We welcome partnering with existing interest groups and initiatives on campus. If you would like to ask us to host a speaker, workshop or other digital humanities related event, please contact Ann Hanlon (hanlon@uwm.edu) for more information. See Past Events
Spring 2025 (all times are Central time)
Georeferencing Historical Maps with Allmaps
Friday, March 28 | 10:00 a.m.
Stephen Appel
VIRTUAL ONLY
Learn how to use Allmaps (allmaps.org) to georeference digitized maps from digital collections. Georeferencing makes it possible to add a historical map layer to a digital map and incorporate these valuable historical objects into digital exhibits, DH projects, and historical and geographic research. We will share tips on how to use Allmaps – a popular open source , browser-based georeferencing tool – and where to find rich troves of compatible digitized historical maps. (Hint: Right here at UWM Libraries!)
Register here: https://uwm.edu/libraries/digital-humanities-lab/dh-lab-events/dh-event-registration-georeferencing-historical-maps-with-allmaps/
Using OpenRefine to Clean Your Data: Regular Expressions
Thursday, April 3 | 10:00 a.m.
Nathan Humpal
VIRTUAL ONLY
OpenRefine is a free, powerful tool for cleaning up data in lots of formats. One especially powerful feature is using regular expressions to search for patterns in your data to convert, clean, and identify. Join us to learn more about how to use OpenRefine and get the most out of using regular expressions. We will be using the Library Carpentries OpenRefine lesson, focusing on Transformations: https://librarycarpentry.github.io/lc-open-refine/07-introduction-to-transformations.html
Register here: https://uwm.edu/libraries/digital-humanities-lab/dh-lab-events/dh-event-registration-using-openrefine-to-clean-data/
Python for Beginners Workshop
Tuesday, April 1 and Wednesday, April 2 | 10:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
Instructor: Karl Holten, UWM Libraries/L&S IT
Helpers: Ann Hanlon, TBA
VIRTUAL ONLY
This 2-day workshop will cover the basics of learning how to program using Python for data analysis. Based on the curriculum for the Software Carpentries “Plotting and Programming in Python” we will cover installation, fundamentals, and data analysis (time permitting). No experience necessary.
Register here: https://uwm.edu/libraries/digital-humanities-lab/dh-lab-events/dh-event-registration-python-for-beginners/
Text Analysis for the Humanities Workshop
Asynchronous Lesson Modules
Instructors: Karl Holten, Stephen Appel, Jie Chen, Stephanie Surach, Ann Hanlon
VIRTUAL ONLY
We have created learn-on-your-own lesson modules for this recently developed Carpentries workshop, a practical Introduction to Text Analysis, designed for those with Python experience (how to create functions, for loops, conditional logic, use the pandas library, etc.). Check out our Intro to Python workshop, April 1 and 2nd, if you need an introduction. The workshop covers Natural Language Processing (NLP) basics, API usage, data preparation, document/word embeddings, topic modeling, Word2Vec, Transformer models using Hugging Face, and ethical considerations. Students and researchers working in the digital humanities are especially encouraged to attend! View the the lesson homepage for an overview of the topics we will cover.
This is a pilot workshop, testing out a lesson that is still under development. We are also experimenting with a new delivery method by offering this as a series of asynchronous modules. The lesson authors would appreciate any feedback you can give them about the lesson content and suggestions for how it could be further improved.
Online course videos and lessons: https://guides.library.uwm.edu/carpentries/TAP
Attentive or Absentminded: Habits of Mind in the Age of AI
Meghan O’Gieblyn, author of God Human Animal Machine, and the essay collection Interior States, which won the 2018 Believer Book Award.
April 10, 2025 | 4:00 -5:00 p.m. (refreshments at 3:30 p.m.)
Golda Meir Library Fourth Floor Conference Center
At a moment when we are outsourcing many intellectual and creative tasks to machines, it’s worth thinking about the point of thinking itself. Is it a means to an end, or an end in itself? Are humans just “stochastic parrots,” mindlessly producing language in a way that is not so different from AI, as some tech luminaries contend, or is there something more going on in our minds? While these questions may seem new, they harken back to older debates about the relationship between thought and language, freedom and necessity, and the fine line that exists between attention and automaticity. Long before the advent of digital technologies, two twentieth century philosophers, Hannah Arendt and Simone Weil, wrote about some of these questions through the lens of the technologies of their times. Their writing anticipates many of the challenges of the age of AI and calls attention to the more ordinary and insidious ways that consciousness becomes ossified by social convention, as well as the moral and political risks that arise when we fail to “think what we are doing.”
This event was organized by AI and the Humanities, a C21-sponsored collaboratory formed to consider one of the most pressing questions for higher education: what is the future of humanities in the context of AI?
Optional registration here: https://uwm.edu/c21/event/meghan-ogieblyn/