Undergraduate Courses

Requirements

Lower Division (one required): Each of these classes introduces students to the use of digital tools and methodologies to examine complex cultural, social, and historical dynamics. See the master list for the full list of options.

Upper Division: In addition to the Lower Division course, Minors need to take:

1. 1. 1. DH 101
      2. One upper division course, DH 110-160, and
      3. Four other upper-division electives, which may be DH courses or courses from other disciplines. See the master list for the list of options from other disciplines.

DH 195 Internships

The DH Program is not offering any DH 195 internships at this time. If you are already working closely with a DH affiliated faculty member and have identified a possible internship together, then first consult with your faculty sponsor to see whether they would be willing to supervise your 195.

Course Petitions

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 per quarter. Please email Deanna Finlay if you have additional questions.

Questions?

Contact our SAO, Deanna Finlay at deanna@humnet.ucla.edu

Spring 2026

101 – Introduction to Digital Humanities

Instructor: Nicholas Sabo

Foundation course for students in the Digital Humanities minor, providing theoretical and conceptual framework for understanding genesis of digital world. Use of contemporary cultural-historical methodology to focus on the rise of new media and information technologies in the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries, such as photography, film, radio, television, Internet, and World Wide Web, and their impact on how individuals, groups, and cultures experienced their worlds. Letter grading.

122 – Theories of Information Society

Instructor: TBD

(Formerly numbered Social Science 101.) Lecture, two and one-half hours; discussion, one hour. Exploration of seminal theories that have shaped scholarship on the information society, internet studies, and digital media. Through a critical examination of canonical texts and contemporary debates, students gain an in-depth understanding of how digital technologies transform social, cultural, political, and economic landscapes. Topics include the evolution of network societies, the digital divide, media convergence, and the cultural politics of information technology. P/NP or letter grading.

124. Critical History of Computing and the Internet

Instructor: Stacy Wood

(Formerly numbered Social Science 103.) Lecture, two and one-half hours; discussion, one hour. Exploration of the rich and complex histories of computing and the internet, recontextualizing dominant narratives within a global context and intersectional frameworks. Through the study of early knowledge machines like the abacus and Jacquard looms and historical milestones such as World War II, the Cold War, and the rise of Silicon Valley, an analysis of how these technologies were shaped by political, cultural, and social forces. By connecting historical developments to contemporary issues such as surveillance, social media, and artificial intelligence, students gain tools to challenge techno-utopian narratives and better understand the profound societal impact of digital technologies. P/NP or letter grading.

140 – Coding for Humanities

Instructor: Nicholas Sabo

Introduction to coding, with focus on Python. Study of basic structural elements such as lists, if statements, dictionaries, loops, functions, and classes. Consideration of how to apply these concepts to research in humanities and social sciences, and project-based learning. Students discover how to manage and display data with added impact. Content and goals are guided by freedom to research more effectively and freedom of speech. Letter grading.

150 – Digital Musicology and the Global Audio Archive

Instructor: Mohsen Mohammadi

This course explores the intersection of digital musicology and archival studies, focusing on the preservation and analysis of sound heritage from around the world. Students will examine the technical and ethical challenges of migrating musical cultures from diverse formats like wax cylinders to born-digital field recordings into digital repositories. Beyond the mechanics of digitization, this course critically analyzes the global sound archive. We will study how digital archives function in global contexts, issues of indigenous data sovereignty, and the emerging field of computational musicology, where audio is treated as data for analysis.

150 – German Émigré Culture, Art, and Media in Los Angeles

Instructor: Benno Herz

In the 1930s and 1940s, Los Angeles became a vibrant cultural center for a distinguished group of German-speaking artists and intellectuals, including literary authors, poets, and playwrights, such as Thomas and Heinrich Mann, Vicki Baum, Bertolt Brecht, and Lion Feuchtwanger, philosophers Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer, filmmakers and actors like Fritz Lang, Lilian Harvey, and Joe May, and composers Arnold Schoenberg and Alma Mahler-Werfel, who were forced to flee Nazi Germany. They were often in conversation not only with U.S. friends and supporters but also with fellow emigrants who had already arrived in Los Angeles during the 1920s, such as architects Richard Neutra and Rudolph Schindler. Many European artists and intellectuals made Los Angeles their new home and left a lasting cultural imprint on this city. The seminar begins by introducing students to the history and culture of German-speaking émigrés in 1930s and 1940s Los Angeles, highlighting their transcultural dialogue with U.S. artists and intellectuals.

150- RomeLab: Storytelling in the Roman Forum

Instructor: Chris Johanson

For this iteration of RomeLab, you will study various aspects of 2D/3D argumentation focused on the case study of the city of Ancient Rome, its built environment, and social and historical phenomena set within. We will begin the course by viewing examples of existing, multi-media storytelling and argumentation before we focus on skill acquisition, domain-specific knowledge in social history, and an investigation of a set of specific research questions: What did the Roman Forum of the 2nd Century BCE look like? How might we represent it? And how did specific events such as the Roman Funeral, gladiatorial games, dramatic performances, and processions take place therein? The final project will focus on one Roman family, set in one specific time period, or, a sequence of time periods. The project will consist of two complementary parts, a 2D, panel-based narrative (e.g., modeled after a graphic novel) and a computationally generated 3D model with the same narrative embedded within. The project will contain hypothetical representations of one aspect of the events described above.

150- Data from the Margins

Instructor: Miriam Posner

How do marginalized communities make use of or push back against datasets that often reflect the priorities of the hegemonic institutions that produced them? What are the possibilities of data for liberation? Examining cases from DuBois to current-day data advocacy, we’ll investigate the capacity of data to bend history toward freedom.