Digital Studies and Methods Certificate

Return to: Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences

Graduate Certificate in Digital Studies and Methods

This certificate offers graduate students at the University of Pittsburgh the opportunity to acquire a proactive, mindful engagement with digital methods in the humanities and allied social sciences. While interpretive scholars have been applying computational methods to their work for as long as there have been digital computers, the arrival of the World Wide Web witnessed a more expansive group of humanists and social scientists, armed with a new array of interpretive possibilities, joining the conversation about how computing can productively enrich their research. In these recent years, such scholars have turned to using the computer not only as a revolutionary programmable calculator but also as a medium of connection, capable of supporting a wide number of approaches to scholarly investigation, interpretation, and expression. In sum, they focus on what it means to be human in a world where the dominant force-for-change seems to be technology. The Graduate Certificate in Digital Studies and Methods is designed to welcome students into this community.

Being a mode of inquiry with an expansive set of methods and tools, the use of digital techniques within the humanities and allied social sciences requires a pedagogical approach that relies on not only lecture and seminar time, but also hands-on workshop opportunities where students can apply the techniques they have been learning and discussing. To this end, this certificate includes traditional classroom hours as well as studio-based learning experiences that provide the hands-on, peer- and mentor-supported experience that this digitally-attentive approach to interpretive scholarship requires.

The methods, skills, and techniques that the students enrolled in this certificate might encounter include: network analysis, topic modeling, digital visualization techniques, geographic information systems (GIS), effective data modeling practices, and approaches to text analysis focused on the use of markup languages.

Contact Information

Graduate Advisor: Alison Langmead
Mailing Address: 104 Frick Fine Arts
Physical Address: 116 Frick Fine Arts (Visual Media Workshop)
412-648-2407
adlangmead@pitt.edu

Enrollment

The graduate certificate in Digital Studies and Methods (DSAM) consists of courses totaling 15 credit hours. Any student enrolled in a graduate program at the University of Pittsburgh, and who is in good academic standing according to the guidelines of their unit of matriculation, is eligible to apply.