Courses

DIGI 3000 | Information Management & Scholarly Communication: Develop the skills you need to do research in the humanities. From manuscripts and published texts to visual arts and new media, research in the humanities is simultaneously traditional and groundbreaking. We will first master the standard research tools in the discipline, then we will examine ways that new technologies are changing the questions humanities scholars ask. Issues discussed will include the crisis in scholarly book publishing, intellectual property and orphan works, new venues for scholarly discussion, and the future of the humanities and humanities collaborations in the academy. (3 credits) 

DIGI 3100 | Cultural Institutions: This course will discuss the history of cultural institutions—libraries, museums, gardens, digital libraries and other settings. We will explore the meaning and method behind the act of collecting and classifying texts and objects through readings, discussions, field trips to local institutions, and a digital curation project. (3 credits)

DIGI 3200 | Intellectual Property in the Digital Age: This course will examine the idea of copyright as a cultural philosophy and an idea that has changed over time. We will look at case studies of plagiarism and copyright infringement both past and present to discuss what intellectual property meant then and what it might mean now in the digital age. This course will also discuss and provide strategies for avoiding plagiarism in students’ own academic work. (3 credits)

DIGI 3300 | Issues in Information Technology: This discussion-based seminar will examine the history and cultural, social, and legal ramifications of our information-focused world and how this infrastructure permeates all aspects of global society. We will cover a wide range of topics including how information exchange underlies the modern global economy, the importance of monitoring your electronic footprint, legal issues (such as cyberbullying and file sharing) associated with our current information technologies, the effects of social media on how we communicate, and other aspects and implications of how we gather, process, and store information. (3 credits)

ENGL/LING 4885/6885 | Introduction to Digital Humanities (Steger, Eaket, Kretzschmar)

This broad introduction to the field of digital humanities focuses on both theory and praxis; students read and discuss the emerging scholarship in the digital humanities, and learn some of the basic skills that a humanities scholar might find useful in working with digital resources: HTML, CSS, XML, SQL (databases) and TEI. The course also focuses on digital tools—including mapping tools, tools for building timelines, text analysis tools, and visualization tools—to explore the question, “What can a computer tell you about language and literature?”

ENGL/LING 4888/6888 | Digital Humanities I (Steger)

This course goes beyond an introduction to the field to challenge students to engage with the ways that thinking about texts as “data” changes, enhances, and complicates humanistic enquiry. The course is particularly concerned with digitization of artifacts.

† ENGL 4889/6889 | Digital Humanities II: Stories, Spaces and Archives (Eaket): ENGL 4889/6889 examines the “Spatial Turn” in the Humanities & Social Sciences as it relates to DH practices. The class looks at the intersections between spatial theory, embodiment and narrative as they relate to creating rich user experiences. The goal is to help scholars get research, collections and stories out of the archives and into the real world through the use of content management systems, maps, audio exhibits and educational games. Central questions of the class revolve around issues of medium-specificity (ie. “the right tool for the right job”) and how to best deploy digital tools to facilitate engagements with spaces and archives.

* HIST 4xxx | Introduction to Spatial History (Hamilton): History happens in place as well as time; this course will introduce students to concepts and techniques for thinking spatially about the nature of political, social, economic, and cultural change. Although students will learn basic techniques for creating digital historical maps using ArcGIS, seminar-style discussions will focus on how the practice of spatial history opens up opportunities for new research questions and collaborative research practices. (3.0 credits)

* HIST 4xxx | History in the Digital Age (Nesbit): This course will introduce students to opportunities and challenges of using newer technologies in the practice of history. Themes will include incorporation of GIS, relational databases, social network analysis, and text mining into historical work; humanities visualization; the use of the social web; and current debates in the fields of digital history and digital humanities. (3.0 credits)

The following courses are occasionally taught not for DIGI credit. Students should confirm that course is being taught in its DIGI “flavor” with either the instructor, the registrar, or the DIGI coordinator.

† CLAS 4140 | Archaeology of Punic and Roman Carthage (Norman): The civilization of Roman North Africa from the Punic period through the Arab Conquest, using the important city of Carthage as a model. For the digital humanities component, students will contribute to a comprehensive website that will present the archaeological remains of the city in order to map the city’s development throughout antiquity. (3.0 credits)

† CLAS 4340 | Ancient Athens (Norman): Examination of the archaeological, literary, and environmental evidence for the ancient city of Athens, from the Dark Ages through the Roman period, with special emphasis on the creation of the polis, its social, economic, and cultural systems, and its place within the wider Greek world. For the digital humanities component, students will work on digital walking tours of the ancient city at particular historical moments in order to understand more fully the architectural and natural landscape of the city. (3.0 credits)

ENGL 4826 | Style: Language, Genre, Cognition (Kretzschmar)

The focus of this course is patterns, especially those that can be discovered by digital means, both for the creation and the reception of language and literature, through the relative contributions of author, reader, and their social milieu to the creation of meaning in literary texts.

