Here you will find the assigned readings for each week, as well as a rough guide to the events happening in each class session. This schedule may change; you will be notified of any changes at least one week in advance.
Week 1: January 22
Readings: “Introduction: From Humanism to Digital Humanities,” 1-26 Burdick et. al.
Aristotle, Poetics: “Introduction” xi-xvii, 17-23, 40-49 (recommended, 40-55).
In class (Moved to 1-30): Introduction to OED (you will need to log in with your Amherst College account in order to access the dictionary
Sign up for Explorations schedule
Week 2: January 30th
Readings: “Salvation or destruction: Metaphors of the Internet” Rebecca Jonston
Alexander, “A Note on Rhetoric”, in Selected Renaissance Literary Criticism (308-310)
Francis Bacon, from The Advancement of Learning, in Selected Renaissance Literary Criticism (289-290)
In Class:
- Review Aristotle
- Introduction to OED (you will need to log in with your Amherst College account in order to access the dictionary
- Sign up for Explorations schedule
- Figures: cyberspace, the cloud, bandwidth, surfing, the web
Week 3: February 6
Readings: Alexander, “Introduction,” Selected Renaissance Literary Criticism (xix-xliii, lii-lxii)
Philip Sidney, “Defence of Poesy,” in Alexander, Selected Renaissance Literary Criticism (3-25).
“The Digital Humanities Is Not about Building, It’s about Sharing” by Mark Sample
In Class:
- First Exploration Presentation
- Determine rough areas of interest for the final project, eg, if you would like to work on the front end or back end of the WordPress site
- Figures: chat room, message/bulletin board, forum, black box, internet
Week 4: February 13
Readings: Sidney, Defence continued, Alexander, Selected Renaissance Literary Criticism (25-54)
In Class:
- Finalize Groups
- Discuss websites vs. DH projects
- Discuss WordPress design
- Figures: inbox/outbox, email, menu, webpage/website, information superhighway, archive
Week 5: February 20
Readings: Henry Peacham, The Compleat Gentleman, in Alexander (248-253)
“Database as genre,” Ed Folsom in PMLA
Responses to Folsom, PMLA
In Class:
- Criteria for group presentations; how to provide a progress report
- Figures: portal, interface, shopping cart, database, firewall, ESC
Week 6: February 27 (Progress Reports Due)
Readings: Alexander, “Introduction,” lxi-lxvii
George Puttenham, “The Art of English Poesy,” in Alexander, Selected Renaissance Literary Criticism (57-65, 133-152)
In Class: Group Progress reports, presented to class
Week 7: March 6
Readings: George Puttenham, “The Art of English Poesy,” in Alexander, Selected Renaissance Literary Criticism (152-165)
Alan Liu, “From Reading to Social Computing”
In Class: Figures: mining, linking, nodes, window, tabs, surfing
Week 8: Spring break, March 10-18
Week 9: March 20
Readings: “Man and His Tool, Again? Queer and Feminist Notes on Practices in the Digital Humanities and Object Orientations Everywhere,” Jamie “Skye” Bianco, DHQ 2015 9.2
George Puttenham, “The Art of English Poesy,” in Alexander, Selected Renaissance Literary Criticism (165-191)
In Class:
- Start looking at polished DH projects: Hypercities, Mapping Du Bois, The Map of Early Modern London, Voices of the Holocaust, Six Degrees of Francis Bacon, Petrarchive, The Walt Whitman Archive.
- Figures: trolls/trolling, desktop, mouse, dashboard
Week 10: March 27 (Progress Reports Due)
Readings: “Information Visualization for Humanities Scholars,” Sinclair, Rueker, Radzikowska
George Puttenham, “The Art of English Poesy,” in Alexander, Selected Renaissance Literary Criticism (191-203)
In Class:
- Figures: archive, pocket, network, phishing, texting
Week 11: April 3 (Progress Reports Due)
CLASS ENDS AT 4PM
Readings: none
In Class:
- Group progress reports
- Collaboratively establish criteria for evaluating final project
Week 12: April 10
Readings: Ben Jonson, Horace, the Art of Poetry, in Alexander; please read ll 1-255 and 440-end.
Ben Jonson, The Forrest, in Alexander, pp. 95-119
In Class: Figures: domain, recycle bin, hotspot, hit
Week 13: April 17
Readings: Jonson continued
In Class: Synthesis of DH approaches to literary texts
Week 14: April 24
Readings: none
In Class: work time on final project
