The most accurate and up-to-date version of this calendar can be found on this site. Use this online calendar to check on reading assignments, rather than the print version, since the print version of this syllabus will not be updated throughout the semester.
The course calendar may be altered as needed throughout the semester; adequate advance notice will always be given of any changes.
B indicates that reading can be found in our shared Box folder.
Week 1
Monday, January 16: NO CLASS – MLK JR DAY
Week 2: Digital humanities?
Monday, January 23
* 2 theoretical strands of DH to ground our inquiries throughout the semester: new media theory (what are digital media and technologies?); STS/history of science approaches to method (what do we mean when we talk about humanistic knowledge, and how can DH methods help us produce it?)
Marshall McLuhan, “The Medium is the Message” (1964) (B)
Alexander Galloway, The Interface Effect (2012), Introduction (B)
Alan Liu, “Imagining the New Media Encounter,” from A Companion to Digital Literary Studies (2007), http://www.digitalhumanities.org/companion/view?docId=blackwell/9781405148641/9781405148641.xml&chunk.id=ss1-3-1&toc.depth=1&toc.id=ss1-3-1&brand=9781405148641_brand
C. P. Snow, “The Two Cultures” (1959) (B)
Lorraine Daston, “Whither Critical Inquiry?” (2004) (B)
Matthew Kirschenbaum, “What is Digital Humanities and What’s It Doing in English Departments?”, from Debates in the Digital Humanities 2012 (2012), http://dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/debates/text/38
Week 3: State of the field
Monday, January 30
* What/where is/isn’t DH now?
Natalia Cecire, “Theory and the Virtues of Digital Humanities” (2011), http://journalofdigitalhumanities.org/1-1/introduction-theory-and-the-virtues-of-digital-humanities-by-natalia-cecire/
Alan Liu, “Where Is Cultural Criticism in the Digital Humanities?”, from Debates in the Digital Humanities 2012 (2012), http://dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/debates/text/20
Tara McPherson, “Why are the Digital Humanities So White? or Thinking the Histories of Race and Computation,” from Debates in the Digital Humanities 2012 (2012), http://dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/debates/text/29
Wendy Hui Kyong Chun and Lisa Marie Rhody, “Working the Digital Humanities” (2014) (B)
Gil, Alex and Élika Ortega, “Global Outlooks in Digital Humanities: Multilingual Practices and Minimal Computing,” from Doing Digital Humanities (2016) (B)
Lauren F. Klein and Matthew K. Gold, “Digital Humanities: The Expanded Field,” from Debates in the Digital Humanities 2016 (2016), http://dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/debates/text/51
Kim Gallon, “Making a Case for the Black Digital Humanities,” from Debates in the Digital Humanities 2016 (2016), http://dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/debates/text/55
Miriam Posner, “What’s Next: The Radical, Unrealized Potential of Digital Humanities,” from Debates in the Digital Humanities 2016 (2016), http://dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/debates/text/54
Moya Bailey, Anne Cong-Huyen, Alexis Lothian, and Amanda Phillips, “Reflections on a Movement: #transformDH, Growing Up,” from Debates in the Digital Humanities 2016 (2016), http://dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/debates/text/59
Global Outlook::Digital Humanities (GO::DH), http://www.globaloutlookdh.org/ (browse site)
Week 4: Data in the humanities
Monday, February 6
* What is data?
