As of Fall 2015, we are pleased to introduce the Literature and Digital Humanities working group, which we warmly invite you all to join. The group assumes absolutely no prior knowledge of, or experience with, the digital humanities, and is aimed at an introductory level — we will be offering a combination of faculty project presentations and hands-on DH trainings. Our goals are to enable group members to familiarize themselves with some of the discourse, ideas, debates and tools relevant to current work in digital humanities, and hopefully to think about ways in which they might want to use digital or quantitative methods in their own research.
The first session of Lit + DH was a smashing success! We began with a broad overview of some of the projects and possibilities encompassed by the digital humanities, and then narrowed our focus to consider the resources available on the Berkeley campus, finishing with a look at my work on Old English color terms as an example of how simple (yet effective!) a beginning DH project can be. While we didn't have time to discuss the assigned readings (Ted Underwood's "Theorizing Research Practices We Forgot to Theorize Twenty Years Ago," and Alan Liu's "The State of the Digital Humanities") during the session, they certainly enriched our conversation over snacks afterwards!
Thanks very much to those who attended, as well as to Teddy Roland, who gave a great introductory presentation, and to Camille Villa for sharing some of the resources available through the Digital Humanities at Berkeley program.
Looking ahead, please join us on September 22nd, from 6-7:30 PM in Wheeler 300 (same time, same place!!) for a talk by Professor Emily Thornbury of the UC Berkeley English department, entitled "Stop Having Ideas and Start Counting Things: Or, Some Ad-hoc Approaches to Quantifying Style." In addition to the chance learn more about Dr. Thornbury’s work, this is also a good opportunity to get a sense of the tools and methodologies we'll encounter in our first hands-on training, scheduled for Sept 29th. And, as with the first session, snacks will be served!
Amy, the Lit + DH primary contact, can be reached at amy.w.clark@berkeley.edu OR at berkeley.lit.dh@gmail.com (Imogen Forbes-Macphail also checks this email, though she's currently out of the country.) We're quite happy to chat about Lit + DH, so feel free to reach out with any questions or concerns.