When Coding Meets Culture
Developing data-driven opinions — an eight-week introduction to coding in the humanities.
00Start here
The documents that frame the course.
01Lectures
The short conceptual frames that open each day — the “code is not neutral” throughline, from Humanities & Coding on Day 1 to Going Public on Day 19. Each opens as a slide deck on the day it is taught; the full text is linked on every card.
Mini-lectureHumanities & Coding
Why a humanist learns to code.
Day 1Full text
Mini-lectureConnotations & Code
Code is not neutral.
Day 1Full text
Mini-lectureClassification Logic
Whose categories? Sorting as judgment.
Day 3Full text
Mini-lectureCollective Memory
What a culture keeps and forgets.
Day 4Full text
Mini-lectureData Archaeology
Where found data comes from.
Day 10Full text
Mini-lectureNLP & Topic Modeling
Teaching machines to read culture.
Day 16Full text
Mini-lectureGoing Public
Analysis → public argument.
Day 19Full text02Code-alongs
Instructor-led notebooks we build together in class — one per coding day, grouped by week. Each opens in Colab on the morning of its class day.
Weeks 1–2Python foundations
Variables & Data Types
How Python stores text and numbers.
Day 1Code-alongStrings & String Methods
Slicing, cleaning, and splitting text.
Day 2Code-alongLists, Loops & Conditionals
Collections, iteration, and decisions.
Days 3–4Code-alongDictionaries & Functions
Key–value data and reusable tools.
Day 5Weeks 3–4From text to data
03Assignments
The four homework notebooks and the capstone, the course's final evaluative exercise. Turn in everything through TCU Online → Assignments.
Homework
Four notebooks where you apply the skills to a cultural dataset — ideally one you choose. Each opens on the day it is assigned. (Due dates are confirmed in the syllabus.)
HW1 · Foundations
Python basics on real text.
due Day 7HomeworkHW2 · Term Frequency
“Whose words win?” — comments vs. the Constitution.
due Day 10HomeworkHW3 · Sentiment
Tone, stance, and what counting missed.
due Day 16HomeworkHW4 · Topic Modeling + Integration
Themes, then all three lenses together.
due Day 19Self-reflections
Capstone & stylometry
The final evaluative exercise integrates all three methods on data you choose; the stylometry track is an alternative path.
Data-Driven Opinion
Notebook analysis + short essay, presented Wed 12/16 or Fri 12/18.
Week 8WorksheetChecking the Machine
A one-page routine for testing a result by hand: HW3, HW4, and the capstone.
Day 19 · Week 7ExerciseReading for the Seams
Stylometry close-reading: hearing a human (or AI) voice.
Day 8 · Week 3NotebookStylometry (computational)
The computational half of the stylometry exercise.
Day 18 · Week 604Resources
How-to guides, the tutor, the syllabus, and tools and references for going further.
Working in Colab
Set up, save your copy, come back to it, and submit homework.
start here · Day 1GuideYouTube API Key
One-time setup for the YouTube Comment Collector.
Day 10 · by Fri 11/13TutorCode Guide
An after-hours tutor for your homework and capstone.
optionalPolicySyllabus
Outcomes, the ungrading policy, AI-use policy, and dates.
Fall 2026Tools & references
- ToolsGoogle Colab — runs every notebook — no install
- ToolsCourse GitHub repo — all notebooks, data, and docs
- DataCourse corpus — 93 YouTube comments (123 rows) · the U.S. Constitution
- ReferencePython docs — the language reference
- Referencepandas — DataFrames & data wrangling
- ReferenceVADER sentiment — the sentiment lexicon we use
- ReferenceGensim LDA — topic modeling
- Further readingMelanie Walsh, Cultural Analytics — optional model & inspiration