Tung-Hui Hu, A Prehistory of the Cloud (2015), Introduction (B)
Lisa Gitelman and Virginia Jackson, “Introduction” from “Raw Data” is an Oxymoron (2013) (B)
Daniel Rosenberg, “Data Before the Fact” from “Raw Data” is an Oxymoron (2013) (B)
Alexander Galloway, The Interface Effect (2012), Ch. 3 (B)
Lauren Klein, “The Image of Absence: Archival Silence, Data Visualization, and James Hemings” (2013) (B)
Alan Liu, “N + 1: A Plea for Cross-Domain Data in the Digital Humanities,” from Debates in the Digital Humanities 2016 (2016), http://dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/debates/text/101
Week 5: Positivism and the humanities
Monday, February 13
* Logics and theories of positivism
Karl Popper, “Science As Falsification,” from Conjectures and Refutations, pgs 43-51 (1963) (B)
Ian Hacking, “‘Style’ for Historians and Philosophers” (2002) (B)
Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison, Objectivity (2010), Ch. 6: “Trained Judgment” (B)
Daston and Galison, Objectivity (2010), Ch. 7: “Representation to Presentation,” pgs 363-382 (B)
John Guillory, “The Sokal Affair and the History of Criticism” (2002), pgs. 498-508 (B)
Franco Moretti, “‘Operationalizing’: or, the function of measurement in modern literary theory” (2013) (B)
Franco Moretti, “The End of the Beginning: A Reply to Christopher Prendergast,” pgs 83-86 (2006) (B)
Week 6: Text analysis – From close to distant reading
Monday, February 20
* Reading across different scales
Jonathan Culler, “The Closeness of Close Reading” (2010) (B)
Michael Hancher, “Re: Search and Close Reading,” from Debates in the Digital Humanities 2016 (2016), http://dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/debates/text/63
Julie Orlemanski, “Scales of Reading” (2014) (B)
Ted Underwood, “We don’t already understand the broad outlines of literary history” (2013), https://tedunderwood.com/2013/02/08/we-dont-already-know-the-broad-outlines-of-literary-history/
Franco Moretti, selections from Graphs, Maps, Trees: Abstract Models for Literary History (2005), read pages 1-33, 91-92 (B)
Matthew Jockers, Ch. 4 “Macroanalysis,” from Macroanalysis (2013) (B)
Andrew Piper, “There Will Be Numbers” (2016), http://culturalanalytics.org/2016/05/there-will-be-numbers/
Lisa Marie Rhody, “Why I Dig: Feminist Approaches to Text Analysis,” from Debates in the Digital Humanities 2016 (2016), http://dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/debates/text/97
Week 7: Projects and methods
Monday, February 27
* Examples of different methods in use
Andrew Goldstone and Ted Underwood, “The Quiet Transformations of Literary Studies: What Thirteen Thousand Scholars Could Tell Us” (2014) (B)
Week 8: Graduate training, academic labor, and DH
Monday, March 6
Bethany Nowviskie, “It Starts on Day One” (2011), http://nowviskie.org/2011/it-starts-on-day-one/
“What is a Dissertation? New Models, Methods, Media,” from “Beyond the Dissertation as Proto-Monograph: Examples and Reflections,” #alt-academy (2014), http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/alt-ac/pieces/what-dissertation-new-models-methods-media#licastro (read contributions by Davidson, Davis, Donovan, Licastro, Sousanis)
Helen J. Burgess and Jeanne Hamming, “New Media in the Academy: Labor and the Production of Knowledge in Scholarly Multimedia” (2011), http://digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/5/3/000102/000102.html
Julia Flanders, “Time, Labor, and ‘Alternative Careers’ in Digital Humanities Knowledge Work,” from Debates in the Digital Humanities 2012 (2012), http://dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/debates/text/26
Dorothea Salo, “Respect My Praxis,” from “Careers and Credentials,” #alt-academy (2011), http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/alt-ac/pieces/respect-my-praxis
Friday, March 10
Week 9
March 11 – 19: NO CLASS – SPRING BREAK
Week 10: Projects
Monday, March 20
Work on projects
Week 11: Projects
Monday, March 27
Final project abstract due
Presentations:
Work on projects
Week 12: Projects
Monday, April 3
Presentations
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Dainerys: Abigail Williams, “The Digital Miscellanies Index: Mapping an Evolving Poetic Culture”
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Tarika: Bethany Nowviskie, “Graduate Training for A Digital and Public Humanities”
Work on projects
Week 13: Projects
Monday, April 10
Presentations
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Paige: Tanya Clement, “‘A thing not beginning and not ending’: Using digital tools to distant-read Gertrude Stein’s The Making of Americans“
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Tiffany: Johanna Drucker, “Humanities Approaches to Graphical Display”
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Suchi: Diana S. Sinton, “Mapping”
Work on projects
Week 14: Projects
Monday, April 17
Presentations
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Elena: Nedra Reynolds, Ch. 3 “Maps of the Everyday: Habitual Pathways and Contested Places,” from Geographies of Writing: Inhabiting Places and Encountering Difference
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Kerli: Cheryl E. Ball, “Show, not tell: The value of new media scholarship”
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Lydda: Tyler Kendall, “Enhancing Sociolinguistic Data Collections: The North Carolina Sociolinguistic Archive and Analysis Project”
Work on projects
Week 15: Projects
Monday, April 24
Presentations of final projects
Monday, May 5