ENGL 4832W | Writing for the World Wide Web (Davis)

Theory and practice of the process of writing for the World Wide Web. An advanced study of writing focused on analysis of digital texts, use of digitally-informed research methods, and design of texts intended for delivery through the digital, networked environment. This course examines how the medium affects the production and consumption of digital texts and on how readers, writers, and researchers manage, process, and present digital material.

ENGL 4810 | Literary Magazine Editing and Publishing (Iyengar): Students engage in all aspects of editing and producing a literary magazine or scholarly journal while learning about literary and academic culture through theoretical, aesthetic, critical, and practical components. (3.0 credits)

ENGL/LING 4886 | Text and Corpus Analysis (Kretzschmar)

This course is an exploration of text and corpus analysis–the field is too new, developing too quickly, to have become canonical. The course begins with discourse analysis, analysis of patterns of language within and across texts, especially in the social and cultural contexts in which texts occur. The course also by necessity includes training in a computer text-processing environment. It considesr the literary and linguistic value of computer-aided analysis of texts and corpora, including elementary notions of text encoding, file manipulation, stylometry, and textual criticism.

* ENGL 48xx | Literature and Media (Menke): This course teaches students how to understand literary works in light of theories and histories of media, from writing and the printing press to digital culture. Tools and approaches include orality and literacy theory, media theory, media-specific analyses, hypertext and cybertext theory, comparative media studies, intermediality theory, and media archaeology. Students conduct and present their own research via multiple media and have the opportunity to undertake a digital research project as their major assignment for the course. (3.0 credits)

† FREN 4600/6600 | French New Media (Baillehache): The course (cross-listed graduate and undergraduate) explores the history and theory of French and Francophone new media art, including algorithmic and combinatory literature, text generators, kinetic poetry, hyperfiction, net art, hypermedia fiction and video games. The goal of the class is to give students critical tools to explore and better understand the increasing role of information sciences in contemporary culture. This seminar draws on the collection of the Digital Arts Library at UGA, a library of legacy computers, electronic literature, and video game systems. Students learn how to interact with, preserve, archive and document a collection of legacy computers and software, and how to use online databases to document and share their research. (3.0 credits)

* HIPR 4xxx/6xxx | Public History and Technology (Nesbit): This course will explore the interplay between the spaces of the past and the communicative technologies and media used to represent them. The course will introduce students to the use of technology in public history, the relationship between media and historical sites, and will teach students how to assess the effectiveness of technologies in presenting historical narratives. (3.0 credits)

HIST 3090 | The American South (Lawton): This course explores the political, social, and cultural history of the U.S. South from its colonial foundations through the present. Student research projects are part of an ongoing effort between the Georgia Virtual History Project and the Georgia Humanities Council to expand upon and geospatially locate content in the web-based New Georgia Encyclopedia. (3.0 credits)

HIST (AFAM) 3101 | The Early African American Experience (Lawton): This cross-listed course explores the African roots of African Americans, the experience of slavery, and the creation of communities and the struggle for freedom through the Civil War. Students in this course will have the opportunity to work on digital projects connected to the Georgia Virtual History Project, People not Property, and Born Unfree. (3.0 credits)

HIST (AFAM) 3102 | The Modern African American Experience (Lawton): This cross-listed course explores the twentieth-century struggle for civil rights, black identity, and self-determination. Students in this course will have the opportunity to work on digital projects connected to the Civil Rights Digital Library, Born Unfree, and the Georgia Virtual History Project. (3.0 credits)

HIST 4100 | Georgia History (Lawton): A survey of the people and events that have shaped Georgia from 1733 to the present. Student research will be part of an ongoing effort between the Georgia Virtual History Project the Georgia Humanities Council to expand upon and geospatially locate content in the web-based New Georgia Encyclopedia. (3.0 credits) 

