= Readings to focus on are marked by a spotlight icon below.
English 197: Class 1 (Jan. 7) — Introduction
- Introduction to the course
- Course enrollment business: Attendance will be taken of registered students and of students on the course wait list. A sign-up sheet will be passed out for other students wishing to take the course. Students must come to first three class meetings to hold their place in the course.
What's At Stake
Class 2 (Jan. 9) — Everyday Reading, Past and Present
- Plato, from Phaedrus (the myth of Theuth and the invention of writing) [PDF] (360 B.C.E.)
- Alberto Manguel, "The Silent Readers" from his A History of Reading (1996)
- Alberto Manguel, "How Pinocchio Learned to Read" [PDF], open-access version of essay from his A Reader on Reading (2011)
- Nicholas Carr, "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" (2008)
Class 3 (Jan. 14) — Literary Reading Reconsidered
- "Belle Lettres": Hugh Blair, excerpt from "Taste" [PDF], Lecture II in his Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres (1787)
- "Close Reading": Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren, "Introduction" to Understanding Poetry (1938)
- "Critique" vs. "Surface Reading": Stephen Best and Sharon Marcus, "Surface Reading: An Introduction" [PDF] (2009)
- Toward "Distant Reading": N. Katherine Hayles, excerpt on "Scale Matters" [PDF] from How We Think: Digital Media and Contemporary Technogenesis (2012)
- Special Early Assignment: Because so many of the readings in this course are online, students are required by this class to demonstrate that they have the means to annotate and save copies of online materials according to one of the methods described here. Bring to class on your laptop or other digital device at least one copy of an assigned reading that you have highlighted or otherwise annotated in some way. (If you do not own a laptop, tablet, or other digital device, then bring a printed copy of one assigned reading.)
Close Reading
Class 4 (Jan. 16) — The New Criticism (1)
- Archibald MacLeish, "Ars Poetica" (1926)
- John Crowe Ransom, from "Wanted: An Ontological Critic" [PDF] (pp. 279-316 only) from his New Criticism (1941)
- Cleanth Brooks, "The Heresy of Paraphrase" [PDF] from his The Well Wrought Urn (1947)
Class 5 (Jan. 21) — The New Criticism (2)
- Cleanth Brooks, "Irony as a Principle of Structure" [PDF] (1949)
Cleanth Brooks, "Keats's Sylvan Historian" from his Well Wrought Urn (1947) - W. K. Wimsatt, "The Structure of Romantic Nature Imagery" [PDF] (1949), rpt. in his The Verbal Icon
Class 6 (Jan. 23) — The New Criticism (3): The Cultural Background
- From I'll Take My Stand by "Twelve Southerners" (1930):
- John Crowe Ransom, excerpt from "Reconstructed But Unregenerate" [PDF] (pp. 17-22 only)
- Andrew Nelson Lytle, excerpt from "The Hind Tit" [PDF] (pp. 216-234 only)
Class 7 (Jan. 28) — Russian Formalism (1)
- Victor Shklovsky, "Art as Technique" (1917) (in required book: Lemon & Reis, ed., Russian Formalist Criticism)
- Boris Eichenbaum, "The Theory of the 'Formal Method'" (1926) (in required book: Lemon & Reis, ed., Russian Formalist Criticism)
Class 8 (Jan. 30) — Russian Formalism (2)
- Boris Tomashevsky, from "Thematics" (1925): read only pp. 66-87, 92-95
(in required book: Lemon & Reis, ed., Russian Formalist Criticism)
Class 9 (Feb. 4) — Discussion of Student Papers
- Discussion with students of key topics and issues in their 4-page essays.
Distant Reading
Class 10 (Feb. 6) — Introduction to the Digital Humanities
- Franco Moretti, Graphs, Maps, Trees (2005), pp. 1-33, 91-92
- Matthew L. Jockers, Chapter 4 ("Macroanalysis") in Macroanalysis: Digital Methods and Literary History (2013)
Class 11 (Feb. 11) — [No Class]
- Practicum: Exploring Digital Humanities Tools (See Practicum Assignments)
Course "practicums" are hands-on, small-scale exercises that ask students to experiment at a beginner's level with the tools of the digital humanities. The goal is not technical mastery but learning enough about the technologies to think about, and through, their concepts. In many cases, experience gained in the practicums will feed directly into discussion of conceptual issues in class. (The first 4 practicums for classes 11-14 are required; students can then choose to do any 2 of the remaining practicums for classes 15-18.) - Also: get started on the readings and practicum for the "text encoding" topic in Class 12.
