Digital Humanities Teaching Grants CFP


As part of an effort to develop an interdisciplinary palette of courses in digital humanities at KU, the Institute for Digital Research in the Humanities (IDRH) offers $1,000 stipends to teaching faculty or staff who develop a new course in the digital humanities or add significant digital humanities components to an existing course.

Deadline: Monday, April 8th, 2019, at 11:59pm

Update: For Spring 2020 applications , the deadline has been extended to May 1st at 11:59pm.

Questions
Applicants should direct all questions about the Digital Humanities Course Development Grants to IDRH co-director Brian Rosenblum (brianrosenblum@ku.edu).

By incorporating digital humanities into the undergraduate and graduate classroom, humanities departments can both attract new students from STEM fields and provide humanities students with valuable digital skills that they can use throughout their academic careers and beyond.  IDRH is committed to increasing KU’s digital humanities course offering at the undergraduate and graduate level.

The proposed course may be in any humanities or closely-related discipline. Faculty members are encouraged to incorporate their own area of expertise (e.g. 19th c. English literature, contemporary art, activism in social media), with DH skills, methods, and tools. All proposed courses must be taught on the Lawrence or Edwards campus within three semesters of receiving funding.

Priority will be assigned to proposals that meet following criteria and topical foci:

  • Undergraduate courses, or Undergraduate/Graduate courses;
  • Courses that raise the profile of the digital humanities in their home departments or disciplines;
  • Courses that attract students from a variety of departments and disciplines; and
  • Courses that feature digital humanities methods that can be applied to a variety of humanities disciplines.

Suggested Approaches:

  • Team-taught courses, led by two or more instructors with unique expertise
  • General introductions to the Digital Humanities
  • Scripting and coding for humanities studies
  • Digital Editing and Publishing (Markup languages, XML, TEI)
  • Visual representation of humanities data (data scraping, mapping, quantitative and qualitative analysis, speculative representations)
  • The creation of digital archives and/or use of existing ones
  • Creating, analyzing, and presenting audiovisual sources
  • The ethics of data creation, collection, access, and privacy
  • Social impacts and theories of new media
  • Visual and textual models of epistemology
  • Cyberinfrastructure and the humanities
  • Collaborative research methods in the humanities

The Digital Humanities Studio in Watson Library (Room 410A) is equipped with Apple Macbook Air laptops and may be used for proposed courses if needed.  If applicable, please note this request in your application. Three grants will be awarded each funding cycle.

The primary applicant for the project must be a KU faculty or staff member with an ongoing teaching appointment whose work is situated in the humanities, humanities-oriented social sciences, or arts. Proposals are welcome in any area of the humanities. 

All application materials must be submitted to idrh@ku.ed. Paper submissions will not be accepted. Successful applicants will be notified before May 1st. The award period will be May 1st, 2019 through April 30th, 2020. All applicants who are selected for the program will be asked to participate in a Digital Humanities curriculum workshop in late May or early June (date TBA), and eventually to provide their course syllabus to IDRH to make available online.

For an application to be verified as complete, and thus forwarded for committee review, applicants must submit the following:

  1. Cover Email: This should include your full name, department affiliation, phone number, email address, mailing address, proposed course title, and a brief (no more than one sentence) course description.
     
  2. Project Description, not to exceed 3 double-spaced pages, with one-inch margins and 11-point type. Do not assume specialized knowledge on the parts of reviewers. The description should address the following:
  1. Course Title and Number: Please list your proposed course title, course number, and whether or not this course is intended as a principal course.
  2. Course Synopsis: Explain the main elements of the course and how it will integrate digital humanities into your specific discipline.  Discuss the necessity and value of incorporating digital humanities topics and/or methodologies into this course. 
  3. Course Audience: Please define the audience for this course: Is this course for undergraduates, graduates, or both?  How many students will be enrolled?  Explain when you plan to first offer this course and how frequently you plan to offer it thereafter. It is expected that the course will be offered within no more than three semesters from the date of the award.
  4. Required ResourcesDetail how you will draw on resources outside your department to make the digital humanities elements of this course as effective as possible.
  5. Timeline and Work Plan: Detail the work you will accomplish during the year of funding and provide a timeline for major accomplishments during the grant period. Be sure to provide a plan for promoting your course and encouraging student enrollment.
  6. Impact: Describe the expected learning outcomes of this course for enrolled students as well as the larger impact of this course on your department and on digital humanities education at KU.
  1. Curriculum Vitae, not to exceed two pages for each instructor. CVs should include the following information, as applicable:
  1. Record of applicant's education, including the dates when degrees were awarded
  2. Record of applicant's employment
  3. List of applicant's most relevant publications;
  4. List of applicant's awards and grants received during the last five years.
  1. Letter from lead KU faculty members' department chair describing support for the proposed course and explaining how the department sees this course fitting into its current degree programs and certificates.

No extraneous materials will be considered.  The Project Description, Curriculum Vitae, and Letter from Department Chair should be attached to the Cover Email as one single PDF with the filename “IDRH-course-grant.YEAR-Semester.ApplicantLastName.ApplicantFirstName” (ex. IDRH-course-grant.2019-Spring.LastName.FirstName).  The email subject heading should read: “Digital Humanities Course Development Grant Application: Applicant Last Name, Applicant First Name” and should be sent to idrh@ku.edu before the deadline for the upcoming review period.

A committee appointed by the IDRH co-directors selects grant recipients according to the following criteria:

  • Quality of the conception, definition, organization, and description of the proposed course.
  • Evidence that the proposed course will be actively promoted and will attract students from diverse academic backgrounds.
  • Evidence of departmental support for the proposed course.
  • Feasibility of the proposed course as evidenced by a clear and reasonable work plan and timeline.

An interdisciplinary panel of KU faculty with successful digital humanities and pedagogical track records is nominated to select awardees each year by the IDRH co-directors.  Reviewers meet to discuss individual applications and determine awardees.  A synopsis of reviewer comments will be sent to all applicants, regardless of whether or not a grant is awarded, by the IDRH co-directors within two months after the submission deadline in order to help applicants improve their written proposals.

Stipends are awarded as a cash deposit to the recipient’s bank account and will be considered taxable income. Stipends are intended to defray costs associated with developing the course, pursuing professional development opportunities, or purchasing course equipment, software or other supplies.

Application Overview

  • Deadline: Applications Closed

  • Eligibility: KU faculty or staff with ongoing teaching appointment

  • Award: $1,000

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