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

  1. PraxisGeneral contains three units: Communities of DH, DH Teaching and Learning, and DH Research and Administration.
  2. 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:

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:

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:

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

August 29, 2024 | CodeLab Fundamentals

CodeLab Fundamentals: Introduction

Pre-Readings

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

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:

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

  1. Do or review the Programming Historian command line tutorial because we’ll be doing a lot of stuff in the command line next week!

  2. 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”.

  3. Manually write out an XML document that contains the data in your CV.

  4. 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

September 19, 2024 | Code Lab Fundamentals

CodeLab Fundamentals: Version Control

Homework to do before the next CodeLab session

  1. 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

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

Pre-Readings

October 03, 2024 | Design Lab: The Elements of UX

Part One

Adapting and aligning the elements of user experience for Digital Humanities work;

Reading

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

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

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

Pre-Readings Pt. 2

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

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

November 06, 2024 | Teaching Statement Workshop

Workshop Teaching Statement with Ashley Hosbach Confirmed

If Time Allows

  • Timed writing prompts on DH pedagogy

Pre-Readings

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

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

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

January 30, 2025 | Code Lab

February 05, 2025 | Project Management and Design 2

Ronda (Confirmed)
Pre-readings

February 06, 2025 | Code Lab

February 12, 2025 | DH Publics 1

Laura (asked)

Pre-Readings

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