Culture and Technology Studies (CTS)
The course will introduce core concepts and skills for digital literacy in connection with big questions facing culture and society. Students will engage with words used to think through the relationships between information and communication technologies and big ideas related to ethics, culture, and how we understand what it is to be human. Students will learn to write for a web audience through the creation of their own weblog.
This course introduces students to core concepts in data creation, representation, and interpretation. Students will develop technical skills for ethically encoding and working with data. Students will learn to model data in software, develop a data schema, and develop basic programming skills in R or Python. They will learn version control and gain an introductory understanding of computational operations.
This course takes a hands-on approach to introducing students to various methods used by the digital humanities community. Students will gain a high-level understanding of approaches including but not limited to text-analysis, data mining, data visualization, augmented reality, game design, curation, and storytelling. Exploration of these methods will be informed by critical discourse, enabling students to analyze and evaluate digital projects and to think ethically about the choices involved in creating, manipulating, analyzing, and representing using digital methods. Projects and reflections completed as part of this class will contribute towards student's digital portfolios.
This course examines the ways in which social categories of difference have been theorized in conjunction with inquiry into how difference operates in a range of digital contexts. It will develop a vocabulary and critical framework for understanding diversity in relation to identities, bodies, and communities, provide an introduction to debates surrounding diversity and difference within digital spaces, and consider how individuals and groups have responded to the opportunities and challenges related to matters such as access, self-representation, and social justice.
This course invites students to work with their hands, learning to create with a variety of modern 'maker' methods (arduinos, raspberry pis, laser-cutters, 3D design programs, printing and scanning, photogrammetry, digital printmaking, virtual reality and augmented reality platforms). Each student will select at least two of these methods to create and build a project of their own devising. Students will read about design methods and critical theories of making, build a prototype through an iterative development process, and present their project, all while maintaining a reflective journal that critically engages with the theories presented in class and relates them to their chosen materials, methods, and/or media.
This course will see students working directly with a community group in the arena of public humanities: this might be a museum, historical society, community arts or tourism program. Students will have the opportunity to learn what it is like to work with a partner group while undertaking project-based learning that will develop their abilities to produce public-facing stories of relevance to the community. Examples of projects include digital curation or content development, oral history interviewing, developing programming, or creating a digital/virtual tour of a specific area of Guelph.
Culture and Technology Studies students will participate in summer workshops hosted by Digital Humanities at the University of Guelph (DH@Guelph) to complement their studies and develop advanced skills in digital humanities. Students will attend a workshop of their choice and propose and develop a final project in response to the topic presented. The project will allow them to apply digital tools and methods to their learnings and explore a specific research question or area of interest.
Students in this course will focus on two projects: a polished, professional version of their digital portfolio and the creation of an edition of the CTS student journal. Through this process they will develop an awareness of desktop publishing options, copyright, the open access movement, digital design, and self-presentation for the web.
This course prepares students to imagine, prototype, develop, manage, and produce a major project. It is a precursor to the final CTS Capstone project and is designed to equip students to manage larger, complex projects involving some form of digital creation or knowledge production. Students will propose a project to address a significant research question, gap in knowledge, or deficiency in digital representation or methods. They will also learn advanced research skills, reference management, project planning, proposal development and pitching, project management, version management, teamwork, waterfall and agile development models, collaborating with others, and working towards milestones.
In this course students build on the planning and initial efforts in the Capstone Preparation course to produce their major research project from its initial version to its completion, through a systematic process of research, development, iteration, and design.
This is a directed project supervised by a CTS-affiliated faculty member. The student and faculty member will collaboratively develop a course of study organized around a well-defined topic related to CTS. The student will work through the readings, meeting regularly with the faculty member to discuss the material, or the course may entail the development of skills in a programming language or toolkit. This course will culminate with the production of a final paper or project that will incorporate a substantive long-form argument. Students are required to submit a proposal to the CTS curriculum committee and receive approval prior to course registration.