I think that humanities students should learn to code. Although it is not always necessary for the work we do, it makes us better collaborators and broadens our understanding of what is possible. I agree with Donahue that it’s important to understand there exists a “discourse divide […] not [just] between the humanities and the computer sciences, but equally much between every subfield therein” (Donahue 2010), but this doesn’t diminish the need to learn some basics of programming or one form or another.
Requiring humanities students to learn how to code is important not only for the potential practical benefits, but also because it introduces students to a unique type of “procedural literacy” that they may not have encountered in their own fields. This is beneficial in its own right, in the same way that Carleton’s distribution requirements are beneficial; learning the basics of another discipline’s theoretical approach, sensibilities, and methodological toolkit allows us to evaluate our own disciplines’ methods with fresh eyes.
My own limited experience with coding started with following the step-by-step R lab tutorials in an intro stats course last Spring, and continued over the summer, when I learned some basic HTML to make the images I inserted into my LibGuides research guide screen reader-accessible (mostly figure captions) and formatting citations. This Fall, I took political science methods, learning relevant practical applications of the more abstract statistical concepts I’d encountered last Spring.
Below is an example of some (very messy) HTML captioning and a link to the source of a screenshot from the Library of Congress’s Chronicling America text-searchable database of digitized historical newspapers that I included in the research guide I made last summer about consumer marketing at the start of the Great Depression.
<figure class="figure align-right"><a href="https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045462/1931-06-16/ed-1/seq-16/" target="_blank"><img alt="[Full page advertisement for Kraft Mayonnaise]. Evening Star. (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, June 16, 1931, Page A-16, Image 16." loading="lazy" src="https://www.loc.gov/rr/business/images/now-try-this-mayonnaise.jpg"></a>
<figcaption><a href="https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045462/1931-06-16/ed-1/seq-16/" target="_blank"><em>"NOW try this mayonnaise ... it's always KITCHEN-FRESH!</em></a> Evening Star. (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, June 16, 1931, Page A-16, Image 16.</figcaption>
</figure>Although I wouldn’t consider myself an expert by any means, I’m definitely more comfortable with coding than I was this time a year ago. Before learning some coding basics, I was always intimidated by the thought of coding, and didn’t know where to start learning. I still don’t know how to code in the popular understanding of the word, but what I have learned has allowed me to take more agency over my own learning. Understanding the barest fundamentals of R studio has opened a whole new world of possibilities for me within my major field of Political Science-IR. If there’s one thing I regret, it’s not exploring this sooner.
Works Referenced
Donahue, Evan. “A ‘Hello World’ Apart (why humanities students should NOT learn to program).” hastac: Changing the Way We Teach + Learn. Published 28 May 2010. Accessed 20 Jan 2021. Link.
