Workshop/CFP - Expanding Communities of Digital Humanities Practice 11-20 June 2018, USA

What is the Digital Humanities Research Institute?

The Digital Humanities Research Institute (DHRI) is a ten-day residential workshop to be held from June 11 - 20, 2018 at The Graduate Center, CUNY. Participants will develop core computational research skills through hands-on workshops, explore interdisciplinary digital humanities research and teaching with leading DH scholars, and begin developing versions of the DHRI for their own communities. Over the following academic year, each participant will have access to an online network of peers, as well as 20 hours of consultation from an experienced staff while they lead their own DHRI. Participants will return to New York in June 2019 to report on their experiences and contribute to a guide to leading DHRIs in a variety of institutional contexts.

Reasons to Participate

• Build Community

Engage with leaders who are passionate about using digital tools to enhance their work.

• Learn New Skills

Build technical and professional skills through collaborative and group-oriented workshops

• Share Resources

Learn how to teach, adapt, and share program's open curricula with others.

What to Expect

At DHRI you can expect an intensive, community-oriented, and foundational approach to learning technical skills in service of humanities teaching and learning. Through seminar-style discussions with leading scholars in digital humanities, hands-on workshops on core technical competencies, and project development labs, participants will become familiar with working from the command line, collaborating with git, programming with Python, querying structured data, creating maps, and analyzing texts computationally. You will also become part of a growing network of institute leaders by developing your own DHRI based on our open, core curriculum to be led at your home institution or organization. 

Who is  Digital Humanities Research Institute?

The GC Digital Humanities Research Institute is led by Lisa Rhody, Deputy Director of Digital Initiatives at the CUNY Graduate Center and the GC Digital Fellows. It is joined by Matthew K. Gold, Advisor to the Provost for Digital Initiatives and Associate Professor of English and Digital Humanities, along with a visiting faculty of experienced DH scholars, faculty, and researchers from across New York City. DHRI is hosted by GC Digital Initiatives at The Graduate Center, City University of New York.

Short courses—or “bootcamps”—that last anywhere from one day to two months are an increasingly popular way to offer intensive training in digital tools and skills over a short period of time; however, these courses are resource-intensive to run, reach a limited audience, and rarely offer ongoing support. As part of a commitment to building a vibrant community of scholars who make critical use of technology in their teaching and research, the CUNY Graduate Center ran three week-long institutes between 2016 and 2017, which offered a combined 100 hours of instruction on digital research methods to more than 100 students, faculty, staff, and librarians across the CUNY system. Demand for foundational digital research skills remains high, as it has had to turn away as many participants for each institute as it was able to accept.

Application Evaluation

Applications will be evaluated according to the following criteria:

• Commitment to attending all 10 days of the June 2018 and 2 days of the June 2019 institutes;
• Demonstrated interest in and responsibility for “digital humanities community building” (This can be through a regional digital humanities group as a volunteer, as a post-doc in a university library, a visiting scholar at a liberal arts college, a faculty member creating a DH reading group, a curator or archivist at a historical society, library, or other humanities-oriented organization. Position title is not important. What is important is your ability to explain your responsibility or interest in building communities of DH practice.);
• A letter of support from a group, organization, or institution stating they will support your efforts to run a Digital Humanities Research Institute (Support does not have to be financial. It should simply recognize that your activities are recognized and welcomed by the organization.);
• Interest in helping to build a network of institute leaders through sharing of curricular materials and engaging in online community-support;
• An articulation of a DH project idea that you find interesting and would like to pursue or have already begun;
• An explanation of how you confront and overcome technical difficulties you have experienced in the past.

Program is looking for participants who represent diverse DH areas of interest (disciplines, methods, project-types), who work at a wide range of institutional types (universities, community colleges, libraries, archives, museums, historical associations), and who reflect an array of professional roles from graduate students to experienced faculty to librarians, administrators, museum curators, archivists and more. Ideal participants will be able to demonstrate strong communication and collaboration skills and a willingness to confront and overcome frustration. No previous technical experience is required. Applications will not be evaluated based on familiarity with existing technologies, though program team will be happy to hear about your aspirations and the skills you would like to develop for future work.