Graduate

Certificate in Digital Humanities

In our increasingly digitized world, the question isn’t whether to use digital technology, but how. BC’s Graduate Certificate in Digital Humanities offers a coordinated curriculum that is feasible for graduate candidates to complete alongside existing degree requirements.

Registration Form

Digital Humanities Projects

Certificate Overview

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 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/ENGL 7888: Graduate Colloquium: Digital Humanities, introductory course
One relevant course within the home department
HIST/ENGL 8275 Capstone: Digital Humanities as Public Scholarship, 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, 2023–2024

Course Number	Course Title	Instructor
HIST7888 (Fall 2023)	Graduate Colloquium: Digital Humanities	Weiskott
HIST8275 (Spring 2024)	Capstone: Digital Humanities as Public Scholarship	Lehman

Electives, Fall 2023

Course Number	Course Title	Instructor
ARTH4370	The Art Museum: History, Philosophy, and Practice	Netzer
ENGL6302	Seminar: Black Feminist Literature, Art, and Performance, 1970s-1990s	Jones
ENGL6649	Seminar: Irish Romanticism	Connolly
ENGL8802	Joyce’s Ulysses	Howes
ENGL8887	Introduction to Advanced Research	Stanton
HIST4076	Democracy Movements and Contemporary China	Mo
HIST4262	Ireland in the Age of Revolution: From United Irishmen to United Kingdom, 1798-1803	Beiner
HIST4267	Life and Death under Stalin	Eaton
HIST4402	Natives and Newcomers in Early America	Stanwood
HIST4440	Housing America	Glass
HIST4705	In the Eye of the Hurricane: An Environmental History of Latin America	Picone
HIST7202	Graduate Colloquium: Modern European History	Eaton
HIST7319	Graduate Seminar: Podcasting as a Medium of Scholarship	Sajdi
HIST7799	Graduate Colloquium: Race and Inequality in Modern America	Glass
HIST8215	Graduate Seminar: Modern European History	Pendas
THEO5437	Jewish/Christians Reading Bible	Langer & Joslyn-Siemiatkosk
THEO7037	Practical Theological Ethics and Global Christianity	Vicini