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(Worth 10% of your grade; due on February 12)
Your first assignment is to familiarize yourself with several “mature” digital humanities projects, then select one to analyze and critique. Your investigation of the project should include not only the finished project itself, but also any supporting materials you can find — blog posts, press releases, early drafts, software documentation, etc… Your final analysis of the project will take the form of a short essay (1,000–1,500 words) and a brief in-class presentation (3–5 minutes).
Before you select a project, you should survey a wide range of options. Here are a few good directories of digital humanities projects that will help you see what’s out there:
Once you find a project that piques your interest, begin bookmarking and/or downloading everything you can find related to this project. (Generally speaking, you’ll be better off analyzing a large project that has been carefully documented and widely promoted.) You should immerse yourself in your chosen project, doing your best to understand the original inspiration for the project, the ways in which the project fits (or doesn’t fit) into some larger field or scholarly conversation, the tools used to create the project, the funding sources that supported the project, and the current state of the project (i.e., completed or still under development).
Your essay should provide a brief overview of the project, but it should move quickly to analysis and critique. You may want to use the following questions to guide your thinking:
At the conclusion of this assignment, you will submit your essay using your shared Google Drive folder. In class, you will deliver a brief presentation (3–5 minutes) designed to make your classmates aware of the project you analyzed and draw their attention to anything particularly compelling about the project.
I will evaluate your project using the following criteria: