Loyola University Chicago

Center for Textual Studies and Digital Humanities

Apply Now Request Information Make a Gift

Programs

MA in Digital Humanities

Calendar

Introduction to Graduate Writing Workshop

Footprints of Polonia Across America

View Month

Alumni Spotlight

Celebrating our alumni

GRADUATE PROGRAM

Welcome to the CTSDH!

For details on our Digital Humanities MA program, please visit our website.

News

Girls Who Code Fall 2023
We are happy to announce that registration is now open for Loyola University Chicago’s Girls Who Code Fall 2023 session. Girls Who Code is a FREE nonprofit organization that teaches girls, female-identifying, and nonbinary tweens and teenagers (6th-12th grade) important coding skills to grow confidence in computer science and help close the gender gap in tech fields. Class sessions will feature interactive lessons and discussions, guest speakers, and individual and group work with Loyola University Chicago Computer Science graduate and undergraduate student instructors and mentors. This semester's focus will be on coding fundamentals using the programming language Python. In-person classes will be held on Loyola's Lake Shore campus in Rogers Park on the following Saturdays: Oct 21, Oct 28, Nov 4, Nov 1 No prior experience is required: all experience levels are welcome! And as always, our program remains completely FREE. To register, please visit https://tinyurl.com/girlswhocodefall23
Humanities Datebook Fall 2023
We are pleased to announce that the Humanities Datebook Fall 2023 is here for you! We can’t wait to hear from you! Regards, CTSDH What is the Humanities Datebook? The Humanities Datebook is a weekly listserv to provide a round-up of humanities-related events around LUC. To subscribe, and send event visit our page. JOIN
DIGH 500 | FALL 2023: The Amy Lowell Letters Project
Dr. Bradshaw | Fall 2023 | Classes on Thursdays 4:15- 6:45 pm | Open to all graduate students including MA and Ph.D. students. This interdisciplinary seminar will introduce students to the theories and practices of digital scholarly editing, broad areas of DH-related discourse (e.g. databases, digital archives, interface) as well as issues unique to editing Amy Lowell Letters, such as using TEI elements, and encode letters in XML. No prior experience is required. Please email Dr. Bradshaw (mbradshaw@luc.edu) for course approval.
2023 CONFERENCE: DESIGN AND TEXT
This conference will be hosted by The New School, New York NY, and will take place June 1-3, 2023. Pre-registration is required. Schedule: https://textualsociety.org/design-and-text/ Register: https://textualsociety.org/membership-information/
End of the Year CTSDH Celebration!
Friday, April 28 | 3 pm CST | Loyola Hall, Conference Room 318. Please join us to Celebrate the end of the academic year! Please register for this event by using this link: https://tinyurl.com/semesterendcelebration
CDEP 12th Annual International Symposium
Symposium Theme: Inflection points: indicating a time of significant change in a situation; a turning point | Center for Digital Ethics & Policy | April 13-14, 2023 | LUC's Downtown Watertower Campus. Join a two-day conference about this time of transition and flux, with an eye toward the future in digital ethics and policy. Pre-registration is required. Schedule: https://www.luc.edu/digitalethics/events/upcomingevents/ Register: https://www.luc.edu/digitalethics/events/annualsymposium/
Developing a Digital Archive: Mexican Masks & The May Weber Ethnographic Study Collection
Catherine Nichols, Caroline Houser | Wednesday, April 12 | 1 pm CST | Mundelein 419. In recent years, anthropologists, information scientists, and digital humanists have called attention to the ways in which metadata standards and similar descriptive practices both increase discoverability and position objects within interpretive domains. This presentation of a work-in-progress will consider how one category of museum objects, Mexican masks held in the May Weber Ethnographic Study Collection, are (re)created in digital records. The focus will be on the development of a separate digital archive using Omeka C dedicated to increasing accessibility to these objects while considering the social and institutional dynamics of meaning-making. Please register for this event by using this link: https://tinyurl.com/MexicanMasks
Documenting Movements: Introducing Mukurtu CMS as a Platform for a Collaborative Video Archive
Margaret Heller and Greer Martin | Monday, March 27 | 1-2:30 pm CST | Loyola Hall, Conference Room 318. Mukurtu CMS, an open-source digital access platform, was designed for Indigenous communities to determine and enact cultural protocols in a digital space by managing the access and use of cultural materials and knowledge. What about for political action that Indigenous communities are engaged in and documenting right now? This presentation will provide an overview of Mukurtu CMS, and showcase a partnership between an academic institution and an Indigenous legal advocacy organization to create a portal for students and researchers to their video archive featuring documentation of environmental justice movements. Please register for this event by using this link: https://tinyurl.com/MukurtuCMS. Food will be provided.
