The final projects for the course will revolve around the first fifty years of Carleton’s history as the college nears its sesquicentennial anniversary (that’s the 150). The local setting of our college—its physical environment, its buildings, and its historical and literary archives—constitute our data set. Collectively, we will use new digital technologies to tell stories (well-researched, carefully documented, scholarly sophisticated stories) of how Carleton’s past inhabitants built, inhabited and experienced the spaces that we encounter (or no longer encounter) today.
You and your group will therefore design and execute a DH project using the tools and platforms of your choosing and keyed to your discipline of choice. All projects will make use of local resources, including the holdings of the Carleton College archives, local newspapers from the Northfield historical society, literary works set in the local environment, and environmental data. Part of your research will therefore involve getting out from behind the desk and into the community to gather real world data.
- Be based on some aspect of Carleton’s history, using primary sources from local archvies
- Feature at least one of the buildings built in Carleton’s first 50 years (i.e. before 1916)
- Include an interactive interface to your source data
- Incorporate a strong narrative, storytelling element leading the user through your data
Here are some suggestions for potential topics to explore
- the evolution of a building or buildings on campus and the economic, political and social factors that influenced or resulted from those decisions,
- the campus that might have been — investigating architectural plans, proposals and planning documents for building projects that never came to fruition,
- the lived experience of Carleton students — exploring how the built environment of the first fifty years shaped individual or multiple student lives,
- social networks in Carleton’s past — where did students come from, who did they interact with and how did they stay connected beyond campus?
- town/gown — investigating the negotiations between Carleton’s growing campus, the town of Northfield and the surrounding landscape
- a textual analysis of Carleton students’ literary output, or self representations in yearbooks, etc.
- Invent your own!
Final digital projects could take the form of
- narrated movies using iMovie or other software
- interactive web maps, timelines, or visualizations using pre-existing platforms or — for those who want to code — JavaScript libraries like Leaflet, popcorn, D3 or three.js
- 3D models and simulations
- augmented reality applications
- etc. etc.
Your project will be pitched in week 4, detailed and refined in week 6, published in week 9 and presented in week 10.
Assignment 1 — The Pitch (Week 4)
- The definition of the project topic and objectives for what you plan to produce
- The proposed methodology:
- What data do you hope to use and how do you hope to find it?
- What tools and techniques will you use to gather sources and store your data?
- What analyses or transformations will you conduct on those data?
- How will you present the results and integrate the digital assets you create as an interactive final product?
- The proposed timeline of deliverables
- And finally, a link to one or more DH projects that you think might make a good model for what you plan to do.
On your own blogs, write a brief message outlining your personal interests in the projects and what you hope it will achieve.
Assignment 2 — The Details (Week 7)
Now that you’ve had some time to research and figure out what the possibilities are in terms of sources and technologies, write a blog post on the course blog of at least 500 words under your project’s category stating the following:
- Your progress to date
- What have you done so far, who have you talked to, what have you gathered, and what have you built?
- Problems and (proposed) solutions
- What issues have you run into?
- Have they forced you to change your initial plan?
- Do you have a proposed solution or do you need help formulating one?
- Tools and techniques
- What applications/languages/frameworks have you selected and how are you going to implement them?
- An updated timeline of deliverables
- Is you project still on track?
Remember to include citations and/or links to any resources, tools, or information that you reference.
