Overview

You can find this course’s grading policy and a list of assignments in the navigation menu to the left. But first, let’s set the foundations for our class together.

Setting the Foundation: Flexibility, Commitments, and Intellectual Journeys

What does it mean to do “assignments” or be assessed as a graduate student? Ideally this question wouldn’t matter, and you enrolled in this course with a deep, self-motivating passion for digital humanities research, so grading would be of minimal concern. In reality, we know that grades have enormous influence in both how we have been taught to value ourselves and in turn how society often values us. While I cannot wave a magic wand and restructure society, I do want to address this situation explicitly for a few reasons.

First, I hope that we can all approach this course as an experiment in learning where flexibility, patience, and individual development are prioritized. Such a perspective does not mean that we don’t have deadlines or expectations, but rather we acknowledge that we are all coming into this course with differing levels of expertise, responsibilities, and bandwidth. Rather than erasing these differences, we will strive to accommodate—or even embrace them—as much as possible. If you want to get the most out of this course—and I hope you do!—you should meet each assignment and expectation where you are in your development, setting appropriate challenges and striving to meet them.

To have this kind of flexibility, we must ensure that we are committed to doing our best in this course. Otherwise, we lose a rare opportunity to think collectively and grow intellectually. So, how do we balance these goals—flexibility and commitment—in an increasingly unpredictable world? While I do have to submit grades for you, I want to emphasize that this course is about your individual intellectual development and journey.

To try and mitigate this tendency we will be doing a form of grading called consultative or specifications grading, which I discuss in the Grading & Assessment section, but also want to emphasize an important adage that I hope you remember throughout the course:

comparison is the thief of joy

Rather than compare yourselves to each other, I hope that you can focus on your individual growth during the semester and see each other as colleagues to learn from, instead of competition. Some of you will already be in this mindset. However, I find that this shift from undergraduate to graduate education is crucial. As I outline in the “caveat emptor” in the course policies, you will be best served if you use our activities and labs to push yourself rather than pace with your colleagues, and I will support those efforts to the best of my ability.