Certificate in Digital Humanities
In our increasingly digitized world, the question isn’t whether to use digital technology, but how. Institutions of higher education, as well as employers in many other sectors, recognize that digital humanities skills such as text analysis, mapping, and coding have transformative potential. BC’s Graduate Certificate in Digital Humanities offers a coordinated curriculum that is feasible for graduate candidates to complete alongside existing degree requirements. The program combines interdisciplinary methodological training with discipline-specific coursework to provide students with training and institutional recognition of their accomplishments in this fast-growing field.
A joint effort of the History and English Departments and the Boston College Libraries’ Digital Scholarship Group, the program offers M.A. and Ph.D. students the opportunity to diversify their skill-sets and produce projects such as digital archives, data visualizations, online exhibits, and scholarly websites. This project-based approach puts a premium on collaboration and interdisciplinary inquiry. In the process, Certificate holders will enhance their employment prospects in both traditional academia as well as in publishing, government, museums, libraries, archives, and other professional fields.
Eligibility
Students wishing to pursue the Graduate Certificate in Digital Humanities must first be enrolled in a graduate degree program at Boston College. They will be able to pursue coursework in accordance with their preparation under any of the following disciplines:
- Classical Studies
- English
- History
- Economics
- Political Science
- Philosophy
- Psychology
- Romance Languages and Literatures
- Slavic and Eastern Languages and Literatures
- Sociology
- Theology
Admission will be open to all interested graduate students with approval from their graduate advisor.
Requirements
The curriculum for the certificate program consists of three courses:
- HIST 7817/ENGL 7801: Digital Scholarship for the Humanities (introductory course)
- HIST/ENGL 8275 Capstone: Digital Humanities as Public Scholarship
- One relevant course within the home department
- A capstone course conducted under the auspices of the Libraries’ Digital Scholarship Group (third year for doctoral students, second year for MAs)
The introductory course covers methodological aspects of the digital humanities, giving students the technical skills needed to do independent digital scholarship. The departmental course will allow students to apply these skills to discipline-specific work as they complete a digital project agreed to in advance with the course instructor. The capstone course will give students a chance to create a larger-scale work of digital scholarship, perhaps in collaboration with other students in the program, which they can use as part of a portfolio to demonstrate their abilities to potential employers.
Procedures
Interested graduate students should contact the program director as early as possible in their graduate studies. They will need to take the introductory course in the digital humanities and get approval from their departmental advisor to enroll in the program. Because the certificate is interdisciplinary, drawing from the course offerings of other departments, students must plantheir schedules accordingly to ensure that approved electives are offered and can be taken by the time of graduation. For more information, please contact the program director at: DHCertificate@bc.edu
Required Courses, 2022–2023
Course Number | Course Title | Instructor |
---|---|---|
HIST/ENGL 7817 (Fall 2022) |
Graduate Colloquium: Introduction to Digital Humanities | Bee Lehman |
HIST/ENGL 8275 (Spring 2023) |
Capstone: Digital Humanities as Public Scholarship | Bee Lehman |
Fall 2022
Course Number | Course Title | Instructor |
---|---|---|
HIST 4440 | Housing America | Glass |
HIST 8000 | Intro to Doctoral Studies | Reinburg |
HIST 8214 | Graduate Seminar: Early Modern History | Ross |
ARTH 4370 | The Art Museum: History, Philosophy and Practice | Netzer |
ENGL 6038 | Seminar: Cultural Rhetorics | Pauszek |
ENGL 6041 | Game of Thrones: Medieval English Political Poetry | Weiskott |
ENGL 7746 | The City in American Literature and Culture | Rotella |
ENGL 8876 | Issues and Methods in English Studies | Weiskott |
Spring 2023
Course Number | Course Title | Instructor |
---|---|---|
ENGL 7743 | Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama | Sofer |
HIST/ENVS 2406 (by permission) |
This Land Is Your Land | Valencius |
HIST 7818 | Early America in an Atlantic World | Stanwood |
HIST 7202 | Graduate Colloquium: Modern European History | Pendas |
HIST 4302 | Borders & Frontiers in Modern Latin America | Picone |
Affiliated Faculty
Marilynn Johnson
History
Brittany Lehman
Library
Joe Nugent
English
María de los Ángeles Picone
History
Christy Pottroff
English
Dana Sajdi
History
Stephen Sturgeon
Library
Eric Weiskott
English