Department of English

Over the last decade, humanists have turned to data and to methods that rely on data to seek new understandings of literature, history, and culture. This course will provide you with a practical introduction to data-driven inquiry in the humanities, with a focus on the Python programming language. (No prior knowledge of programming is required or expected.) In addition to learning foundational scripting and data science skills, we will ask questions about the role of data in the humanities. How does humanities data differ from data in the physical and social sciences? What new research questions in the humanities can we investigate using data-driven methods? And how can we make our conclusions relevant within the larger frame of humanistic inquiry? Course work will include readings, weekly programming exercises, and a collaborative data bibliography.