Critical Approaches to Digital Humanities INFOST5040

  • Academic Session: 2025-26
  • School: School of Humanities
  • Credits: 20
  • Level: Level 5 (SCQF level 11)
  • Typically Offered: Semester 1
  • Available to Visiting Students: No
  • Collaborative Online International Learning: No

Short Description

This course explores the conceptual, theoretical, and cultural foundations of Digital Humanities (DH). Students will engage with critical readings from areas such as media studies, feminist and postcolonial theory, critical infrastructure studies, and data ethics. Through case studies, seminars, and written work, students will interrogate the values embedded in digital tools and infrastructures, including emerging technologies such as AI, reflect on global and marginalised perspectives in DH, and question the epistemologies underpinning digital research.

Timetable

1x1hr lecture per week over 10 weeks

10x1hr seminar over 10 weeks

Requirements of Entry

Standard entry to Masters at College level

Excluded Courses

None

Co-requisites

None

Assessment

Course Aims

This course aims to:

■ Introduce key theoretical frameworks for critically evaluating digital research

■ Interrogate the historical and institutional development of Digital Humanities 

■ Reflect on issues of power, bias, access, and inclusion in both established and emerging digital tools and infrastructures, such as AI and immersive technologies

■ Develop students' ability to construct theoretically informed critiques of Digital Humanities practice 

Intended Learning Outcomes of Course

By the end of this course students will be able to:

■ Analyse major theoretical debates in Digital Humanities, including questions of power, bias, infrastructure, and epistemology. 

■ Contextualise Digital Humanities within broader intellectual, political, and institutional histories. 

■ Critique the assumptions underlying Digital Humanities tools, methods, and institutional structures. 

■ Construct theoretically grounded arguments about digital culture and scholarship. 

■ Apply critical frameworks to Digital Humanities case studies, tools, or projects. 

Minimum Requirement for Award of Credits

Students must submit at least 75% by weight of the components (including examinations) of the course's summative assessment.