Digital Arts and Humanities Minor
The Digital Arts and Humanities (DGAH) interdisciplinary minor provides students with a framework for studying, understanding, and actively participating in the integration of new digital methods, arts & humanities academic research and creative production. The evolving field of Digital Humanities uses digital tools and computational methods to enhance arts and humanities research and production, while also using traditional humanistic approaches to interrogate the impact of digital technologies. Bridging traditional divides between the humanities, arts, and computational sciences, the minor in Digital Arts and Humanities emphasizes multidisciplinary collaboration and experimentation while encouraging students to both practice and critically reflect on digital creation and interpretation. Students in the DGAH minor will learn to critically evaluate and creatively employ digital media, engage with emergent research questions related to digital culture and practices, and develop the skills that constitute digital fluency in the twenty-first century.
Learning Goals: Students who pursue a DGAH minor will:
- Demonstrate proficiency in several disparate digital arts and humanities competencies (e.g., digital communication; data management, analysis and presentation; critical making, design and development)
- Learn to reflect critically on the intersection between digital media and methodologies and non-digital materials and texts
- Demonstrate an understanding of the social, cultural, political and ethical implications of digital technologies, scholarship, and artistic production
- Gain hands-on experience with collaborative, creative, and interdisciplinary digital projects and demonstrate an ability to work both individually and in group settings
Requirements for the Digital Arts and Humanities Minor
Students must complete at least 44 credits to complete the minor, including an introductory theory and methods course (6 credits) and capstone Digital Arts and Humanities ePortfolio seminar (2 credits).
The remaining 36 credits are drawn from a range of courses that foster digital skills, critical reflection on digital scholarship, and collaborative practices transferable across disciplines. At least 6 credits must be taken from each category (B, C, and D), and at least 12 credits must be at the 200 level or above. Students are strongly encouraged to explore different disciplines and the connections among them in the course of their study; at least three subjects (e.g., ARCN, CAMS, STAT,...) must be represented (for at least six elective credits each) and at least 12 elective credits must come from courses designated Arts Practice, Humanistic Inquiry or Literary/Artistic Analysis. No more than 18 elective credits may come from any one department and no more than 18 credits may count toward both the student's major and the DGAH minor.
A. Core Courses (6 credits)
The core courses introduce students to a broad range of digital methodologies and promote critical reflection on their digital project work in a collaborative setting.
- DGAH 110 Hacking the Humanities (6 credits) Offered annually, this course features a general introduction to the methods and implications of digital scholarship, as well as hands-on collaborative project work.
- ENGL 285 Textual Technologies from Parchment to Pixel (6 credits) Offered annually, this course introduces students to the history and the future of the book, including theories of and hands-on practice with writing, manuscripts, books, printing, and digital media.
B. Skill Building in Digital Media and Methodologies (at least 6 credits)
These courses teach fundamental skills of digital production or analysis including hardware, software, and methods that are widely transferable across the arts and humanities.
- ARCN 246 Archaeological Methods & Lab
- ARCN 251 Greece at a Crossroads: History, Landscape, and Material Culture Program: Digital Archaeology and Virtual Reality
- ARTS 240 Introduction to Film and Digital Photography (not offered in 2023-24)
- CAMS 111 Digital Foundations
- CS 111 Introduction to Computer Science
- DGAH 210 Spatial Humanities
- ENTS 120 Introduction to Geospatial Analysis & Lab
- HIST 200 Historians for Hire
- MUSC 108 Introduction to Music Technology
- STAT 120 Introduction to Statistics
- STAT 220 Introduction to Data Science
- STAT 250 Introduction to Statistical Inference
- CS 201 can count for students that have placed out of CS 111
- PSYC 200/201 or SOAN 239 can count for STAT 120
C. Critical and Ethical Reflection on Digital Scholarship (at least 6 credits)
Courses that directly engage with the implications of digital technologies and teach students to be critical consumers and producers of digital media.
