Corsi di Studio del Dipartimento di Lingue e Letterature straniere e Culture moderne

 

This course contributes to the development of reading, writing and critical tools for literary study and interpretation for MA students.

It aims at introducing students to the theories and practices of using digital tools and methodologies for the study of North- American literature, with selected examples from 19th and 20th century novels/authors. This course also aims at developing analytical skills for assessing digital literary projects and for thinking critically when reading and writing in online environments. It will also help students to develop digital writing and project planning skills.

This course addresses the following learning objectives (obiettivi formativi):

• Gaining specialized knowledge of the current landscape of the field of digital humanities in connection with North American Literature.
• Improve students' competence of the English language and its application in digital environments.
• Acquire the necessary knowledge of digital humanities theories, methodologies, and approaches to the study of North American Literature.
• Learning how to transmit the notions acquired.
• Acquire problem solving skills.

 

After this course, students will:

1. possess an in-depth understanding of some of key topics related to the field of digital humanities for U.S. literary studies;
2. gain broad knowledge of the emerging role of the digital humanities for the study of U.S. authors and historical periods;
3. possess a better ability to read and engage with scholarly texts and digital environments;
4. be able to use some skills used in digital humanities literary projects, understanding their relevance according to different kind of research questions.

This course aims at developing abilities of critical thinking, independent study and initiative, and collaborative approaches. Seminar discussions, individual study of the syllabus, blog activities, designing and creating the digital projects, experimenting with the selected digital tools will help students to think critically about the digital resources employed to analyze North-American literary and cultural artifacts. They will learn to use digital applications for themselves building also on the critical reading and writing skills developed through the course, their collaboration on blogging platforms, and their articulations of research questions for specific data.  

Students will develop knowledge and understanding of the topics and essays included in the syllabus; they will be able to apply such knowledge and understanding, by adopting and explicitly referencing what they have learned; they will be able to make independent assessments and decisions based on what they learned, mobilitating different scientific knowledge, making their points in a consistent and independent way, also on cross-cutting issues.

 

Course Title: The Digital Humanities and U.S. Literary Studies

Course Blog: https://dhunito24.wordpress.com/

This is the site containing the teaching material related to DIGITAL HUMANITIES: The Digital Humanities and U.S. Literary Studies, taught by Cristina Di Maio (Fall 2024).

The course provides a general introduction to the Digital Humanities with a focus on U.S. Literary Studies. We will explore various approaches and methodologies, and we will experiment with digital tools and techniques. We will engage with debates around this field of study, such as the problem of defining the digital humanities, offering an overview of recent critical approaches and applications (e.g., DH and intersectionality). Students will learn how to analyze digital projects and design their own digital humanities project.

We will cover the following topics: Introduction to DH for U.S. literary studies; Digital Humanities: history, methods, definitions; Critical Approaches to DH; Minimal Computing; Distant Reading; Digital Archives; Visualization and Mapping;  Annotation; DH and U.S. Literature: authors and projects.

This course will introduce students to the following digital tools: WordPress; Hypothes.is; Google N-Grams; Voyant Tools; Palladio; GoogleMaps; StoryMaps; Flourish; TimelineJs; Tableau.

The digital projects we will analyze include: Margaret Fuller Archive; The Yellow Wallpaper Edition; African American Women Writers of the 19th Century; Documenting The American South; Emily Dickinson Electronic Archives; Gloria Naylor Archive; “REALIZING THE DREAM OF A BLACK UNIVERSITY” & OTHER WRITINGS PARTS 1 & 2 by Toni Cade Bambara; New York State of Mind: Mapping New York Literary History; Living Nations, Living Words.

The Lab Sessions will be the following: Building a WordPress blog; Designing your DH project; Workshop on the Students DH Projects; Annotation; Text Mining; Mapping; Exploration of DH tools.

 

This course is fully taught in English. No previous technical skills are required but students will experiment with some selected DH tools and methods. There will be seminar discussions of secondary texts and selected digital projects. Student participation to class discussions is expected as well as blogging activities (posting). There will be group activities and sessions dedicated to the experimentation with digital tools. Please refer to the schedule available on the course website.

