ANG6092 Readings in Contemporary Theory

Winter 2022

An Introduction to Digital Humanities

In their introduction to A Companion to Digital Humanities (Blackwell, 2004), the editors Susan Schreibman, Ray Siemens, and John Unsworth write:

This collection marks a turning point in the field of digital humanities: for the first time, a wide range of theorists and practitioners, those who have been active in the field for decades, and those recently involved, disciplinary experts, computer scientists, and library and information studies specialists, have been brought together to consider digital humanities as a discipline in its own right, as well as to reflect on how it relates to areas of traditional humanities scholarship.

This course is an introduction to Digital Humanities, with a literary perspective. It considers the various aspects of Digital Humanities, its emergence as a discipline, its increased visibility and popularity beyond academe, and its usefulness for students engaged in more traditional literary study. Students will read and discuss in detail essays selected from the three volumes of Debates in the Digital Humanities (edited by Matthew K. Gold and Lauren F. Kleins between 2012 and 2019, available in open access from Minnesota Press), along with several other key texts published in the last decade.

There will be a series of talks offered by the “Centre de recherche interuniversitaire sur les humanités numériques” (in English and in French) during the term that will also be part of the course. (These will take place outside of our Thursday PM slot and students unable to attend them live will be able to watch recordings.)

Objectives:

• To familiarize students with the general concepts of digital humanities;
• Identify the technical/practical aspect of digital humanities;
• To deepen the different types of analytical approaches in order to understand their complexity;
• Apply analytical concepts and approaches to literature.

Assignments:

• Critical summaries: 3 critical summaries of an article or book chapter chosen from the readings. Each critical summary must be between 400 words and 600 words (1/3 of the assignment is a brief description of the theme of the article and 2/3 is a critical reading that highlights 2-3 aspects of the article’s contribution, i.e., an individual interpretation of the article that is an intellectual contribution on the part of the student, structured and thoughtful) [10% of the final grade each, 30% total];
• In-class presentation: 1 15′ presentation (between 2,000 and 2,500 words) bringing 2 articles in dialogue, followed by 2 questions to lead class discussion on the articles [30%]
• Poster presentation: 1 20′ poster presentation. Students will choose one of methodological approaches discussed in class, determine a problematic and develop a critical argument related to his or her research topic that will be presented in a poster [40%].

Schedule:

• Thursday 13 January @ 1pm: Introduction
• Thursday 20 January: Remote viewing (Geoffrey Rockwell and Dino Felluga)
• Thursday 27 January @ 1pm: Definitions
• Thursday 3 February @ 1pm: Readings #1
• Thursday 10 February @ 1pm: Readings #2; Student Presentations 1 & 2
• Thursday 17 February @ 11am: Guest-Lecture (Constance Crompton); @ 1pm: Readings #3; Student Presentations 3 & 4
• Thursday 24 February @ 1pm: Readings #4; Student Presentations 5 & 6
• Thursday 3 March: Reading Week
• Tuesday 8 March @ 11.30am: Guest-Lecture (Ariane Hudelet: “La recherche en images : l’essai vidéo dans le contexte des études cinématographiques et audiovisuelles”)
• Thursday 10 March @ 11am: Guest-Lecture (Jada Watson: “Silencing the Past: Industry Data and the Production of Institutional Memory”); @ 1pm: Readings #5; Student Presentations 7 & 8
• Thursday 17 March @ 11am: Guest-Lecture (Claudine Moulin & Christof Schöch); @ 1pm: class visit by Jada Watson
• Thursday 24 March: Remote viewing (Elika Ortega and Eric Gidal)
• Tuesday 29 March @ 11.30am: Guest-Lecture (Lauren Tilton: “Images as Data: A Distant Viewing Approach”)
• Thursday 31 March: Individual meetings
• Thursday 7 April @ 1pm: Conference, Part 1
• Thursday 14 April @ 1pm: Conference, Part 2

Readings:

• #1
  • Johanna Drucker, “Humanistic Theory and Digital Scholarship“
  • John Hunter, “The Digital Humanities and “Critical Theory”: An Institutional Cautionary Tale“
  • Curtis Fletcher, “Educational Technology and the Humanities: A History of Control“
  • Margaret Linley, “Ecological Entanglements of DH“
  • Bobby L. Smiley, “From Humanities to Scholarship: Librarians, Labor, and the Digital“
  • Dave Parry, “The Digital Humanities or a Digital Humanism“
• #2
  • Tara McPherson, “Why Are the Digital Humanities So White? or Thinking the Histories of Race and Computation” (Gauthier)
  • Alan Liu, “Where Is Cultural Criticism in the Digital Humanities?” (Gauthier)
  • Megan Ward with Adrian S. Wisnicki, “The Archive after Theory” (Nault)
  • Lisa Marie Rhody, “Why I Dig: Feminist Approaches to Text Analysis” (Nault)
  • Kyle Parry, “Reading for Enactment: A Performative Approach to Digital Scholarship and Data Visualization“
  • Ted Underwood, “Digital Humanities as a Semi-Normal Thing“
• #3
  • Laura Mandell, “Gender and Cultural Analytics: Finding or Making Stereotypes?” (Ciochina)
  • Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, Richard Grusin, Patrick Jagoda, and Rita Raley, “The Dark Side of the Digital Humanities” (Ciochina)
  • Safiya Umoja Noble, “Toward a Critical Black Digital Humanities” (Chabhar)
  • Kim Gallon, “Making a Case for the Black Digital Humanities” (Chabhar)
  • Roopika Risam, “Navigating the Global Digital Humanities: Insights from Black Feminism“
  • Fiona Barnett, Zach Blas, Micha Cárdenas, Jacob Gaboury, Jessica Marie Johnson, and Margaret Rhee, “QueerOS: A User’s Manual“
• #4
  • Elyse Graham, “Joyce and the Graveyard of Digital Empires” (Aura)
  • Lincoln Mullen, “A Braided Narrative for Digital History” (Aura)
  • Moacir P. de Sá Pereira, “Mixed Methodological Digital Humanities” (Paquin)
  • Michael Hancher, “Re: Search and Close Reading” (Paquin)
  • Stephen Robertson, “The Differences between Digital Humanities and Digital History“
  • Jentery Sayers, “Dropping the Digital“
• #5
  • Tanya E. Clement, “Where Is Methodology in Digital Humanities?” (Boucher)
  • Jeffrey M. Binder, “Alien Reading: Text Mining, Language Standardization, and the Humanities” (Boucher)
  • Benjamin M. Schmidt, “Do Digital Humanists Need to Understand Algorithms?” (Aledavood)
  • Ted Underwood, “Distant Reading and Recent Intellectual History” (Aledavood)
  • David L. Hoover, “Argument, Evidence, and the Limits of Digital Literary Studies“
  • Amy E. Earhart and Toniesha L. Taylor, “Pedagogies of Race: Digital Humanities in the Age of Ferguson“

This content has been updated on April 2, 2023 at 12 h 08 min.