230473 From Gutenberg to Google: Introduction to Digital Humanities (S) (SoSe 2017)

While it is obvious that much literature is nowadays available in digitalised form, digitalisation offers literature and literary studies many more opportunities than storage and distribution, or a word search in e-book. Following a general trend in the humanities, digital technology has not only affected the production and the storage of texts in the last decades but also the analysis and interpretation of literature. This class will introduce students to the concepts, aims, methods and tools of the Digital Humanities, and it will explore the added value of computer-based approaches to literature.

The seminar will steer a middle course between basic theoretical considerations and a hands-on approach: we will discuss the concepts and methods of digital humanities approaches to literary texts, but we will also make practical use of some tools, such as Voyant Tools (http://voyant-tools.org), RAW (http://app.raw.densitydesign.org), and LEX (http://lexthetool.com), and look at digital literary archives and comparable sources (such as the The Walt Whitman Archive and the Internet Shakespeare) in order to explore the potentials of digitalised literary scholarship. In addition to that, we will develop ways in which the digital-humanities-approach can be fruitfully applied to teaching English literature in the classroom.

Please note that NO programming or advanced computer skills are required to attend this class. If you use the Internet and know how to send an e-mail, that will suffice. Students will be required to read some theoretical and some literary texts, and to be generally curious as to what the computer can do for literature.

Bibliography

All materials will be made available at the beginning of the semester.