Weekly reading and discussion

Students will complete all weekly readings in advance of the class meeting and will take an active part in class discussions.

Blogging

Students will create their own blogging site on the first week of class. Througout the course, they will be responsibile for writing 3 blog posts (due on Tuesday) that will be shared also on our course blog for the other students to read and comment on. The posts (400-600 words) will be in response to our weekly readings and class discussions (3 topics of their choice). Students will post their responses, thoughts, questions, close readings, reflections on their own experimentations with DH tools presented in class.

Final project

Students may work individually or in pairs. The project will be delivered as a website: it can be based on a digital archive, a textual analysis, a timeline, a map, a pedagogical website, an interactive visualization. A proposal (2 pages) will be submitted by week 5 (early November) and must include a clear research question; articulate the methods that will be used; the research plan. Throughout the course we will discuss together a variety of projects (also by students) and have project workshops/tutorials to help students in the development of their digital humanities project. The last week of class will be devoted to the student (short) presentations of their projects.

Oral assessment

The oral exam will focus on the student project to test the students understanding of the course materials, and the theoretical and methodological issues explored in the class. Students will need to show an in-depth understanding of the broad field of digital humanities and its relevance for U.S. literary studies, and of the various approaches and debates connected with the topics and tools examined, including relevant examples of digital projects.

Grading

Participation and blogging: 20%

Final project: 50%

Oral assessment: 30%

Non-attending students

Students attending less than 70% of this course need to get in touch with the instructor (preferably at the beginning of the semester) to discuss the final project to be presented during the oral assessment, as well as the blog posts.

All assessments will be in English.

PLEASE NOTE: 

The use of generative AI tools is not allowed in this course for the following activities:

• Impersonating you in classroom contexts, such as by using the tool to compose blog posts or comment on other student's blog posts.
• Completing group work that your group has assigned to you, unless it is mutually agreed upon that you may utilize the tool.
• Writing a draft of a writing assignment (i.e. blog posts, final project).
• Writing entire sentences or paragraphs to complete class assignments.

Any assignment that is found to have used generative AI tools in unauthorized ways will not be graded and submission will not be accepted. When in doubt about permitted usage, please ask for clarification.

 

Students will be supported in the creation of their blogs and research projects with specific sessions dedicated to the use of DH tools.

For students with physical disabilities, dyslexia, and other specific learning difficulties, please visit the University's support page (https://www.unito.it/servizi/lo-studio/studenti-con-disabilitaopen_in_new) and admission information (https://www.unito.it/accoglienza-studenti-con-disabilita-e-dsaopen_in_newopen_in_newopen_in_new).

The procedures for requesting support during exams can be found here: https://www.unito.it/servizi/lo-studio/studenti-e-studentesse-con-disabilita/supporto-studenti-e-studentesse-conopen_in_new

 

Course reader

All texts included in our course schedule for weekly readings will be available in the course reader on our course blog.

Non-attending students will also study:

Eve, Martin Paul, The Digital Humanities and Literary Studies, Oxford UP 2022. Available in open access here.

 

Course reader:

• Dunst,  Alexander.  2016.  “Forum:   Digital  American  Studies.  An Introduction and Rationale”. Amerikastudien 61 (3), pp. 381-395.

• Hockey, Susan. “The History of Humanities Computing.” In A Companion to Digital Humanities, Susan Schriebman, Ray Siemens, and John Unsworth eds. Blackwell Publishing, 2004, pp. 3-19.

• Kirschenbaum, Matthew G. “What Is Digital humanities and What’s It Doing in English Departments?” ADE Bulletin 150 (2010), pp. 55-61.

• Risam, Roopika and Gil, Alex. “Introduction: The Questions of Minimal Computing.” Digital Humanities Quarterly Vol 16.2 (2022). https://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/16/2/000646/000646.html
• Hughes, Lorna, Panos Constantopoulos, and Costis Dallas. “Digital Methods in the Humanities:Understanding and Describing their Use across the Disciplines.” In A New Companion to Digital Humanities, edited by Susan Schreibman, Ray Siemens, John Unsworth, Malden, MA, Wiley-Blackwell 2016, pp. 150-170.

