Capstone: Digital Humanities as Public Scholarship

Many schools across the United States teach different versions of survey classes for which instructors have to reach outside their own focuses. To do so, those instructors often search for visualizations of historical change, literary development, and examinations of religious networks, depending on the field and course. In this capstone, graduate students will develop projects within their areas of specializations to produce digestible digital exhibits, visualizations, and more that can be made freely available to scholars across the world. The goal would be to promote the free exchange of high quality information and digital sources available in the public domain.Furthermore, through the capstone, students should understand the process of a project from conception to presentation. They should have developed skills engaging metadata, transcription, the process of digitization, and more. Students can bring their own research data from their dissertation project or from previous coursework, or they can be provided with a historical or literary dataset from the Boston College Libraries to utilize over the semester. There are four phases to the class, beginning with performing an environmental scan and writing a proposal for their project. In Phase II and III, students will implement and carry out their projects. Finally in Phase IV, students will engage in peer consulting and prepare their work for online publication.

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