“These days, it’s becoming clear that innovation flourishes best not on devices but in the social spaces between them, where people and ideas meet and interact. It is there that computing can have the most powerful impact on economy, society and people’s lives.” (Mark Dean, IBM)
Course Description
Computers are transforming the way the written word captures and determines human experience. On the one hand, the shift from print to digital culture, like the earlier shift from manuscript to print, is transforming how we produce and consume the written word. On the other, it creates a new imperative for the preserving and extending access to the texts of the past. Computer-based tools provide new methods of exploring how literature relates to human experience through digital archives and data-driven forms of visualization and analysis. The Digital Humanities is a new field which examines how technology relates to culture and how technology can be used to enhance our understanding of the products of culture, such as literature. This course will serve as an introduction to Digital Humanities theory and methods, using a range of examples drawn from literary history and a selection of the most popular tool-based approaches to studying literary texts. You will acquire some basic programming skills, but no prior knowledge of computers beyond the basics of e-mail and word processing is necessary. However, access to a computer with good internet access is essential.
Course Objectives
- You will participate in the growth of an exciting new field in the Humanities.
- You will become familiar with a range of methods for studying culture using computers.
- You gain an introductory knowledge of the technologies that underlie the production of digital literary texts and other forms of new media.
- You will develop perspectives on the impact of media technologies on human, and particularly literary, cultures.
- You will have some fun using computers in class without logging into Facebook.