Course content
An Introductory Course in Data in the Humanities and Related Contexts
Estimated Time: ≈ 2–2.5 hours (full course, including all 5 modules)
Course Overview
In our everyday lives, we are surrounded by data—from the statistics we read in the news to the playlists and algorithms that shape what we see and hear online. But what is data, really? Where does it come from? And how does it function in the humanities: a world of stories, meanings, and creative expression?
This short course offers a clear, human-centered introduction to the idea of data, exploring how information is gathered, shaped, and used to produce knowledge across disciplines. Through examples drawn from music, art, history, and cultural studies—including the ongoing work of the Wellespring Project—you'll learn to recognize data not as cold numbers, but as living traces of human life and creativity.
The course builds on our previous learning journey, "Singing the News: Understanding Jesse Welles and the Wellespring Project," and prepares you for later courses on data modeling, graph databases, and analysis tools.
What You'll Learn
By completing this course, you will be able to:
- Define data and explain how its meaning varies across disciplines.
- Identify different types and scales of data, from textual to visual, qualitative to quantitative.
- Describe the processes that transform raw observations into structured evidence.
- Compare how data are used in the humanities, sciences, and social sciences.
- Recognize the ethical, cultural, and human dimensions of data collection and interpretation.
- Articulate the role of the digital humanities in connecting meaning, structure, and technology.
Course Structure
| Module | Title | Focus |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | What Is Data? | Core definitions and the human context of information. |
| 2 | Kinds of Data | Textual, numeric, visual, and relational forms. |
| 3 | From Observation to Evidence |
How data are collected, cleaned, and interpreted. |
| 4 | Data Across Disciplines | Comparing scientific, social, and humanistic uses of data. |
| 5 | Ethics, Context, and the Human Side of Data |
Values, consent, and empathy in responsible data work. |
Each module includes clear learning outcomes, examples from humanities and Wellespring contexts, and discussion/reflection prompts suitable for individual learners or classroom use.
How This Course Fits Within the Wellespring Project
The Wellespring Project treats songs, people, and cultural networks as data, not to reduce them to numbers, but to reveal their hidden connections. By learning what data are and how they become meaningful, you're gaining the conceptual foundation for everything that follows:
- Next course: Modeling Meaning: How We Structure Humanities Data.
- Later courses: Building Graphs in Neo4j, Exploring Networks and Narratives, and Analyzing Lyrics with NLP.
This course helps you enter that ecosystem with clarity and confidence.
Key Idea
Data are not things given, but things taken. — Johanna Drucker, Humanities Approaches to Graphical Display (2011)
In this course, you'll learn to see data not as impersonal facts but as human choices: creative, interpretive, and full of potential meaning.
To get started, proceed with Module 1. Defining Data: From Latin Roots to Digital Revolutions.
About the author
Darrell J. Rohl
Scholar of archaeology, heritage, and digital tools in the humanities and social sciences. Founder of the Wellespring Project.