Meeting: Wednesdays, 2:30 - 5:20, SMI 109
Instructor: Bo Zhao, SMI 416B, Office hours by appointment
Contact: 206.685.3846, zhaobo@uw.edu, jakobzhao (skype/wechat)
In this seminar, we will invite you to participate in the ongoing discussion and scholarly practice at the intersection of geospatial technologies and the disciplines of the humanities. Digital GeoHumanities refers to the systematic use of digital geographical resources in the humanities, as well as the geospatial analyses and narratives of their application. This seminar provides a unique opportunity to hone practical skills of geospatial technologies and to catalyze critical thinking of their applications. You will read literature from a few well-established geographers and philosophers in STS (Science, technology and society), as well as the latest pieces of work by both GIS (Geographic Information Science) and critical scholars. With the theoretical preparation, you will practice a few emerging data-driven techniques (e.g., web crawling, GitHub, geo-narrative, deep learning, text mining, virtual reality, raspberry pi, blockchain, etc.), and also reflect upon their relevance to critical views, such as power relation, hermeneutics, embodiment, autonomy, surveillance, and so on. As a course requirement, you need to choose a topic from any humanities discipline, apply the newly learned visual, analytical, and synthetical skills, and also critique the significant role, mediating function, or social implication of the geospatial technologies. The course material is strongly influenced by my interest in mapping, GIS, humanities, and STS. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact Dr. Bo Zhao. Welcome to this course, we are delighted to have you with us!
This web page is the syllabus - There is no printed version, please refer here instead. Make sure refer to this page as often as possible. Also, Feel free to ask the instructor for clarifications whenever needed.
Download the reading material of each week from a shared folder at UW Google Drive.
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Readings: GeoHumanities, Phenomenology, Humanistic Geography.
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Statement of Intent: requirements
Due: 01/10 5:00pm
- Hosts: Teddy, Tyler, and Oliver
- Readings:
- Thinkpiece
Due: 01/14 5:00pm. - Practical Exercise 1: Cloud-based project management using GitHub
Due: 01/19 5:00pm.
- Hosts: Angel, Eryk, and Tyler
- Readings: Autonomy, Robot and Web crawler
- Thinkpiece
Due: 01/21 5:00pm. - Practical Exercise 2: Twitter data collection using web crawler
Due: 02/02 5:00pm.
- Hosts: Eryk, Jou and Zhaowen
- Readings: Uncertainty, Post-truth and location spoofing
- Thinkpiece
Due: 02/04 5:00pm. - Practical Exercise 3: Spatial database management using SpatiaLite
Due: 02/09 5:00pm.
- Hosts: Oliver, and Zhaowen
- Readings:
- Thinkpiece
Due: 02/11 5:00pm. - Practical Exercise 4: Making a storymap using Mapbox
Due: 02/16 5:00pm.
- Hosts: Angel, Jou and Tyler
- Readings:
- Thinkpiece
Due: 02/23 5:00pm. - Practical Exercise 5: Place context analysis using Natural Language Processing
Under DevelopmentDue: 01/07 5:00pm.
- Hosts: Oliver, and Jou
- Readings:
- Thinkpiece
Due: 02/25 5:00pm. - Practical Exercise 6: Making a web-based VR environment
Under DevelopmentDue: 03/01 5:00pm.
- Hosts: Angel, Eryk and Zhaowen
- Readings:
- Thinkpiece
Due: 03/03 5:00pm. - Practical Exercise 7: Environmental data collection in real time with Raspberry Pi
Under Development.Due: 03/08 5:00pm. However, this exercise will not be included to your final score.
- Each student presents the writing project during the last class meeting (03/11/2020).
- Writing Project
Due: 03/16 5:00pm.
Computational skill: This course welcomes students who own some GIS or other computational experience, and have programmed in a python or javascript IDE (Integrated Development Environment). Students should at least hear of GIS, GitHub, Leaflet, web crawler, and Raspberry Pi before considering this seminar, and most importantly, be self-motivated to solve a research question with the listed computational skills.
Statement of intent: Please prepare a short statement of intent describing your project on or before the end of Week 1. Please feel free to plan your writing project to help advance progress in your own work – qualifying exam essay, draft of journal article, side project, etc. I am happy to meet with you to talk more about your writing project.
GitHub: This course material will be hosted on GitHub instead of UW Canvas. On this dedicated GitHub repository for this course, you can find most of the course material, participate in group discussions by submitting GitHub issues, and creating new GitHub repositories to turn in practical exercise deliverables. By the end of this quarter, you will be more proficient in operating a cloud-based coding environment and able to host your work online as a way to gain public and peer attentions.
Seminar leadership: You will take at least two turns facilitating our seminar exercise and discussion with a few of your classmates. You will work with one or more others (depending on the enrollment) on this, so you are not responsible for the entire session yourself. Please work together to prepare some activities and guiding questions that will inspire and structure our discussion of the material. The instructor is happy to help you to prepare the practical exercise walk-through before the meeting class.
Practical exercise: You need to get familiar with the practical exercise instruction before the class meeting in order to better reflect upon the theoretical concepts. We will walk through each practical exercise in class, and you will submit the deliverables to GitHub three days after the class meeting (you will have two weeks for your Week 3&4’s exercise deliverable).
Participation in seminar discussion: Complete all assigned readings and get familiar with the practical exercise instructions before class meetings, and participating in critical discussions of those readings. You can also join the class slack (https://geog595win2020.slack.com) for virtual dicussions.
Thinkpiece: Each Week (except for Week one and weeks where you lead discussion), please prepare a one-paragraph ‘thinkpiece,’ discussing your reflection to three general items:
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(at least) one of the readings for that week;
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The relevance of the practical exercise with the readings; and
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The relevance with your writing project.
Please upload your think piece to the GitHub issues page by Tuesday 5:00 PM – so your colleagues leading discussion can draw on your ideas in planning activities for our class session.
Writing project: During the quarter, you will complete a larger writing project that engages with the seminar material and course themes, along with additional readings that you bring into conversation with the assigned course readings. You are aiming for 20-30 pages coalescing around ideas and readings from this quarter – you can take up and extend one of the themes from our weekly structure or develop a new one relevant to your own work and thinking. Writing projects is due no later than the end of Week 11.
Based on the above requirements - 40% seminar participation, think pieces, and discussion leadership, 20% practical exercise, 40% writing project.
We welcome the opportunity to work with any students with disabilities in this class to ensure equal access to the course. If you have a letter from Disability Resources for Students (DRS) outlining your academic accommodations, please present the letter to me (or email us, to confirm, if the letter is electronic) as soon as possible so that we can discuss the accommodations you may need for this class. Any discussions between student and professor need to occur as early as possible in order for adequate arrangements to be made. If you do not yet have a letter from DRS, but would like to request academic accommodations due to a disability, please contact DRS here (Links to an external site.), or in-person at 011 Mary Gates Hall, or at 206-543-8924 (Voice & Relay), uwdrs@uw.edu.
Washington state law requires that UW develop a policy for accommodation of student absences or significant hardship due to reasons of faith or conscience, or for organized religious activities. The UW’s policy, including more information about how to request an accommodation, is available at Religious Accommodations Policy. Accommodations must be requested within the first two weeks of this course using the Religious Accommodations Request form.
© 2019-2020 All rights are reserved by Bo Zhao.