Guest

Tess McNulty, UIUC English

Discussion Topic

What is humanities data? How do we work with data in DH? How do we create or discover datasets? What does it mean to transform historic and cultural objects into data?

Discussion Prep and Collaborative Notes Doc

Core

  • Thomas Padilla, “On a Collections as Data Imperative” (2017), external link
  • Catherine D’Ignazio and Lauren F. Klein, “What Gets Counted Counts” and “The Numbers Don’t Speak for Themselves,” Data Feminism (2020), https://data-feminism.mitpress.mit.edu/
  • Lee Skallerup Bessette and Quinn Dombrowski, DSC Multilingual Mystery /#1: Lee and the Missing Metadata (2020), external link (note: I would recommend looking at DSCM #2 and #3 also at some point, particularly if you appreciate the Data-Sitters Club approach to this topic!)
  • Benjamin Lee, “Compounded Mediation: A Data Archaeology of the Newspaper Navigator Dataset” (2021), external link
  • Tess McNulty, “What’s On Top of TikTok?” (2023), external link

Penumbra

  • Miriam Posner, “Humanities Data: A Necessary Contradiction” (2015), external link
  • Katie Rawson and Trevor Muñoz, “Against Cleaning” (2016), external link
  • Melissa Terras and Julianne Nyhan, “Father Busa’s Female Punch Card Operatives,” Debates in the Digital Humanities 2016, external link
  • Sarah Allison, “Other People’s Data: Humanities Edition” (2016), external link
  • Ryan Cordell, “‘Q i-Jtb the Raven’: Taking Dirty OCR Seriously” (2017), library link
  • Jessica Marie Johnson, “Markup Bodies: Black [Life] Studies and Slavery [Death] Studies at the Digital Crossroads,” Social Text (2018), library link
  • Rachel Wittmann, Anna Neatrour, Rebekah Cummings, and Jeremy Myntti, “From Digital Library to Open Datasets: Embracing a ‘Collections As Data’ Framework” (2019), external link
  • Jennifer Mahoney, Roopika Risam, and Hibba Nassereddin. “Data Fail: Teaching Data Literacy with African Diaspora Digital Humanities” (2020), external link
  • Timnit Gebru, Jamie Morgenstern, Briana Vecchione, Jennifer Wortman Vaughan, Hanna Wallach, Hal Daumé III, and Kate Crawford, “Datasheets for Datasets” (2021), external link
  • James A. Hodges and Ciaran B. Trace, “Preserving Algorithmic Systems: A Synthesis of Overlapping Approaches, Materialities and Contexts,” Journal of Documentation (2023), library link
  • Benjamin Lee, “The ‘Collections as ML Data’ checklist for machine learning and cultural heritage” (2023), library link

Updated: