All courses offered by the Advanced Certificate for Digital Humanities are open to current graduate students at NYU. Students pursuing the Advanced Certificate must complete the three core courses as well as two electives, for a total of 20 points. A maximum of 12 points may be shared with the points required for the PhD.
Courses
Intro to Programming
4 points
DHSS-GA.1120
Offered every fall semester.
This course introduces students to the fundamentals of computer programming as students design, write, and debug computer programs using the programing language Python. The goal in this course is for students to learn how to manage their files, data, and materials in their own ways, to explore original research, and to be knowledgeable partners when they collaborate with computer scientists and experts in technology.
Qualified students in the Advanced Certificate program may take a placement test to place out of this course, and, with the approval of the Program Director, substitute a more advanced programming course from among those offered in the Department of Computer Science.
Working with Data
4 points
DHSS-GA.1121
Offered every spring semester.
Spring 2023: Thursdays, 5 pm to 8 pm, Silver Room 515
Professor Christine Roughan
Data analysis in the humanities presents challenges of scale, interpretation, and communication distinct from the social sciences or sciences. This seminar will explore the emerging practices of data analysis in the digital humanities through a critical perspective aiming to be more responsible readers of cultural analytics, and a creative perspective that equips students to analyze and visualize data in a modern programming language (usually R, though exceptions are possible.) Readings are interdisciplinary: assignments will allow engage in exploration of their own dataset or to work collaboratively on a new dataset about New York City history.
Web Development
4 points
DHSS-GA.1122
Offered every spring semester.
Spring 2023: Tuesdays, 5 pm to 8 pm, Silver Room 510
Professor Zach Coble
This course provides a project-based approach to web programming and development. Students will study the principles of web design and each student will build websites based on content relevant to their interests. To complement these practical skills, we will look at how the web has expanded our notions of discourse beyond books and articles and explore how websites can be used for scholarly communication, with an emphasis on academic websites in the humanities. A deeper understanding of these topics will help you make better decisions in your own web development practice.
Students in the Advanced Certificate program select two courses in their discipline from among the graduate courses offered in GSAS. Students are also able to take elective courses in other schools with the permission of the Program Director.
Elective courses in the student’s discipline do not require a pre-existing digital component. Students are asked to work with their advisors to select courses that allow them to gain experience using their newly acquired digital skills and methods in their chosen field. Please contact your academic advisor, one of our DH Advising Faculty, or send email to dhss@nyu.edu for advising on your course selection for the Advanced Certificate in Digital Humanities.
Graph Databases and Network Analysis
4 points
(ISAW-GA 3023-001)
Spring 2023: Mondays, 2 pm to 5 pm, ISAW Room 202
This course will explore the relationship between two overlapping approaches to working with data: Graph Databases and Network Analysis. Students will learn to apply these approaches to their own work within the broad scope of the Ancient World. A “Graph Database” is a collection of heterogeneous entities and the relationships between them. The software tools that allow querying of these collections start from the perspective of the individual entities and allow these entities to be selected, grouped, and counted. For the purposes of this course, a “Network” is a collection of nodes and the edges that connect them to other nodes in the same set. A focus of the tools for working with networks is the whole collection. Which nodes are highly connected? What is the nature of the paths that exist between all the nodes? What subgroups exist within a network and which nodes mediate between those subgroups? It is the case that ‘nodes’ are analogous to ‘entities’ and that ‘edges’ are analogous to ‘relationships’. Starting with working examples, the course will explore these similarities as students learn how to implement these concepts within the context of their own work. How do these generic terms, methods, and questions relate to the past phenomena we study? Existing resources, including the Wikidata graph database and the networks that can be derived from it, will introduce students to specific tools such as the SPARQL query language and the Python programming-language libraries for working with networks. Visualization of results will be one focus of our work. While there is no prior technical expertise required, an openness and commitment to learning digital methods is essential. As the course progresses, students will increasingly work with their own data and this will lead to the development and implementation of a final project that uses the methods we learn in class. Weekly readings will explore working examples of both technologies and explore the impact they are having on scholarship and research in the Ancient World. The course may be particularly useful to archaeologists, historians, art historians, and philologists who want to explore how Graph Databases and Network Analysis can contribute to their own research.