Ben Gurion University

Ben Gurion University

Digital Humanities for Computer Science

Dr. Yael Netzer
Teaching language: Hebrew
This course is a project-based introduction for CS / software engineering students to the field of digital humanities. In this course, students will read critical and technical papers about methodological questions, such as ‘what is the difference between research in the humanities and research in exact sciences’ and will learn about traditional tools and concepts developed in each field to describe cultural works -  curation, preservation, classifying, authorship etc. Students will design and work on software projects that utilize and implement tools for solving specific research questions or address need in the humanities. The course will cover topics about attributes of texts, annotation of cultural information, classification, as well as integration and visualization of information from multiple knowledge sources. Tools in Machine Learning, Text Mining and Natural Language Processing will be taught. All participants in the class will be expected to produce a software project based on the use of digital tools and techniques by the end of the semester.
The main axes of the course: Humanities issues (main concepts in literature theory: narrative, authorship, genre), Digital Humanities (archiving metadata, digital libraries and curation, distant reading), Basic computing skills including quantitative textual data analysis, scientific visualization, basic statistical models topic models and classification models.
The focus in this course will be on Hebrew literary texts such as those found in benyehuda.org project and additional sources such as the Talmud.

Topics in Digital Humanities (for Computer Science students)

Dr. Yael Netzer
Teaching language: Hebrew
The purpose of this course is to understand, plan and implement a small project in Digital Humanities.
Digital Humanities is a developing filed of knowledge, dealing with the integration of the Humanities with ideas, methods and tools from computer science and technology in general. It uses computational methods to create, describe and annotate and research cultural and human knowledge with digital tools and by sharing knowledge sources in the subjects of the Humanities.
The rapid development of this field is heavily influenced by the massive quantities of digital forms of knowledge, including literature and historical resources that can be found as digital texts, multimedia, in the internet and the semantic web and among other tools as OCR and processing of ancient manuscripts.
During this course students will acquire basic knowledge of the issues in this field and about the community of Digital Humanities both in Israel and world-wide. We will survey and analyse existing projects.
The work of the students will include analysis of an existing project, design of a new project using state-of-the-art methodologies of data representation, and finally an implementation of a project. This may be done in collaboration with a researcher from the Humanities with a specific need.

Digital Humanities for the Humanities (for Humanities students)

Dr. Yael Netzer and Dr. Eliezer Baumgarten
Teaching language: Hebrew
The objectives of this course in Digital Humanities, which is aimed for graduate students of the Humanities, are to teach and to bring to awareness tools and ideas that belong to this developing field of the humanities. The developments in the computational and digital world change this field of knowledge, the research, and the ways that its outcomes are presented. A researcher must know the various possibilities that exist for her.
Within the Digital Humanities,  we include the computational tools, advanced search functionalities, means of archiving and retrieval, pattern recognition and data extraction, but also the means of communication, authoring, exposing and sharing of knowledge through the internet, enriching the data with metadata and more. In this course we will start with basic ideas of computation, we will get familiar with terms and tools, experience with them, and will develop skill to process information, enrich and share, get familiarize with projects in the world and eventually, cooperate with students from Computer Science that will together implement the tools on actual projects of these students

Tel Aviv University

Tel Aviv University

Digital History: What? Why? How? (M.A. seminar in The Zvi Yavetz School of Historical Studies)

Prof. Amy Singer
Teaching language: Hebrew
Digital Humanities in general, and specifically Digital History, are becoming more widespread and popular as the latest fashion in research methodologies. Digital tools and computational possibilities enable historians to work quantitatively and qualitatively in ways that yield new insights and results that were not necessarily accessible in the past. But what is fashionable is not necessarily more successful or more appropriate as historical methodology, and there is no one-size-fits all solution. The seminar seeks to discover what Digital History is all about in order to understand more thoroughly what this way of “doing history” comprises and what it can offer. In what ways are digital solutions similar to or different from other methodologies? What are the strengths and weaknesses of working digitally? Are you already doing it? Readings for the seminar will include written research about digital history and digital humanities as well as research that has integrated different tools as part of a research strategy. In addition, students will experiment with different technologies to learn first-hand what they involve and which ones may be helpful in their own research.

Digital Humanities (International Multidisciplinary Program in the Humanities)

Dr. Yael Netzer
Teaching language: English
The term ‘Digital Humanities’(DH) includes not only the computational tools and methods, such as advanced search, information retrieval, quantifying events, exposing patterns in texts or within collections, but also new ways of communication, of writing, of sharing and exposing the knowledge through the web and in addition, alternative ways of readings (close vs. distant reading, hermeneutics that are introduced through tagging, by adding meta-data, by transforming data into social network or presenting it on maps). We will discuss manners of classification and categorization, we will learn to collect and curate data, clean it, prepare it to processing, and will get familiar with tools of archiving, enriching data, natural language processing and visualization. The hands-on nature of the course is such that students will have the opportunity to learn how to use these tools by themselves, and will need to devote time each week to participating in the practical class. As the main assessment for the course, students will produce a digital project which conforms to the same high standards of scholarly rigour as an assessed essay. By the end of this course, DH concepts and ideas should be accessible to the students, they will be acquainted with various digital projects, representations, computational tools and standards.

Bar-Ilan University

Bar Ilan University

Digital Humanities (for Information Science undergraduates)

Dr. Gila Prebor
Digital Humanities are a new academic field. The field is interdisciplinary by nature. Digital Humanities traces its beginnings as a field to the early days of computerization but has developed since the 1990s with the widespread use of the WWW. The term "Digital Humanities" refers to the use of computer technology in the research or academic instruction of fields classified as the Humanities. Digital Humanities as a field strives to expand and redefine traditional research by the use of digital tools. In the framework of this course will become familiar with various computer applications used in research and academic instruction in the Humanities. Students will learn about Digital Humanities tools and projects in Israel and throughout the world.

Introduction to Digital Humanities (for Graduate students at the Science, Technology and Society Graduate Program)

Dr. Sinai Rusinek
Teaching language: Hebrew
This is an introduction to the world of Digital Humanities: an academic movement of renewal, empowerment and enrichment of the Humanities which aspires to take an active, critical and reflective role in the Media and Information revolution, making scholars into leading partners in the development of resources, in building the tools and devising the approaches of digital research, as well as in forming the knowledge community in the academy and beyond. The Introductory course will provide a general view on some of the diverse branches of field with a combination of lectures, reading and theoretical discussion, with experimentation and practice in group and personal hands-on guided work.

The Hebrew University

The Hebrew University

Digital Humanities: Representations of time, space and networks (at the Mandel School for Advanced Studies in the Humanities)

Dr. Zef Segal
Teaching language: Hebrew
Adopting digital methodologies in the humanities could enable scholars, who are used to work in a textual environment, to open up to new sources, and more importantly, relate to their current sources differently. An important part of these digital methodologies is the visual approach towards scientific representation and research, primarily via maps and networks. This course will provide students with the practical and theoretical tools required to create maps and networks from textual sources as well as other types of sources in the humanities.  At the same time, students will discuss and criticize the use of visual images and representations as a scholarly device.