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
Fall 2025 (all times are Central time)
Python for Beginners Workshop
October 9 – 10 | 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/dh-lab-events/dh-event-registration-python-for-beginners/
Cleaning up Spreadsheets: Tidy Data
Thursday, October 23 | 10:00 – 11:30 a.m.
Nathan Humpal and Ann Hanlon, UWM Libraries
VIRTUAL ONLY
Do you have data that you are collecting in a spreadsheet? Probably! Do you need to clean it up and make it work better? Almost certainly. Join us for a Tidy Data workshop to learn how to work with your spreadsheet data so it works for you and your research and projects. Bring your messy spreadsheets! (And we’ll have sample messy spreadsheets, too, if you don’t have anything immediately handy. Which is frankly hard to believe.)
Register here: https://uwm.edu/libraries/digital-humanities/dh-lab-events/dh-event-registration-using-openrefine-to-clean-data/
Artificial Intelligence: The History of a Brand
November 13 | 3:00 – 4:30 p.m.
Thomas Haigh, UWM History
American Geographical Society Library, 3rd floor GML
The history of AI is the history of an overhyped intellectual brand that has only very recently come to signify a set of deployable technologies with broad application and clear, if somewhat horrifying, purposes. Since its debut in 1955 the AI brand has been attached to a rotating cast of technologies with only loose connections to each other or to cognition, none of which has yet come close to delivering on the promise of creating computer systems with human-like intelligence. One AI insider characterized the story of AI as “the history of failed ideas.” Yet in the process of failing, early AI researchers made vital but incidental contributions to the development of computer technology and computer science. In this talk, Thomas Haigh will explore where the AI brand came from, why it was so attractive to researchers and sponsors, and how artificial intelligence institutionalized as a subfield of computer science through research labs, curricula, textbooks, and professional associations. Haigh will also document continuities and discontinuities between our own moment and earlier cycles of AI hype and disillusionment.
Register here: https://uwm.edu/libraries/digital-humanities/dh-lab-events/dh-event-registration-artificial-intelligence-the-history-of-a-brand-2/
Slow AI: A Human Training Workshop
November 21 | 2:00 – 3:30 p.m.
Led by Jocelyn Szczepaniak-Gillece (English), Ann Hanlon (UWM Libraries), and Anne Pycha (Linguistics)
GML Fourth Floor Conference Center
Prompting isn’t just for ChatGPT. In this workshop, we’ll return our attention to older ways of writing and thinking that get hijacked by – but are also prototypes for – contemporary productivity models.
The first ten attendees to register will receive a notebook and pen, courtesy of the Center for 21st Century Studies Human Club.
Register here: https://uwm.edu/c21/event/slow-ai-a-human-training-workshop/
Text Analysis for the Humanities Workshop
Asynchronous Lesson Modules
Instructors: Karl Holten, Stephen Appel, Jie Chen, Stephanie Surach, Ann Hanlon
(please contact hanlon@uwm.edu if you are interested in a live workshop)
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, October 9-10, 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