Graduate Courses
Princeton graduate courses (500-level or above) can be cross-listed with a CDH (Computational & Data Humanities) subject code. This subject code is administered by the Center for Digital Humanities. A 500-level course that is cross-listed with the CDH subject code signifies that the CDH has approved this course to fulfill the elective requirement for the Certificate Description.
Elective courses that count toward the certificate place humanistic research in meaningful and sustained dialogue with methods and concepts in data science, computation, and emerging technologies (e.g. generative art and synthetic text). These classes either a) teach critical and historical frameworks for studying computation, including those informed by data feminism, algorithmic bias frameworks, media theory, and tech justice, or b) require assignments applying data, computational, and quantitative methods to humanities research domains, or c) both. Please see below for categories of courses and examples of how they mix these critical and practical methodologies.
Please note that once a course is cross-listed with the CDH, it will remain that way each time it is offered in the future.
CDH Cross-listed Grad Courses, Prior Semesters#
Categories of CDH Cross-listed Grad Courses#
Courses at Princeton change frequently, but several courses offer the competencies and skills necessary for this certificate. Broadly, there are a few kinds of courses we anticipate students wanting to take.
Courses in Computational Text, Image, & Audio Analysis introduce students to tools and methods useful for making arguments and finding patterns with large scale collections of humanities data. These classes have included Brandon Stewart’s Topics in Statistics and Machine Learning: ML with Social Data: Opportunities and Challenges (SML 515 / SOC 516) and Sarah-Jane Leslie’s Machine Learning: A Practical Introduction for Humanists and Social Scientists (PHI 543 / SML 543).
Courses in Critical Data & Critical Archival Studies train students to ask vital questions of where that humanities data came from in the first place, and the ways that curatorial and archival decisions shape the cultural record and shape the arguments we make of that record. These courses include Autumn Womack and Kinohi Nishikawa’s African-American Literature: Sites of Memory: Black Archives in Theory and Practice (ENG 556 / AAS 556), and Marina Rustow’s Introduction to Arabic Documents (NES 523 / HIS 563).
Courses in Mapping & Spatial Humanities give students the opportunity to use geographic information systems (GIS) to digitally map events, people, historical locations, and travel routes in order to make spatial arguments that wouldn’t be possible in other formats. These courses include M. Christine Boyer’s Mapping the City: Cities and Cinema (ARC 525 / ART 524) and Xin Wen’s Chang’an: China’s Medieval Metropolis (EAS 553).
Courses in Critical Science and Technology Studies examine the social construction of historical and contemporary infrastructures, applying sociological and humanistic lenses on complex technological systems. These courses include Janet Vertesi’s Technology Studies (SOC 557) and Nikolaus Wegmann’s Topics in German Literature: Ego-Writing, Autobiography, Diary, Self-Documentation, Quantified Self (GER 526).
Finally, courses in Visualization & Critical Making enable students to represent their arguments and analyses through information visualizations, or to create intermediary scholarly artifacts (prototypes, data physicalizations) that stage a humanistic argument in new ways. Example classes include Jeffrey Himpele’s Co-seminar in Anthropology: Ethnographic Data Visualization (ANT 503B), and V. Mitch McEwen’s Robotic Architecture Workshop (ARC 568).