The term “Digital Humanities” has always been elusive to me. It never had a clear, compact meaning. When I mention that I am a Digital Humanities major, I get a lot of “What is that?”s and I would usually have a hard time answering. Well, ladies and gentelmean, “that” is my major and I still wouldn’t know what it means. But after exploring the defintion of the term in depth in this course, I am finally able to give a coherent answer. Digital Humanites is the study of human interactions through digital interfaces, or studying digital tools, or even simply using digital tools to study any traditional humanities subject. I like this new and improved comprehensive answer.

I also learned a lot about what research really is. That a research project is not just based on the scientific method, but can be be conducted in a totally new way - by finding a tpoic of interest, asking a relevant question, undersanding the significance of the answer, and maybe even finding some type of application. I also learned about how to form an argumaent - a term I used to throw around to describe pretty much any type of verbal or written sparring, but this course shed light on a new and more rounded meaning for an argument that includes things like having a claim, reasoning, evidence, acknowledgement of objections, and a warrant.

I enjoyed learning how to use new digital tools. I have become comfortable with things like Python. I gained more experience with GitHub and learned about new techniques that can be used in video editing.

As far as cultural competencies go, I feel like I have become most familiar with: play, simulation, and networking. Play is something I had to learn with doing my research project. Taking on this huge task on my own seemed easy when I chose my topic, but when I was actually in the middle of my project, playing around with my code trying to get data and then trying to interpret the data, I realized that play, seeking solutions from my environment, trying new things, and looking at previous works were extremely essential for me to come up with any conclusion.

Simulation was important when I was trying to understand the different research projects we read - the questions they posed, they evidence they brought, the interpretations and conclusions they made. Then taking what we learned and applying it ourselves - taking texts and running word frequency tests on them and drawing out networks in Once Upon a Time and Supergirl.

Networking was also importnat. We learned to digest information and then reflect on it it throughout the semester by writing weekly blog posts that other people in the class were able to read. We also had to apply all that we learned in class in order to complete our final projects.

Overall, I learned a lot of new concepts in this class and also reformed my comprehension of a few others. I enjoyed applying all that I learned via a comprehensive (not too successful) final project.