HIST 4071 | Antebellum South (Lawton): Digital efforts by UGA Libraries and the Digital Library of Georgia have remade the way this course is taught and the type of student research it makes possible. Students are now able to access primary source documents that were once hidden in archives, read daily newspapers from across Georgia, and thus arrive at a much more intimate understanding of the lives of planters, slaves, and the broad spectrum of those in between. Students in this course will have the opportunity not only to experience how technology is remaking the very fabric of humanities scholarship, but also to build digital pieces connected to the Georgia Virtual History Project, People not Property, and Born Unfree. (3.0 credits)

HIST 4110/H | Multicultural Georgia (Lawton): This course presents a deep reading of the various—and previously overlooked—economic, ethnic, racial, and religious groups that have shaped the history and character of Georgia over the past three centuries. Student research will be woven into relevant spaces in ongoing digital projects such as the Civil Rights Digital Library, Born Unfree, and the Georgia Virtual History Project. (3.0 credits)

* HIST 4xxx | Death & Dying in U.S. History (Berry): A broad survey of death and dying in United States history from 1609 to the present with an emphasis on student research and involvement with digital projects devoted to public health and mortality in the American past. (3.0 credits) 

HIST 4073 | The Era of Reconstruction (Nesbit): This course offers an intensive examination of the United States from 1865 to 1900 as the federal government grappled with the aftermath of slavery, secession, and Civil War. The emphasis, however, is on African Americans’ attempts to make their freedom mean something. The course is built around several digital mapping projects. (3.0 credits)

† HIST 8860 | Seminar in History: History, Mapping, and Spatial Analysis (Saunt): GIS (Geographic Information Systems) is a technology that allows to store and analyze information spatially. It has transformed environmental science, cartography, epidemiology, city planning, and many other fields. In this course, we will explore its usefulness to historians and learn how to employ it in our own work. Over the length of the semester, students will work on and complete a mapping project related to their own interests and research. (3.0 credits)

† SPAN 8100 | Digital/New Media/Techno/Net/E-Poetry: A Multimodal Approach to (American, Latin American, Spanish, Portuguese) Poetry & Poetics (Correa-Diaz): This graduate course will reflect on and provide examples of the intersections between experimental poetics and the advent of technological advances, whose connections form the backdrop for the current cybercultural/literary condition structuring 20th-and 21st-Century world literatures and cultures. We will explore what can be done with poetry in an online and/or new media environment. Our multimodal approach to the subject will make an emphasis on the digital-electronic, spatial, performative, audio-visual, and linguistic dimensions of writing poetry nowadays, expecting to offer new and powerful ways to think about and understand (teach) poetry. Readings will include poetry of several varieties (i.e. visual and concrete poetry, animated, video, holo-poems, algorithmic and interactive works, hyper/cyber poetic texts) from different world regions, as well as secondary readings in literary and cultural criticism and digital/media studies (>poetry) (i.e. Hayles, Glazier, Kac, Stockman, Davinio). (3.0 credits)

THEA 7865 | Digital Storytelling: Digital Storytelling uses a various media to create interactive narratives for diverse audiences.  Combining the techniques of multimedia, interactive fiction, interactive drama, locative media and installation art, Digital Storytelling (DS) attempts to use 21st century tools in conjunction with one of our oldest art forms.  We will examine how non-linear stories differ from linear ones, and how various theories of narrative can help us think about (and design) stories in new ways.  The class explores how we can create different types of stories emphasizing particular sensory modalities:  interactive text adventures, location-specific audio walks, re-mixable web media, projected environments and interactive videos. We typically alternate between thinking and making — that is, discussing the use of these technologies (and some relevant artistic examples) and creating projects using particular hardware/software tools.

THEA 7870 | Interactive Performance and Multimedia: In this class, we will explore the ways interactive media can enhance theatre and performance art, as well as the way interactive media is giving rise to new art forms that combine elements of theater, video, music, sculpture, installation and digital technology. This course combines theory and practice. You will acquire hands-on skills to use computers to trigger and manipulate complex sequences of sound, light, video, and robotics, and also to use sensors that respond to touch, light, sound and movement.

THEA 7780 | Locative Media: Despite having access to massive amounts of information on the web, we typically know very little about the streets, buildings and spaces we walk by every day. Locative Media uses wireless networks to link information and stories to places in the real world, in order to turn the environment into a story, a game, a myth or a work of art. Location-linked information changes our perspective, so that instead of seeing world as a set of static objects, we begin to see our surroundings as sites of potential for stories and play. This class explores how technologies like Wi-fi, Cell Phones, FM radios, Augmented Reality and GPS can be deployed to create unique, location-specific experiences in public places.