- AMST 222 Indigenous Film (not offered in 2023-24)
- ARTH 246 What Has Been Happening in Modern Architectural Design? (not offered in 2023-24)
- ARTS 244 Alternative Processes (not offered in 2023-24)
- ARTS 339 Advanced Photography
- CAMS 187 Cult Television and Fan Cultures (not offered in 2023-24)
- CAMS 214 Film History III
- CAMS 228 Avant-Garde and Experimental Cinema
- CAMS 246 Documentary Studies (not offered in 2023-24)
- CAMS 252 Media Archaeology: History and Theory of New Media
- CAMS 254 Cinematic Spectacle
- CAMS 257 Video Games and Identity (not offered in 2023-24)
- CAMS 330 Cinema Studies Seminar (not offered in 2023-24)
- CAMS 340 Television Studies Seminar
- CCST 233 The Art of Translation in the Age of the Machine
- CCST 245 Meaning and Power: Introduction to Analytical Approaches in the Humanities
- CHIN 239 Digital China: Media, Culture, and Society
- CHIN 240 Chinese Cinema in Translation (not offered in 2023-24)
- CHIN 250 Chinese Popular Culture in Translation (not offered in 2023-24)
- CS 314 Data Visualization
- CS 344 Human-Computer Interaction
- ENGL 362 Narrative Theory (not offered in 2023-24)
- ENGL 395 Narrative
- MUSC 208 Computer Music and Sound (not offered in 2023-24)
- MUSC 313 Video Game Music: History, Interpretation, Practice (not offered in 2023-24)
- POSC 214 Visual Representations of Political Thought and Action (not offered in 2023-24)
- POSC 217 Monuments, Museums & Meaning: How Politics Shapes Memory in Artifacts (not offered in 2023-24)
- SPAN 209 Radio and News in Spanish (not offered in 2023-24)
- SPAN 244 Spain Today: Recent Changes through Narrative and Film
- SPAN 345 Culture, Capitalism and the Commons (not offered in 2023-24)
- THEA 320 Live Performance and Digital Media
D. Cross-disciplinary Collaboration in Digital Projects (at least 6 credits)
Courses that emphasize hands-on, experiential learning by creating digital projects that cross traditional disciplinary boundaries or engage authentically with community partners and public audiences.
- ARCN 211 Coercion and Exploitation: Material Histories of Labor (not offered in 2023-24)
- ARCN 222 Experimental Archaeology and Experiential History
- ARTS 252 Metalsmithing: Ancient Techniques, New Technologies
- CS 232 Art, Interactivity, and Microcontrollers
- CS 318 Computational Media (not offered in 2023-24)
- DGAH 264 Visualizing the Ancient City
- ENGL 265 News Stories
- HIST 206 Rome Program: The Eternal City in Time: Structure, Change, and Identity (not offered in 2023-24)
- HIST 231 Mapping the World Before Mercator (not offered in 2023-24)
- HIST 238 The Viking World
- HIST 245 Ireland: Land, Conflict and Memory (not offered in 2023-24)
- HIST 246 Making Early Medieval England (not offered in 2023-24)
- HIST 335 Finding Ireland's Past
- HIST 338 Digital History, Public Heritage & Deep Mapping (not offered in 2023-24)
- MUSC 221 Electronic Music Composition
- RELG 243 Native American Religious Freedom (not offered in 2023-24)
- RELG 289 Global Religions in Minnesota
- SOAN 314 Contemporary Issues in Critical Criminology (not offered in 2023-24)
- THEA 234 Lighting Design for the Performing Arts (not offered in 2023-24)
E. Senior Capstone Experience (2 credits)
- DGAH 398 Digital Arts & Humanities Portfolio: A Capstone Seminar (2 credits) In this advanced capstone seminar, seniors will create an instructor-guided ePortfolio that curates and critically reflects on the digital experiences in, and products of, courses taken for the minor. If appropriate, this may also highlight digital components of a comps project.
Students may count--with prior approval of both the course instructor and the minor coordinators--other advanced courses (200 or 300 level) in which the minor makes significant use of digital technology to produce a research project or creative product. Additional courses that engage substantially with a significant number of the DGAH learning goals may also be added to this list at the director's discretion in consultation with the committee. Courses from OCS programs, independent studies and LACOL Consortium summer courses may be submitted for consideration, but no more than six OCS credits may count towards the minor. For two-credit trailing courses and digital labs that require co-registration, only the digital component will be counted. Repeatable two-credit public outreach courses may be counted for up to six credits.