Ethan Whittet
Member
I've proposed to the Graduate Studies Committee that literacy in writing code should fulfill one of the English PhD program's two foreign-language requirements.
Is there precedent, on an institutional level, for this move? What standards should we use to measure "literacy"?
dana.solomonx@gmail.com
Member
Matthew Kirschenbaum discusses this in his 2009 "Hello Worlds" post for The Chronicle. See: http://chronicle.com/article/Hello-Worlds/5476
Stéfan Sinclair
AdminBest Answer
I think that selling a programming language competency is already a big enough challenge, but truth be told, I'd rather see a technical competency that necessarily relies on whatever language(s) the student prefers.
So, for instance, instead of sitting down to write a Java program to determine word frequencies in a collection of 1,000 texts, it would be more like this: take the plain text version of Hamlet from Gutenberg and write code to automate the conversion of it to a very, very simple TEI representation, ensuring that character names are identified in elements separately from their speeches. Presumably to do that you would need to know pattern matching (regular expressions), loops, data structures, etc. (ideally you'd write your own functions, but if you didn't, does that really matter? I'd take a very pragmatic approach: complete a task without worrying too much about how the code looks (if you coding is a central aspect of the research activities for the student, they'll be plenty of opportunity to learn best practices).
In any case, I'd probably put more emphasis on data pre-processing than on building analytic tools because I think the first kind of activity is under-estimated (even if there's lots of room for better analytic and visualization tools to be built). Rarely do we find shrink-wrapped data sets that are ready for use without some manipulation and preparation. In that context, I think some basic programming competencies can be very useful, to not say indispensable, for many kinds of digital methodologies.
I think what's important in Mike's piece and Stefan's reply is that it will call for some careful thinking-through -- beyond a switcheroo.
I blogged about similar stuff thinking about alt-ac training, but in terms of minors.
There's some precedent for allowing knowledge of statistics, if not programming, to replace foreign languages in history programs. I know from word-of-mouth that the Princeton history department used to allow 'quantitative methods' to displace one required language. No one had used it in years, and it seems to have disappeared from the program guidelines.
Searching for that, I see that the Michigan Grad program history allows quantitative methods/statistics (pdf at link) competency to displace a single language requirement. There they require formal coursework in statistics.
janaremy
Member
I did my PhD work at UCIrvine where they accepted Stats or work in another discipline as one of the languages for the doctorate. However, in 2005 when I asked to use a programming language, I was told no. So I opted to learn the "language of Anthropology" instead (which meant 5 classes in Anth and a 40-page paper demonstrating how I would use what I learned in my research). Last year I was told that they would now consider a programming language to fulfill that requirement.
Daniel Powell
Member
This has come up in my graduate program as well (English at the University of Victoria, home to the Digital Humnities Summer Institute). Reception has been lukewarm, but I came across the Claremont Graudate University's interesting idea of requiring what they call "Language and Research Tools."
For the PhD in History, "the student must demonstrate proficiency in two foreign languages or in one foreign language and an approved research tool . . . . With the advisor’s approval, a PhD student may substitute the second language requirement with Digital Humanities or oral history."
See: http://www.cgu.edu/pages/8200.asp in the middle of the page.
The English PhD has similar language, although the 'research tool' option is limited to digital humanities. See http://www.cgu.edu/pages/8210.asp
The University of Guelph PhD in Literary Studies/Theatre Studies in English Writes that "In certain cases, students' research may require demonstrable competency in a non-written or technical language such as a programming language. The selection of the language(s) will be determined by the student in consultation with the dissertation advisor, and must be submitted for approval by the Graduate Studies Committee." there doesn't seem to be an accepted (or at least outlined) method for assessing a programming language. See: http://www.uoguelph.ca/registrar/calendars/graduate/current/gradprog/sets-phd.shtml
UC Santa Cruz has similar language on the website for the PhD in Film and Digital Media: http://film.ucsc.edu/phd_program/requirements
Thinking about this in relation to the above, it seems like there might be precedent in in History for considering various specializations (oral history, quantitative methods), as well as in Linguistics. Personally, I really like Claremont's research tools idea, given the justifications that have bee explicitly put forth for reasons why multiple languages are required, ie, to be useful in primary research settings.
In the early 2000s, a colleague and good friend used her HTML coding experience as her ONLY language other than English for her PhD at University of North Carolina ay Greensboro. When I did my PhD work at the same school in the early 1980s, I was required to take two graduate level French classes. . . so there is precedent at this one university in NC accepting coding. . . .
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