, 2025 | Praxathon Week 2
Doing
April 23, 2025 | Praxathon Week 3
Doing
April 24, 2025 | Praxathon Week 3
Doing
April 30, 2025 | Praxathon Week 4
Finishing
May 01, 2025 | Final Presentation Prep
Final Presentation will be scheduled 10:30-12:00 one day May 5-9
May 08, 2025 | Praxathon and Final Presentation Prep
Final Presentation will be scheduled 10:30-12:00 one day May 5-9