• Deegan, Marilyn  and Simon Tanner, “Conversion of Primary Sources”, in A Companion to Digital Humanities, edited by Susan Schriebman, Ray Siemens, and John Unsworth, Malden, MA, Blackwell Pub., 2004, ch. 32, https://companions.digitalhumanities.org/DH/?chapter=content/9781405103213_chapter_32.html

• Hearst, Marti, “What Is Text Mining?”, 2003, https://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~hearst/text-mining.html

• Hoover, David L.  “Textual Analysis”, in Literary Studies in the Digital Age: An Evolving Anthology, 2013, https://dlsanthology.mla.hcommons.org/textual-analysis/

• Bauer, Matthias  and Angelika Zirker, “Whipping Boys Explained: Literary Annotation and Digital Humanities”, 2015, https://dlsanthology.mla.hcommons.org/whipping-boys-explained-literary-annotation-and-digital-humanities/

• Drucker, Johanna. “Humanities Approaches to Graphical Display.” digital humanities quarterly 5:1 (Winter 2011), https://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/5/1/000091/000091.html

• Boyles, Christina. “Intersectionality and Infrastructure. Toward a Critical Digital Humanities.” In People, Practice, Power. Digital Humanities Outside the Center, Anne McGrail, Angel David Nieves, and Siobhan Senier, eds. University of Minnesota Press, 2021, pp. 118-126.
• Underwood, Ted. "A Genealogy of Distant Reading." DHQ: Digital Humanities Quarterly 11.2 (2017).

• Manoff, Marlene, “Theories of the Archive from Across the Disciplines”, Libraries and the Academy, Vol. 4, No. 1, 2004, pp. 9-25.

• Owens, Trevor. "What Do You Mean by Archive? Genres of Usage for Digital Preservers." The Signal: Digital Preservation. Library of Congress. 27 February 2014. Web. 10 May 2016. [https://blogs.loc.gov/digitalpreservation/2014/02/what-do-you-mean-by-archive-genres-of-usage-for-digital-preservers/].

• Spiro, Lisa  and Jane Segal “Scholars’ Usage of Digital Archives in American Literature”, in The American Literature Scholar in the Digital Age, edited by Amy E. Earhart and Andrew Jewell, Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 2011, pp. 101-122.

• Gallon, Kim. “Making a Case for the Black Digital Humanities.” Debates in the Digital Humanities 2016, edited by Matthew K. Gold and Lauren F. Klein, University of Minnesota Press, 2016, pp. 42-49. 

• Browner, Stephanie P.  “Digital Humanities and the Study of Race and Ethnicity”, in The American Literature Scholar in the Digital Age, edited by Amy E. Earhart and Andrew Jewell, Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 2011, pp. 209-227.

• Williams, George H. “Disability, Universal Design, and the Digital Humanities.” Debates in the Digital Humanities, edited by Matthew K. Gold, NED-New edition, University of Minnesota Press, 2012, pp. 202-212. 

• Klein, Lauren, and Catherine D’Ignazio. Data Feminism. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2018, chapter 2.

• Elam, Michele “Poetry Will Not Optimize; or, What Is Literature to AI?”, American Literature 95 (2),(2023), pp. 281-;303.

• Rambsy, Kenton, “Text-Mining Short Fiction by Zora Neale Hurston and Richard Wright using Voyant Tools,” CLA Journal Vol. 59, No. 3, 2016, pp. 251-258.

• Clement, Tanya, “A Digital Regiving: Editing the Sweetest Messages in the Dickinson Electronic Archives”, in A Companion to Emily Dickinson, edited by Martha Nell Smith and Mary Loeffelholz, Malden: Blackwell Publishing, pp. 415- 436.

• Buck Dominguez, Patricia  and Joe A. Hewitt, “A Public Good: Documenting the American South and Slave Narratives”, RBM: A Journal of Rare Book, Manuscripts, and Cultural History vol: 8, issue 2, 2007, 106-124.

Course overview and schedule is available at https://dhunito24.wordpress.com/

While no previous knowledge of DH is required, students must have basic computer literacy skills and are expected to bring their own laptops.