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What happens when books become screens? When narrative turns into an interactive multimedia experience on a tablet? When reading becomes augmented by statistical analysis and data visualization? When literature is less written than composed as a form of new media art? When communities of readers interact with texts and each other through digital networks? This class invites students to ask these and more questions about how our texts, reading, and interpretive practices are changing in a digital age. We will examine electronic texts as well as experimental books and apps; read...
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This course invites first-year students into a historically ranging, critically intensive, and hands-on learning environment about the technologies by which humans transmit our cultural inheritance and ideas. “Interpretive Machines” takes a long view of how we got to now, from the history of manuscripts, books, and print media to the opportunities for innovation in the digital present. It argues that 1) then and now, our technologies for sharing text, image, and data crucially shape the ideas which they convey, and 2) these contexts can help students plan and execute new mechanisms for...
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This course is an introduction to digital technology and culture that integrates interdisciplinary knowledge from literary studies, rhetoric and composition, art and design, business, and sociology to prepare students for the technical and cultural challenges of the 21st century. While this class is committed to introducing students to the history and culture of digital technology, it will also provide students with hands-on experiences with digital tools and delve into questions about what makes something digital and how we conceptualize our lives beyond the digital.
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DTC 356 explores the cultural, aesthetic, and political roles of information and data. Beginning with library classification systems and the structures of Wikipedia, this course then turns to the technological and engineering aspects of data as it is disseminated worldwide, while also exploring how visualization techniques use art and metaphor to communicate complex data to multiple audiences. The course ends with a consideration of hackers and cyberwar, exploring the methods used to strike digital infrastructures and control global populations.
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What is “digital humanities” and how does it impact and intersect with the field of public humanities? Digital humanities work involves new approaches to reading, writing, research, publication, and curation: digital tools help us examine digital and non-digital material in innovative ways, and digital modes of communication help us reach new and wider ranges of audiences. This course provides students with the opportunity to create digital projects and utilize digital tools to further their academic and professional interests. Key questions that this course will cover include: How can...
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We tend to imagine writing as mysterious and opaque – a gift of the Muses, that descends upon us in manic bursts of creative energy. As a result, we spend much of the time that we may have to write not writing but rather waiting to write: waiting for just the right mood, just the right place, just the right lighting, noise, or level of caffeination, in the hopes that inspiration may strike. (We’re all guilty of it!) It is the goal of this course to rid us of these beliefs and habits. Writing is, as any productive writer will tell you, not a lightning bolt of clarity but a slow and...
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The book’s role and significance within literary culture is being scrutinized today with an intensity unseen for five centuries. Nowhere is this questioning more acute, sophisticated, and nuanced than in the burgeoning field of the book arts, an umbrella term encompassing artists’ books, book sculpture, zines, and print-oriented forms of electronic poetry. This is an inherently collaborative and interdisciplinary field. Its practitioners skirt the thresholds between visual art and literature, technology and philosophy, producing uniquely bookish artifacts that defy easy categorization....
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Perhaps no single activity defines college more than reading. We read textbooks and text messages, perform “close readings” of literature and “read between the lines” of course descriptions. Some readings are dense, and we struggle to discern their meaning; other texts are skimmed quickly. We take our literacy for granted, giving barely a thought to the complex neurological processes that enable us to interpret these lines. In an age of artificial intelligences, even machines “read.” In this seminar, we explore the histories, sciences, and technologies of reading. Guest lectures and...
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How do you measure a book? Can machines read? Do we read prose texts now the way people read them in 1919 or in 1819? We are swimming in textual data that could change our understanding of the written word - if you have the right tools and know how to access and work with it. What could you learn to do with all these different forms of textuality, with all this data? Can you find connections between your current interests in literature and the perspectives that technology opens up, or the goals of your career? This course is meant to give you practice with a variety of methods and real-...
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