Rhodes Fellowship in the Computational Humanities

Graduate students at Duke have a variety of options for learning how to use specific digital and computational tools, but I believe that they need an intellectual framework to integrate these skills with their dissertation research and teaching opportunities. To that end, over the past two years, I have developed what was originally individualized graduate mentoring within Data+ and the Data Expeditions into a full-fledged training program in digital and computational methods. As a direct result of my efforts, iiD supporting a competitive graduate fellowship, the Rhodes Fellowship in the Computational Humanities, that will start in Fall 2020.

The fellowship gives an opportunity to English doctoral students at Duke University to receive training in the methodology and theory of computational and digital literary studies. Fellows will also gain an understanding of the quickly-developing critical questions and methodologies that drive scholarship in the digital humanities.

Through workshops and mentoring, the fellowship creates a collaborative environment where English PhD students can acquire the necessary skills to translate their teaching and research interests into a digital or computational project. The projects undertaken as part of the fellowship aim to advance and complement the students’ dissertation research and their teaching within the English department. Because of this, the students will be required to design and create projects that reflect their core areas of research. Fellows are encouraged, though not required, to work towards a conference presentation or a publication for their project. At the end of each year of the program, they will share their completed projects on a public-facing website as well as present their work in an public panel.

Data Expeditions

Through the generous support of the Rhodes information initiative at Duke, I have been able to create teaching opportunities for graduate students interested in digital pedagogy. A Data Expedition is a unit within an undergraduate course lead by a graduate student in order to introduce undergraduate students to exploratory data analysis.

Each year, I mentor one graduate student for a Data Expedition (Spring 2018; Spring 2019; Fall 2022). During the fall semester, the student meets with me on a regular basis to curate a dataset or a textual corpus for exploration. In our meetings, we discuss computational tools, framing readings and questions for the students, and assignment design. In the spring, the graduate student works with me for two weeks of the course to implement the expedition. Part of this work includes after class meetings to discuss how the expedition is unfolding with the students and, after completing, help with the expedition write-up if desired (as in this example from Spring 2019).

In addition, graduate students receive professional development funds once they complete their Data Expedition.