Graduate Certificate

At Princeton, Digital Humanities means data-intensive and computational approaches to the humanities, and humanistic approaches to data science. We blend critical data studies with data science for the humanities and prepare students for our current (and future) technologized world as both critical thinkers and expert practitioners.

Beginning AY 2023-24, the CDH will offer a Graduate Certificate in Digital Humanities. The goals of this certificate are to:

• Educate and credential the next generation of humanities researchers in cutting-edge, computational methods that are transforming fields ranging from medieval history to media studies. Certificate students will have the opportunity to expand their methodological toolkit, and to build a community of praxis that will help them imagine the expanded applications of humanistic thought in a data-driven world.
• Equip Princeton students to be interdisciplinary, forward-thinking, collaborative researchers in a competitive academic job market. Certificate students will be primed for careers on the tenure track, as well a broader range of positions in academia including libraries, museums, and academic administration, and roles in industry or the public sphere.

Eligibility

Admission to the Certificate is open to PhD students enrolled in a humanities department (including History and History of Science) who are interested in using quantitative, data-intensive, or coding methods in their research. Students must be in good academic standing and have the written support of their academic advisor or the director of graduate studies in their department.

No prerequisites are required.

Requirements

The Certificate has three components. Progress toward the candidate’s PhD must continue while completing the three requirements below.

1. Two graduate-level courses Students must receive a grade of B or better in each course. Candidates are permitted to have their two certificate courses also count toward their degree progress. These two courses include:
   1. One required core course cross-listed with the CDH.
      1. This course must have “CDH” in the subject code. The first core class, HUM5XX / CDH5XX “Data in the Humanities” will be offered Spring 2024.
   2. One elective course from a list approved by the Certificate directors. This course must be taken outside the candidate’s home department. A student may take two core “CDH” courses instead of an elective as long as the courses are not cross-listed in their home department.
      1. These classes either a) focus on the relationship between technology and culture, or b) include assignments involving data, computational, and quantitative methods, or c) both. Elective courses that count toward the certificate place humanistic research in meaningful dialogue with data science, computation, and emerging technologies.
      2. Previous courses have included:
         1. Machine Learning: A Practical Introduction for Humanists and Social Scientists (PHI 543 / SML 543)
         2. African-American Literature: Sites of Memory: Black Archives in Theory and Practice (ENG 556 / AAS 556)
         3. ML with Social Data: Opportunities and Challenges (SML 515 / SOC 516)
         4. Introduction to Arabic Documents (NES 523 / HIS 563)
      3. Note: Periodically, new courses focused on emerging technologies in the humanities are offered by Inter-University Doctoral Consortium (IUDC) partner institutions in the tri-state area. IUDC courses are also eligible to fulfill the Certificate’s elective course requirement. (A list of relevant IUDC courses for the Spring 2022 semester is available on the CDH website.)
2. Original research requirement: a significant portion of the student’s dissertation must demonstrate proficiency in data-driven methodologies and tools relevant to the humanities.
3. Colloquium series participation and presentation: candidates will present their research in a CDH-sponsored colloquium series, open to attendance by the university community.
   1. The student’s project will be related to their dissertation, and should involve engagement with humanities data, code, visualization, empirical or quantitative methods, and/or digital editions and exhibits.
   2. Candidates are required to give one presentation, serve once as respondent to another presenter, and attend each event in the colloquium series for at least two semesters.
4. (optional) Participation in Pedagogy or Project Management Orientation Workshops. These workshops will complement the student’s participation in the colloquium series.

Apply

An application form will be posted later in the Summer of 2023. In the meantime, reach out to Grant Wythoff with any questions.