David J. Birnbaum (University of Pittsburgh)
The term “digital humanities” (DH) describes an interdisciplinary set of methods and methodologies involving the integration of computation into research and teaching in the humanities. The speaker will describe applications of DH methods in his own work as both scholar and teacher of Slavistics and Medieval Studies, demonstrating a range of projects and the tools he has designed and built to support editing, exploring, analyzing, and visualizing the contents of medieval Slavic manuscripts. The speaker has been a leader in the DH community since the mid-1980s, and currently teaches a university course entitled “Computational methods in the humanities,” where students learn to write original computer programs, similar to the ones to be demonstrated, to facilitate their own research in the humanities. That course is cross-listed in eight academic departments, including languages and literatures, history, and religious studies.