Week 7: How does the way we do research change the nature and results of that research?

I think we’ve worked out all of the kinks in our assignments for the second assignment, so at this point you should be learning as much as you can about your chosen tool and documenting the process as you go. Insofar as it’s possible, try to situate your exploration of the tool within the context of a project that you could actually carry out. In other words, work with real data or real artifacts, and develop some sample research questions that will allow you to find out what the tool is (or is not) capable of doing.

Here’s a quick review of our plans for next week:

• On Monday, we will focus on the methodological challenges of doing digital humanities work, with Lindsey and Andrew K. serving as our discussion superheroes. Please read Rieder and Röhle’s chapter in Understanding Digital Humanities (pp. 67–84), Matthew Wilkens’s chapter in Part IV of Debates in the Digital Humanities (pp. 249–58), and “Topic Modeling Made Just Simple Enough,” by Ted Underwood. In addition, please be ready to talk about any challenges you have encountered during your early explorations of your chosen tool.
• On Wednesday, we will conduct a workshop on content management systems, focusing on WordPress and Medium. Before you come to class, please create an account on the Blogs@VT system. (You can name your site whatever you’d like; you’ll be able to delete it at the end of the workshop.)

If you have any questions about these plans, or if you’d like to talk about the project you’re working on right now, don’t hesitate to ask.