Undergraduate Minor

MSU offers a Minor in Digital Humanities for students from all majors. The Minor provides a solid foundation and credential for communicating both digital skills and a critical eye on technology.

In this minor, students will develop knowledge, skills, and experiences that will help them make change in a world that is entangled with the digital in complex and layered ways. This learning empowers students to act as effective global and local citizens, and helps them to demonstrate the flexibility, critical thinking, and other skills needed by professionals in the 21st century.

Learning Goals:

In completing this minor, students will do all of the following:

  1. Explain the ethical ramifications, equity issues, and cultural or historical contexts of digital technologies and how this knowledge can shape real world decisions
  2. Use digital humanities methods to constructively address questions related to the humanities, ethics, culture, arts, or society
  3. Demonstrate skills related to four or more of the following:
    • Collaborate effectively on a digital project on an interdisciplinary team
    • Demonstrate project management skills, such as organization, maintaining a timetable, resource management, documentation, proactive troubleshooting, comfort with experimentation
    • Engage in work that makes a digital project more inclusive or equitable, in its processes or products, and/or make decisions that reflect humanistic knowledge about ethical considerations in digital practices
    • Collect, prepare, and analyze data or metadata 
    • Use computer programming to engage with humanities inquiry
    • Adeptly selecting the technology and tools to suit the work at hand
    • Create multimodal, multimedia work 

15 credits total

Required courses:

  • DH285 – Intro to Digital Humanities (offered every Fall) (Fall 2021 syllabus) – 3 credits
  • DH340 – Digital Humanities Seminar (offered every Spring) – 3 credits

Elective courses:

Students take 2-3 elective courses. Options include courses listed below but may also include courses that significantly incorporate digital humanities and must be approved by the DH advisor.

Experiential learning:

The experiential learning component of the Minor may be achieved through a for-credit internship or coursework, or it may be achieved through a non-credit internship. The key component is that students gain experience working hands-on in Digital Humanities, inside or outside of a university context. Students work with the Minor advisor to identify an experience best suited to their interests and schedule.

Examples of common Experiential Learning for the DH Minor include:

Tracks

Students have the opportunity to follow a track as they complete the minor. While not required, the tracks allow students to pursue a particular emphasis as they complete the minor. Students in each track will focus two of their elective courses and their experiential learning component around their chosen track.

Global Digital Humanities Track

Learning goals

Students will be able to:

  • Complete a project that effectively and responsibly engages with globally diverse materials, methods, collaborations, and/or cultural contexts OR complete a study abroad centered on the digital humanities
  • Explain how power, positionality, access, oppression, or equity influence digital technologies, and are influenced by digital technologies, in global contexts
Requirements
  • Demonstrate the common learning goals for the DH Minor and fulfill the common requirements for the DH minor
  • Complete the Experiential Learning requirement for the DH Minor with an experience that centers DH work on global cultural artifacts, cultural contexts, etc.
  • Coursework: 2 courses in the humanities or social sciences or related fields that focus primarily on non-US cultures and/or indigenous cultures. These courses should focus on the digital OR should involve a final paper or significant project that relates to DH.

Community Engagement and Digital Humanities

Learning Goals

Students will be able to: 

  • Identify and apply culturally and socially responsible practices in community engagement
  • Complete a project that effectively uses digital humanities methods or practices to make a positive difference in a community
Requirements
  • Demonstrate the common learning goals for the DH Minor and fulfill the common requirements for the DH minor 
  • Complete the Experiential Learning requirement for the DH Minor with an experience that centers community-based work
  • Coursework: 2 courses that focus primarily on community engagement and culturally and socially responsible practices in digital humanities community engagement

Data, Ethics, and Society

Learning Goals

Students will be able to:

  • Apply sound ethical reasoning to make or analyze decisions about technology that align with the values of the student and/or the communities or organizations they are a part of
  • Identify how systems of power and oppression shape how digital technologies are made and used, how technological developments affect different groups differently (distributive justice, distribution of risk, etc.), and how the use of digital technologies can contribute to systems of power and oppression
Requirements
  • Demonstrate the common learning goals for the DH Minor and fulfill the common requirements for the DH minor   
  • Complete the Experiential Learning requirement for the DH Minor with an experience that centers ethical and equity issues related to data   
  • Coursework: 2 courses that focus primarily on ethics, equity, systems of power, marginalized identities, or cultures/histories that are underrepresented in higher education

For further information, contact the Assistant Director of Digital Humanities, Kristen Mapes, kmapes@msu.edu.