Postgraduate Course: Digital Humanities for Literary Studies (ENLI11199)
Course Outline
| School | School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | Digital Humanities is a field of study in which scholarly applications of technology are used to perform analyses and generate insights that would be difficult or impossible to achieve without the help of technology. This course will introduce students to a number of digital tools that will aid them both in their studies and their lives beyond university, and will help them to use these tools in a critical way. The approach taken to DH in this course is grounded in literature, linguistics and book history. We will examine computer-mediated communication, and will consider the development of digital texts in the light of earlier technologies such as the printing press. We will focus on two kinds of approaches that are particularly prominent within digital literary studies - computational text analysis and digital mapping - and we will explore, and critique, examples of projects which use these tools. The hands-on nature of the course is such that students will have the opportunity to learn how to use these applications for themselves, and will need to devote time each week to participating in the class's virtual community with regular, informative contributions. As the main assessment for the course, students will produce a digital project which conforms to the same high standards of scholarly rigour as an assessed essay, but which is attentive to the specific imperatives of the online environment in relation to genre, design and format. |
| Course description |
Digital Humanities is a field of study in which scholarly applications of technology are used to perform analyses and generate insights that would be difficult or impossible to achieve without the help of technology. This course will introduce students to a number of digital tools that will aid them both in their studies and their lives beyond university, and will help them to use these tools in a critical way. The approach taken to DH in this course is grounded in literature, linguistics and book history. We will examine computer-mediated communication, and will consider the development of digital texts in the light of earlier technologies such as the printing press. We will focus on two kinds of approaches that are particularly prominent within digital literary studies - computational text analysis and digital mapping - and we will explore, and critique, examples of projects which use these tools. The hands-on nature of the course is such that students will have the opportunity to learn how to use these applications for themselves, and will need to devote time each week to participating in the class's virtual community with regular, informative contributions. As the main assessment for the course, students will produce a digital project which conforms to the same high standards of scholarly rigour as an assessed essay, but which is attentive to the specific imperatives of the online environment in relation to genre, design and format.
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | None |
| High Demand Course? |
Yes |
Course Delivery Information
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| Academic year 2021/22, Available to all students (SV1)
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Quota: 3 |
| Course Start |
Semester 2 |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
200
(
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
196 )
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| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
100 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
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| Additional Information (Assessment) |
1. 20% oral presentation delivered in class on a digital scholarly project (8-10 minutes, including description, evaluation and critique; roughly equivalent to 1200 words)
2. 30% class contribution activities, including four blog posts, participation in class Twitter feed, contributions to digital map, contributions to collaboratively authored summaries, and possibly other tasks that may arise as the semester goes on; minimum 2000 words.
3. 50% digital project (website built with WordPress which uses digital tools to analyse a text; 2000w approximate word count.)
Students will be given feedback on their oral presentation immediately, and formative feedback on their class contribution activities midway through the semester. Time will also be set aside in the final weeks of the semester for students to get help with the technical aspects of the digital project, and to request formative feedback on parts of the digital project as they complete it. |
| Feedback |
Not entered |
| No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- think critically about what they are doing when they read, write, search for information and engage with others in an online environment, building on the critical reading and writing skills they have already developed.
- produce writing in a number of genres, and to understand how to adapt their writing when producing public-facing digital artefacts.
- articulate some of the benefits and the drawbacks of using digital tools to analyse literary and cultural artefacts that have been identified within digital humanities scholarship.
- attain a level of digital literacy that will allow them to critically interrogate the way they use digital resources to get information and interact with others, and will raise their awareness of the data trails they leave when they use the internet
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Reading List
Additional reading:
Darnton, Robert. 'Google and the Future of Books.' New York Review of Books 12 February 2009. Web. 13 Dec. 2013.
Duguid, Paul. 'Material Matters: The Past and Futurology of the Book'. The Book History Reader. 2nd revised ed. Ed. David Finkelstein and Alistair McCleery. Abingdon: Routledge, 2006. 494-508. Print.
Flanders, Julia. 'The Productive Unease of 21st-century Digital Scholarship.' Digital Humanities Quarterly 3.3 (Summer 2009). Web. 13 Dec. 2013.
Grafton, Anthony. 'Future Reading: Digitization and its Discontents.' The New Yorker 5 November 2007. Web. 13 Dec 2013.
Gregory, Ian, and David Cooper. 'GIS, Texts, and Images: New Approaches.' Poetess Archive Journal 2.1 (2010). Web. 13 Dec 2013.