Class 12 (Feb. 13) — Text Encoding
- Alan Liu, "Transcendental Data: Toward a Cultural History and Aesthetics of the New Encoded Discourse" [PDF] (2004): read only pp. 49-63
- Wikipedia article on "Markup Language"
- C. M. [Michael] Sperberg-McQueen and Lou Burnard, "A Gentle Introduction to XML" (2004): read only from the beginning through section v.4 ("Complicating the Issue"); in section v. 3 ("XML Structures"), read only "Elements" and "Content models: an example." Reading Tip: This essay introduces "TEI" (Text Encoding Initiative markup) as implemented in XML markup; read to get the main sense of what is involved.
- Julia Flanders, "Basic Manuscript and Physical Document Encoding" -- Reading Tip: this is a set of explanations and examples of using TEI to encode handwritten and physical manuscripts; read just to get a sense of what is involved.
- Practicum: Text Encoding
Class 13 (Feb. 18) — Text Analysis (1)
- Jean-Baptiste Michel, Erez Lieberman Aiden, et al., "Quantitative Analysis of Culture Using Millions of Digitized Books" (2011) (paywalled; UCSB students have free access from UCSB campus or Library Proxy server)
- Franco Moretti, "Style, Inc. Reflections on Seven Thousand Titles (British Novels, 1740–1850)" [PDF] (2009)
- Practicum: Text Analysis 1
Class 14 (Feb. 20) — Text Analysis (2)
- Ryan Heuser and and Long Le-Khac, "A Quantitative Literary History of 2,958 Nineteenth-Century British Novels: The Semantic Cohort Method" [PDF] (2012)
- Practicum: Text Analysis 2
Class 15 (Feb. 25) — Text Analysis (3)
- David M. Blei, "Topic Modeling and Digital Humanities" (2012)
- Matt Burton, "The Joy of Topic Modeling" (2013)
- Ted Underwood, "Topic Modeling Made Just Simple Enough" (2012)
- Matthew L. Jockers
- "The LDA Buffet is Now Open; or, Latent Dirichlet Allocation for English Majors" (2011)
- Chapter 8 ("Theme") in Macroanalysis: Digital Methods and Literary History (2013)
- Practicum: Text Analysis 3
Class 16 (Feb. 27) — Social Network Analysis
- Wikipedia article on "Social Networks"
- David Easley and Jon Kleinberg. Networks, Crowds, and Markets: Reasoning About a Highly Connected World, Chap. 1 [PDF] (2010) -- read only Chap. 1
- Franco Moretti, "Network Theory, Plot Analysis" (2011)
- Practicum: Social Network Analysis
Class 17 (Mar. 4) — Mapping & GIS
- Franco Moretti, Graphs, Maps, Trees (2005), pp. 35-64
- Jo Guldi,
- Ernest Hemingway, "Big Two-Hearted River" (1925) [short story on which the practicum for this class might be based]
- Practicum: Mapping
Class 18 (Mar. 6) — Deformance & Glitch
- Lisa Samuels and Jerome J. McGann, "Deformance and Interpretation" (1999) [paywalled; UCSB students have free access through UCSB Library Proxy server]
- Mark Sample, "Notes Towards a Deformed Humanities" (2012)
- Rosa Menkman on "Glitch" -- Rhizome.org interview with videos (2011)
- Practicum: Deformance & Glitch
Student Mock Project Proposals
(Ideas for hypothetical digital-humanities projects)
Class 19 (Mar. 11) — Discussion of Student Mock Project Ideas (1)
-
Mock Project Proposals due this week (see Assignments) (Folder for Mock Proposals)
- Samantha B.
- Angelica
- Chris
- Noemy
Class 20 (Mar. 13) — Discussion of Student Mock Project Ideas (2)
-
Mock Project Proposals due this week (see Assignments) (Folder for Mock Proposals)
- Nicole/Irene/Samantha P.
- Max
- Karissa
- Maria
8-Page Essay due March 15 (emailed to Instructor) (see Assignments)