Visualizations in the Humanities

AMST2661, ITAL2661, and MCM 2500FSteven Lubar, Massimo Riva, Jean Bauer

1Tuesday, September 10, 13

About the Course

Museums, maps, network graphs and datasets reflect and shape the work of scholars in the humanities. This course provides an overview of the way that literary and historical scholars have organized, analyzed, and presented their research to each other and the public. The course includes theoretical, historical and practical work. It combines traditional humanities and digital humanities, academic and public humanities. It includes significant lab work, with students undertaking projects in their fields of study.

Monday, 3-5:20, in the Digital Scholarship Lab in Rockefeller Library

Lab session to be determined.

2Tuesday, September 10, 13

About the Course

How do humanists make sense out of the material they study? How do they organize that material to present it to other scholars, and to the public? How do digital methods change that?

3Tuesday, September 10, 13

• Visualization is a place where public and academic humanities intersect

• Interface design and use as interpretive act

• Changing role of visual as subject and tool in the humanities

• Changing role of the digital as subject and tool in the humanities

• Practical and philosophical

4Tuesday, September 10, 13

Before and After• Technical background

• Humanities background

• A project that you want to explore further

• Appreciation of new technologies of digital humanities

• Deeper understanding of nature of visualization, interpretation, interface design

• Some skills in a range of DH methods

• A DH project conceptualized

5Tuesday, September 10, 13

Class Work• Each week, read *‘d readings and others that seem

interesting; write a short post to the class blog about a reading or project that you find interesting or useful.

• Participate online: Twitter hashtag #amst2661, Zotero group, google doc class notes

• Participate in class discussions

• For one week: Write a 5-10 page paper that summarizes the arguments in the reading and discussion for any class of the course.

• Choose a project: preliminary outline due Week 7, final project due end of term

6Tuesday, September 10, 13

Labs

Once a week students will meet for a separate lab on Data Visualization.  These labs are designed to introduce you to the principles of data visualization (also known as Computational Information Design) and allow you to play with several simple tools for data visualization.  

7Tuesday, September 10, 13

Course Outline• Part 1: Foundations

• Week 2: Visualization

• Week 3.  Introducing Digital Humanities

• Part 2: Types of Visualization

• Week 4: Chronologies

• Week 4: Chronologies

• Week 5: Space and Place

• Week 6: Relationships and Influences, historical and literary

• Part 3: Visualizing texts, images, and collections

• Week 7: Collections

• Week 8: Texts and ImagesReading:

• Part 4: 3-D Visualizations

• Week 9: 3-D Modeling and Printing

• Week 10: Immersive 3-D

• Part 5: Presentations

• Weeks 11 and 12:  Student presentations

8Tuesday, September 10, 13

Viewshare“Creating and manipulating an interface to a digital collection is fundamentally an interpretive act.”

“Visualization is thought of as a process for revealing and illustrating knowledge. “

—Jefferson Bailey and Trevor Owens, ”From Records to Data with Viewshare: An Argument, An Interface, A Design”

9Tuesday, September 10, 13

Viewshare for class 1

collections data:

go to http://viewshare.org/profiles/profile/GalleryArchives/

click on views – first one in list

explore this view: 4 widgets on left, a choice of views in center

use widgets on left to shape views (cmd to choose more than 1)

look at different views (piechart, timeline, map, etc.)

look at sorting

what interesting questions can you ask out of this?

What makes them interesting?

What can’t you ask of this?

10Tuesday, September 10, 13

Now log in

Click on “all users” tab

Search for galleryArchives – click on “data”

Choose first data set – “with source” (1st thing in list)

Click Build (far right) to create a new view

Pick one of the canvases (can’t change later)

Probably best to pick the three column view – easiest to play with

Click on Add a view and add list, map, timeline, gallery, whatever

Each of these has settings – look at them, but no need to change now.

Use the green arrows to look at the data

At top – add a widget –

Select several – tag cloud, list, slider, range good.

For each, select what variable to show

Click show preview to see, then save if you want to save it

11Tuesday, September 10, 13

Things to think about - what historical questions does this help you answer?

Change over time? Kress taste? Taste of various galleries?

Can you talk about change in style? In medium?

How might it serve as a teaching tool? A public teaching tool?

How would you use this in research? Teaching? Public presentation?

What makes this a good or bad interactive?

12Tuesday, September 10, 13

Uploading this data

Download it from table, use Google Refine to clean up data column

Delete c., date ranges, etc.

Think about how to make medium more useful

Then ask questions about purchase date and date of artwork

13Tuesday, September 10, 13