Hayles, N. Katherine. 'How We Read: Close, Hyper, Machine,' ADE Bulletin 150 (2010): 62-79. Web. 13 Dec. 2013.
Hindley, Meredith. ¿Mapping the Republic of Letters.¿ Humanities: The Magazine of the National Endowment for the Humanities 34.6 (2013). Web. 13 Dec. 2013.
Hitchcock, Tim. ¿Big Data for Dead People: Digital Readings and the Conundrums of Positivism.¿ Keynote Address at CVCE Conference: Reading Historical Sources in the Digital Age, 4-5 December 2013. 9 Dec. 2013. Web. 13 Dec. 2013.
Kirschenbaum, Matthew. ¿What Is Digital Humanities and What¿s It Doing in English Departments?¿ ADE Bulletin 150 (2010): 1-7. Print.
Leary, Patrick. ¿Googling the Victorians.¿ Journal of Victorian Culture 10:1 (Spring 2005): 72-86. Web. 13 Dec. 2013.
McCarty, Willard. ¿What is Humanities Computing? Toward a Definition of the Field.¿ Address at Reed College, 2 Mar 1998. Web. 13 Dec. 2013.
Michel, Jean-Baptiste et al. ¿Quantitative Analysis of Culture Using Millions of Digitized Books.¿ Science 331.176 (2011): 176-182. Web.
Nunberg, Geoffrey. ¿Farewell to the Information Age.¿ The Future of the Book. Ed. Nunberg. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1996. 103-138. Print.
Piez, Wendell. ¿Something Called ¿Digital Humanities¿.¿ Digital Humanities Quarterly 2.1 (2008). Web. 13 Dec 2013.
Rockwell, Geoffrey. ¿What is Text Analysis, Really?¿ Literary and Linguistic Computing 18.2 (2003): 209-219. Web. 13 Dec 2013.
Schmidt, Ben. ¿Reading Digital Sources: A Case Study in Ship¿s Logs.¿ Sapping Attention 15 Nov. 2012. Web. 13 Dec. 2013.
Serlen, Rachel. ¿The Distant Future? Reading Franco Moretti.¿ Literature Compass 7.3 (2010): 214-225. Web. 13 Dec 2013.
Sinclair, Stèfan. ¿Computer-Assisted Reading: Reconceiving Text Analysis.¿ Literary and Linguistic Computing 18.2 (2003): 167-74. Web. 13 Dec 2013.
Underwood, Ted. ¿Where to Start with Text Mining.¿ The Stone and the Shell 14 Aug 2012. Web. 13 Dec 2013.
Underwood, Ted. ¿Why Digital Humanities Isn¿t Actually ¿The Next Thing in Literary Studies¿¿. The Stone and the Shell 27 Dec. 2011. Web. 13 Dec. 2013.
Vanhoutte, Edward. ¿The Gates of Hell: History and Definition of Digital | Humanities | Computing.¿ Defining Digital Humanities: A Reader. Ed. Melissa Terras, Julianne Nyhan, and Edward Vanhoutte. Farnham: Ashgate, 2013. 119¿156. Print.
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Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
A. Research and Enquiry (Graduates of the University will be able to create new knowledge and opportunities for learning through the process of research and enquiry): developed through readings and in-class activities; tested by class participation activities, presentation and project.
B. Personal and Intellectual Autonomy (Graduates of the University will be able to work independently and sustainably, in a way that is informed by openness, curiosity and a desire to meet new challenges): developed through class participation activities and presentation.
C. Communication (Graduates of the University will recognise and value communication as the tool for negotiating and creating new understanding, collaborating with others, and furthering their own learning): developed through presentation, class participation activities and project, which ask students to communicate their ideas and understanding in different formats (eg. speaking aloud vs. informal digital writing vs. formal digital writing).
D. Personal Effectiveness (Graduates of the University will be able to effect change and be responsive to the situations and environments in which they operate): developed through the class participation activities, especially those designed to help students understand their digital presence in a fast-changing online environment, and also the collaborative work required to complete the project. |
| Keywords | digital humanities,computational analysis,GIS,digital mapping,print culture,data privacy |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Anouk Lang
Tel: (0131 6) 5 50 8936
Email: Anouk.Lang@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Miss Kara McCormack
Tel: (0131 6)50 3030
Email: Kara.McCormack@ed.ac.uk |
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