Welcome to Digital and Public Humanities Program at SMC!
This 15-credit interdisciplinary minor, launched in the fall of 2022, integrates the humanities with fields in technology and business. Through a project-based approach, students gain practical experience in digital technologies, data analysis, information visualization, curation, and project management—all skills that are in-demand for many careers. Partnerships with several community organizations such as the St. Joseph County Library, the Civil Rights Heritage Center, the South Bend Civic Theatre, and more, ensure that our graduates have connections to publicly-engaged initiatives.
This site functions as a repository of recent DPH-affiliated project work. Some of these projects were inspirational to the DPH program's development. Some have been spearheaded by DPH faculty members and supported by external grants. Some were designed and organized by students within their DPH-affiliated coursework.
We hope you enjoy exploring the impactful, community-engaged public and digital humanities projects that our faculty, students, and community partners have been working on during the past few years.
What are the Digital and Public Humanities?
The Humanities are disciplines that explore the range of the human experience, in our present day and over time. Through the study of history, philosophy, literature, religious studies, cultural studies, anthropology, and more, students learn how people have lived and perceived their world in the past, and they use this foundation to better understand how societies are structured today and how we can create a better world for everyone in the future.
Digital and Public Humanities scholars base their research within these core humanities disciplines but explore their topics of inquiry using digital tools or with a community-oriented output in mind. In digital humanities work, scholars might use computational methodologies to interrogate historical artifacts, trace the movements of people over time, or make archival collections more accessible to national and international audiences. Public humanities scholars also seek to expand the public's access to humanities-based content, but they generally situate their research within a local area, highlighting how valuable the study of history, literature, art, and culture can be to the well-being of our communities and our society.