A Chatbot Wrote My Essay: Navigating the Future of AI in the College Classroom
Bruce Montes, Brandiann Molby, Adam Porter, and Felix Oke | Friday, March 17 | 3 PM - 4.30 PM CST | Loyola Hall, Conference Room 318. Join us for an open and interactive discussion on the challenges—and potential opportunities—of incorporating Chatbot and AI technologies in the undergraduate classroom. Our interdisciplinary panelists from Digital Humanities, the Writing Program, Computer Science, and Religion will share their experiences and concerns with the rise of these technologies in education. **Note: A chatbot wrote this panel description. Please register for this discussion by using this link: https://tinyurl.com/AChatbotWroteMyEssay . Food will be provided.
Douglass Day 2023!
Tuesday, February 14th | 11:30 AM-12:45 PM CT | Information Commons, 4th Floor. Join the CTSDH to wish a happy birthday to Frederick Douglass! Douglass Day is an online and international celebration of Frederick Douglass’s chosen birthday (Feb 14), run by The Center for Black Digital Research at Penn State ( https://douglassday.org/ ). The day celebrates Douglass and Black history by gathering communities to transcribe the papers of Mary Ann Shadd Cary. Please register for the event by using this link: https://tinyurl.com/douglassday . Food will be provided.
Humanities Datebook Spring 2023
We are pleased to announce that the Humanities Datebook Spring 2023 is here for you! We can’t wait to hear from you! Regards, CTSDH What is the Humanities Datebook? The Humanities Datebook is a weekly listserv to provide a round-up of humanities-related events around LUC. To subscribe, and send event visit our page.JOIN
Gathering Places: Religion, Community, and Digital Public History
Dr. Christopher Cantwell | Thursday, November 17th | 12:30PM-1:30PM | Loyola Hall, Conference Room 318. The rise of digital humanities methods and pedagogies has fundamentally altered the study of religion. At the same time, our networked world currently is experiencing a profound shift in the nature of religious life. How might these two trends be brought into conversation? Can one help understand the other? This talk will draw upon a recent digital public history project to explore how religious studies, digital humanities, and public history can fruitfully work together to build a vibrant digital archive of our current moment. Please register for this Lunchtime Lecture. Food will be provided.
Digital Paris, c 1400
Dr. Emily Hutchinson | Tuesday, November 15th | 12:30 PM-1:30 PM | Loyola Hall, Conference Room 318. Mapping is a critical element of my scholarly work, and a useful form of evidence. Mapping often reveals things that are otherwise hidden in textual, artistic, or material sources. It offers insights into the physicality of a space, but also into patterns of use. The primary aim of Digital Paris c. 1400 is to have this platform answer queries for users that range from the very simple and straightforward (such as locating a particular street) to the more complex (for example: tracing the trajectory of the Dit des Rues de Paris and identifying ONLY the sites of interaction with women). Mapping evidence from our textual sources forces us to recognize that people's experiences differ across the terrain in very concrete ways, and mapping enables these realities to come to life in ways that we might otherwise overlook. Please register for this Lunchtime Lecture. Food will be provided.
Digital Humanities + Textual Studies Showcase
Melissa Bradshaw, Ian Cornelius, Elizabeth Hopwood, Frederick Staidum, and Marta Werner | Wednesday, November 9th | 12:00 PM - 2:00 PM | Loyola Hall, Conference Room 318. Presentations of digital humanities projects by faculty in the Department of English. Please register for this Lunchtime Lecture. Food will be provided.
The Transformation of the Medium and Meaning of Illustration in Early Nineteenth-Century America
Join us as Dr. Chris Lusakik, Purdue University talks about 'The Transformation of the Medium and Meaning of Illustration in Early Nineteenth' on Thursday Oct 20, 2022 by 12:30pm at Loyola Hall, room 316. While the significance of illustration to the rise of a mass visual culture across the nineteenth century has been well documented, our understanding of what illustration meant during the period leading up to its dominance remains confused. Using a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, this paper examines the transformations in the medium and meaning of illustration as they appear in periodicals published in America from 1775 to 1825. Evidence from this case study will be discussed as it pertains to the study of literature, art history, and book history as well as our understanding of the rise of optical media across the nineteenth century.
ANNUAL REPORT

Read the 2018-19 Annual Report
From new graduating MA students to major new grants, the CTSDH had a banner year in 2018-19. Learn more about all that our research center and graduate program accomplished!
Major Grant

Loyola Awards Grant to Commemorate 150-year History
The Center for Textual Studies and Digital Humanities, Public History Program, and the University Libraries are the recipients of a three-year grant to help prepare for the university’s 150th anniversary celebration which takes place in 2020.