About

Course Description

The time machine, the difference engine, the sonic screwdriver in Doctor Who, and the cyborg: these technologies were born out of language, literature, and imagination. Technologies like the printing press and the Internet allow us to communicate with one another, but through literature we can intimately explore the effects of technology on human experience.

In this course, we will be using current digital humanities methods like digital editing, exhibits, data mining, and interactive mapping to explore late nineteenth-century novels about the relationship between technology and human experience, including novels like Samuel Butler’s Erewhon, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Professor Challenger series, Begum Rokeya’s Sultana’s Dream, Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward, and Bram Stoker’s Dracula. After exploring the possibilities of several digital tools and methods, students will develop a comprehensive digital project either on their own or in collaborative teams.

Objectives

• Study technology as a mode of communication that influences interpretation of and cultural interaction with literature.
• Examine cultural anxieties in relationship to changing literary technologies.
• Understand how technology affects the sustainability of a long-standing cultural record.
• Learn how to use digital tools to study literature and share research findings with others.
• Develop technological literacy.
• Learn how to write multimodally for web environments.
• Practice digital presentation styles.
• Develop collaborative ability.

Books

Most readings will be available via Blackboard; the following books are available for pick-up at Textbook Services:
Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward
Bram Stoker, Dracula
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Herland

Screwing Around, Failure, and Flipped Learning

We are going to be learning about the digital humanities (You’ll know what that means by semester’s end, I promise!). This is going to get you out of your comfort zone in a lot of ways. I know that may sound as frightening as The War of the Worlds and as aimless as a search for Dracula’s secret lair, but trust me, it will be worth it. To make it work, I need you to come to class every day prepared to screw around. That is how digital humanities folks describe the work that they do when they play with things to see how they work, take time to experiment, and tinker without an end goal. Failure is an acceptable outcome. Things may not work right the first time or even the fourth time, but as long as I can see that you’ve applied yourself to the process and learned from it, I’ll consider you to have done the work for the class and then some.

For my part, I’ve designed a syllabus that gives you the opportunity to take big risks with the comfort that a failure is never truly a failure. We’ll be using contract grading (more about that later) and flipped learning. Flipped classrooms provide a flexible environment in which learning happens outside of class so that in class you can engage with your classmates and me in the active invention of products and ideas. As a result, our in-class time will be adaptive to your interests and our timeline for assignments will be flexible. For more on flipped learning, visit: http://flippedlearning.org/domain/46