Graduate Courses

How to find electives:

  1. Review the master list of approved electives. Note: “Grad” denotes graduate courses, “LD” denotes lower division, and “UD” denotes upper division courses.
  2. Identify courses you’re interested in.
  3. Check the course schedule to see if the courses of interest are offered in the next quarter.
  4. Register!

Please fill out this form if you’d like to petition for an elective. Include all the information you can, including a syllabus, if available. Petitions will be reviewed at least once a quarter. Please email Deanna Finlay if you have additional questions.

How to register for a capstone:

  1. Identify a capstone course (see below for upcoming courses).
  2. Contact the professor who is offering the course to express your interest and ask if they have room. If not, repeat step 1. If they do:
  3. Contact our SAO, Deanna Finlay, at deanna@humnet.ucla.edu  to create a DH 299 registration link for you.
  4. Enroll through MyUCLA!

Upcoming Courses

Please note that even though some these courses may be offered as undergraduate classes, graduate students are encouraged and welcome to register for them. We have also updated the course codes for a number of our frequently offered classes. Any of the following classes, except DH 101, may be taken to fulfill the DH 250 requirement, and any non-DH classes advertised here will fulfill elective requirements.

Spring Capstones

Feel free to reach out to the following faculty members to see if they have room in their capstone and then contact Deanna Finlay (CC’ing the instructor) to ask her to open up a seat in their capstone as a DH 299. Then you’ll be able to enroll via My UCLA.

Spring 2023

  • DGT HUM 199/299: Nubia in 4D

    Instructor: Willeke Wendrich

    This combined graduate seminar and undergraduate capstone focuses on the landscape, settlements, cemeteries, and monuments of Nubia over time, in the form of a workshop in which all participants contribute their particular subject of interest and expertise. Central is the development of three-dimensional Virtual Reality models created by participants of the DH199 capstone, in which we will display the landscape over time (the 4th dimension). To this model, we will link the results of individual graduate student research projects, which can focus on textual, spatial, or iconographical analysis, as well as Nubia in the broader context of northeast Africa.

    Instructors: Anthony Caldwell and Wendrich Willeke

  • DGT HUM M221: Data and Society

    Instructor: Munia Bhaumik

    R 1:00 p.m. – 4:50 p.m.
    Dodd 154

    Increasingly, our daily lives are mediated by digital algorithms and data points. Data is constantly being gathered and codified every time a google search is performed, a purchase made on Amazon, or a census survey question answered. Data also plays a crucial role in political representation, governmental resource allocation, and policy decisions. Yet, severe gaps and biases appear in institutional data gathering processes and open datasets.

    Who are the counted? What do data variables and codes reveal about social inequality? This course will investigate how data does or does not ascribe a quantitative value to a human life. Specifically, we will probe how data analytics about race and gender are or are not being gathered to consider how racialized and gendered lives are “counted,” regulated, policed, and paid. By examining the intersecting variables of race and gender in datasets about health, wages, sexuality, indigeneity, migrations, and labor, students will learn to “read” datasets produced by governmental entities such as the U.S. Census, Bureau of Labor Statistics, United Nations, and Department of Health and Human Services. In addition, we will examine the writings of key feminist scholars, activists, and community organizations who explore and mobilize data for social justice.

    At the heart of this quarter, however, is not only reflecting upon the social effects of “Big Data” but also learning to apply and to use data but to engender justice. Questions of “data justice” and “data ethics” are in fact the thread uniting the readings, lectures, and assignments for this quarter. Moreover, we will be moving from considering historical examples to probing data’s role in contemporary social contexts; examples covered this quarter include analyzing the effects of data gathering by “Big Tech” and hyper-policed government institutions here in Los Angeles. In this way, the selection of readings for this quarter introduce you to the work of numerous scholars within the emerging fields of Critical Data Studies (CDS)  and Critical Internet Studies (CIS) who are thinking of data in society today. Both of the fields of CDS and CIS ask us to think critically about the detrimental social consequences of “Big Tech” but also the ethical potential of data-based technological applications. As a result, we will examine how algorithms, Artificial Intelligence (AI), data mapping, and machine learning are implicated in racialization, gender, and labor dynamics.

  • DGT HUM 250: Professional Trajectories: Digital Humanities Methods in Practice

    Instructor: Wendy Perla Kurtz

    Monday 10:00 a.m. – 12:50 p.m.
    Pub Aff 2325

    The digital humanities provide a practical and theoretical grounding that can be applied within academia and beyond. In this class, we will study, interpret, and employ a range of digital humanities methods in preparation to enter the job market. Learning to harness skills such as knowledge mobilization, collaboration, maintaining an online presence, clear language research communication, networking, and project management will help ensure that the students’ work has the greatest possible impact beyond graduate school. This praxis-based course is geared towards humanities, and social sciences graduate students and provides a combination of practical skills and collaboration opportunities in developing digital humanities research applications. Through the construction of a personal academic or professional website, we will cover: how to create an effective online presence, the modification of cover letters and CVs for digital humanities and private sector positions, building syllabi with a DH-focus, creating a DH portfolio, and grant and professional writing, amongst other topics.