Schedule of Readings and Assignments for English 236

The first four classes of the course focus on selected readings designed to start students thinking about the relation between literary interpretation and other paradigms of research. These classes will run in normal discussion mode. From Class 5 on, the course will enter workshop mode where everything is geared toward facilitating–and keeping the rest of the class informed about--team projects. Some of the workshop classes will feature presentations of projects-in-progress; others will be "studio" sessions giving team members a chance to work side by side.

= Solo assignment  = Team assignment

Class 1 (January 7) — Introduction: The Idea of Literature+

• "Close Reading"
  • Exemplary Poems
    • Sir Thomas Wyatt, "They Flee From Me" (1557) [commentary by Ian Lancashire]
    • John Keats, "Ode on a Grecian Urn" (1819)
    • Archibald MacLeish, "Ars Poetica" (1926)
  • Close Reading Theory (the "New Criticism")
    • Cleanth Brooks, "The Heresy of Paraphrase" and "Keats's Sylvan Historian," from his Well Wrought Urn (1947) [course reader]
• Some Recent Challenges to Close Reading
  • "Distant Reading"
    • Franco Moretti, Graphs, Maps, Trees (Verso, 2005), pp. 1-4 [purchase this book from the UCSB bookstore]
    • Jeremy Douglass, Cultural Analytics demo
  • "Deformance" Reading
    • Lisa Samuels and Jerome J. McGann, "Deformance and Interpretation," New Literary History 30, No. 1 (Winter, 1999): 25-56 (access from UCSB campus or use Library Proxy server)
  • Non-Hermeneutic (Non-Interpretive) Reading
    • Friedrich A. Kittler, Discourse Networks, 1800/1900, trans. Michael Metteer with Chris Cullens (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990) (orig. pub. in German in 1985 as Aufscreibesysteme)
    • Friedrich A. Kittler, "There Is No Software," CTheory (Oct. 10, 1995)
• Theory of this Course
  • Alan Liu, "Digital Humanities and Academic Change," English Language Notes 47 (2009), special issue on "Experimental Literary Education": 17-35 [locked resource; course login required]
  • Articles resulting from the 2008 version of this course, forthcoming in Investigating Digital Tools, Texts, and Use Practices: Collaborative Approaches to Research in English Studies, ed. Laura McGrath
    • Monica Bulger, Jessica C. Murphy, Jeff Scheible, and Elizabeth Lagresa, "Interdisciplinary Knowledge Work: Digital Textual Analysis Tools and Their Affordances" (manuscript) [locked resource; course login required]
    • Alan Liu, "'So What': New Tools and New Humanities Paradigms" (response to above; manuscript) [locked resource; course login required]

Class 2 (January 14) — Distant Reading 

• Franco Moretti
  • Graphs, Maps, Trees (Verso, 2005), pp. 1-64, 91-92 [purchase this book from the UCSB bookstore]
  • "Style, Inc. Reflections on Seven Thousand Titles (British Novels, 1740-1850)," Critical Inquiry 36 (2009): 134-58 (access from UCSB campus or use Library Proxy server)
• Fernand Braudel
  • Extract from the Preface of The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II (1976), in Braudel, On History, trans. Sarah Matthews (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), pp 3-5 [course reader]
  • Table of Contents from The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II (1976)
  • Extract from "History and the Social Sciences," in Braudel, On History, trans. Sarah Matthews (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), pp. 25-34 [course reader]
• Lynn Hunt, "French History in the Last Twenty Years: The Rise and Fall of the Annales Paradigm," Journal of Contemporary History, 21 (1986): 209-24 (access from UCSB campus or use Library Proxy server)

Create a bio for the Class Members page of the course wiki; include your intellectual interests. (For details, see Assignments)

Class 3 (January 21) — Text Analysis: Concordance, Model, Deformance?

• Text Analysis
  • Tools
    • Explore text analysis tools in Toy Chest (especially TaPOR and WordHoard)
  • Theory of Text Analysis
    • Geoffrey Rockwell, "What is Text Analysis, Really?", Literary and Linguistic Computing 18.2 (2003): 209-220 (access from UCSB campus or use Library Proxy server)
    • Excerpt from Julia Flanders, "Detailism, Digital Texts, and the Problem of Pedantry," TEXT Technology No. 2 (2005): 41-70 (access from UCSB campus or use Library Proxy server) -- read pp. 54-67
    • Stephan Ramsay, "Patacomputing," from his forthcoming Criticism in the Digital Age [course reader]
• Modeling Theory
  • Willard McCarty, Humanities Computing (Palgrave MacMillan, 2005), pp. 20-72 [course reader]
• Deformance Theory
  • Lisa Samuels and Jerome J. McGann, "Deformance and Interpretation," New Literary History 30, No. 1 (Winter, 1999): 25-56 (access from UCSB campus or use Library Proxy server)
  • Stephen Ramsay, "Toward an Algorithmic Criticism," Literary and Linguistic Computing 18.2 (2003): 167-174 (access from UCSB campus or use Library Proxy server)

Teams to be formed in class on this date. [Students may choose instead to work individually on projects supporting their dissertations.]

Class 4 (January 28) — Datamining, Pattern Recognition, Visualization (with an addendum on Social Computing)

• Andrea Lau and Andrew Vande Moere, "Towards a Model of Information Aesthetics in Information Visualization," Proceedings of the 11th International Conference Information Visualization, 4-6 July 2007: 87-92
• Explore the following:
  •  Data visualization galleries:
    • Visual Complexity
    • 50 Great Examples of Data Vizualization (Web Designer Depot) and/or the Information Aesthetics blog
    • Periodic Table of Visualization Methods (Visual-Literacy.org)
  • Data visualization tools:
    • IBM ManyEyes (IBM Visual Communication Lab)
    • WiGis: Web-based Interactive Graph Interfaces
    • Awesome Data Visualization Tools (Mashable blog)
• Jerome J. McGann, "Rethinking Textuality" (also available in print as chap. 5 of his Radiant Textuality: Literature After the World Wide Web [Palgrave, 2001]
• Stephen Ramsay, "In Praise of Pattern" (2005)
• Addendum: Literary Studies and Social Computing
  • Alan Liu, "From Reading to Social Computing" (draft essay; see also figures for essay) [locked resource; course login required]

At least one team-meeting outside class by this date to begin brainstorming. (For details, see Assignments)

Class 5 (February 4) — Project Idea Presentations

 Choose a literary work (or part of a work) that the team will work on.  Present to the class your team's rationale for choosing the work and at least two initial project ideas. (For details, see Assignments)

Class 6 (February 11) — Workshop 

Create an annotated bibliography of 5 research resources related to your team's project (including not only items from the relevant secondary, theoretical, or technical literature but also at least one online or downloadable tool that might be added to the Toy Chest). (For details, see Assignments)

Class 7 (February 18) — Workshop

 Write 4-page research report on one of the items in your annotated bibliography. (For details, see Assignments)

Class 8 (February 25) — Workshop 

Class 9 (March 4) — Workshop 

Class 10 (March 11) — Final Presentations 

Formal presentations of team projects. (For details, see Assignments)

(March 15)

Final essay or other form of combined analytical/reflective/creative thinking about your team project or its primary literary work due. (For details, see Assignments)