ENG 295-01 - Special Topic: Lighting the Page: Digital Methods in Literary Studies

4 credits (Spring)

How do humans read and write? How do machines read and write? And how do humans and machines read and write together? This course will introduce students to methods used in the digital humanities, with a special emphasis on applications to electronic literature and literary studies. We will begin the class with an exploration of electronic literature, which uses digital tools to create interactive stories. After reading works of e-lit such as Szilak and Tsibouski’s Queerskins: A Novel and Ana María Uribe’s Tipoemas y Anipoemas, students will create their own works of e-lit. We will then move on to textual analysis. This part of the class will combine literary reading and theory with introductory computer programming. We will read works of theory and criticism in the digital humanities, seeing how computational methods are expanding the possibilities of literary studies. We will also use Python programming to do our own work on machine-assisted creative and analytical projects. Readings will include literary texts as well as recent contributions to criticism and theory in digital humanities. Assignments will include student-designed individual and group projects using digital tools and methods. No technical skills are required, but willingness to gain them is fundamental to the course.

Prerequisite: ENG 120 or ENG 121.
Instructor: Simpson