My department is in the process of developing a digital humanities certification program. I will be serving as the graduate liaison and would love to hear about others’ experiences in developing digital humanities courses and curricula for history graduate programs. This session could also serve as a workshop to generate a collection of resources and articles for introducing and training graduate students in the digital humanities. Some questions and topics for discussion:

• What sorts of courses, skills, and readings should be included in a digital humanities program? What sorts of work-arounds are there for departments who want to offer these certifications but don’t have the necessary faculty or DH centers (combining courses and camps like THATCamp or DHSI, for example)?
• How do graduate students incorporate digital humanities into their degrees for ‘credit’? Meaning, how do we place dh training alongside other C.V. builders (articles, reviews, conferences) in a competitive job market?
• What sorts of parallels are there between graduate training in the digital humanities and the current tenure and promotion system for junior faculty? Can the issue of getting tenure credit for DH work be addressed alongside the development of new forms of training graduate students?

Many graduate students are self-taught in the DH world, often times by learning from blogs, conferences, and mentorship outside their institutions. Perhaps there is a way to make this a more concerted and organized effort. At the very least, such a session would be useful in both assessing how different programs approach the issue and in creating a list of resources.

Alex Galarza,