The first part of the course ("Theory") focuses on key topics in literary studies related to the onset of the digital humanities and new media studies.  In the second part of the course ("Project Workshop"), students collaborate on developing and presenting team projects.

= Solo assignment  = Team assignment

Class 1 (April 5) — "Close Reading"

• Introduction: Idea of this course
• Modernism, formalism, and close reading (the "New Criticism") - 1930's to 1960's
• Archibald MacLeish, "Ars Poetica" (1926)
• John Crowe Ransom, "Criticism, Inc." (1937)
• Cleanth Brooks,
• "The Heresy of Paraphrase" from his Well Wrought Urn (1947) [requires course materials password]
• [Optional: for an example of Brooks's close reading practice, see his "Keats's Sylvan Historian" from the same book]
• Exemplary poems for close reading:
• Sir Thomas Wyatt, "They Flee From Me" (1557) [commentary by Ian Lancashire]
• John Keats, "Ode on a Grecian Urn" (1819)
• Challenges to Close Reading in the Mid to Late 20th Century
• Annales historiography
• Table of Contents from Fernand Braudel's The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II (1976)
• Structuralism and "langue"
• Poststructuralism and "language" ("textuality," "intertextuality," etc.)
• Hypertext theory in the 1980's
• Media theory (including "media archaeology")
• Cultural studies
• Practical Exercise
• Comparing close reading and the way Foucault reads

Class 2 (April 12) — "Distant Reading"  I

• Research from the Stanford Literary Lab and related projects at Stanford
• Stanford Literary Lab
• Franco Moretti
• Graphs, Maps, Trees (Verso, 2005), pp. 1-64, 91-92 [purchase this book from the UCSB bookstore]
• "Style, Inc. Reflections on Seven Thousand Titles (British Novels, 1740-1850)," Critical Inquiry 36 (2009): 134-58 (access through UCSB Library Proxy server)
• "Network Theory, Plot Analysis," Stanford Literary Lab Pamphlet #2 (2011)
  
• Ed Finn, "Becoming Yourself: The Afterlife of Reception," Stanford Literary Lab Pamphlet #3 (2011)
• Mapping the Republic of Letters Project (browse the site)
• The Spatial History Project (browse the site)
• N. Katherine Hayles, "How We Read: Close, Hyper, Machine," ADE Bulletin, no. 150 (2010): 62-79
• Cultural Analytics Initiative (Software Studies Program, UC San Diego) [browse the site]
• Culturomics
• Jean-Baptiste Michel, Erez Lieberman Aiden, et al., "Quantitative Analysis of Culture Using Millions of Digitized Books" (2011) (access from UCSB campus or Library Proxy server)
• Google Books Ngram Viewer
  
• Some background contexts of distant reading (optional)
• Fernand Braudel and Annales historiography
• The "New Sociology of Literature" 
• James F. English, "Everywhere and Nowhere: The Sociology of Literature After 'the Sociology of Literature'" (2010) (access through UCSB Library Proxy server)
• Data-mining and analytics
  

Create a bio for the Class Members page of the course wiki; include your intellectual interests. (For details, see Assignments)

Class 3 (April 19) — "Distant Reading" II (Digital Humanities methods)

• Text Encoding
• Concept of Markup Languages
• Alan Liu, "Transcendental Data: Toward a Cultural History and Aesthetics of the New Encoded Discourse," Critical Inquiry 31 (2004): 49-84 [read the first two sections, titled  <preface type="general"> and <preface type="technical">] (access through UCSB Library Proxy server)
• Text Analysis
• Tools
• Explore text analysis tools in Toy Chest (especially TaPOR , TaPOR 2 beta, and WordHoard)
• Larger list of text analysis tools
• Geoffrey Rockwell, "What is Text Analysis, Really?", Literary and Linguistic Computing 18.2 (2003): 209-220 (access through UCSB Library Proxy server)
• Excerpt from Julia Flanders, "Detailism, Digital Texts, and the Problem of Pedantry," TEXT Technology No. 2 (2005): 41-70 (access through UCSB Library Proxy server) -- read pp. 54-67
• Topic Modeling & Pattern Recognition
• Clay Templeton, "Topic Modeling in the Humanities: An Overview" (2011)
• Stephen Ramsay, "In Praise of Pattern" (2005) (see also the figures accompanying this article)
• Social Network Analysis
• Micro intro
• Mini intro (with tools)
• Full intro: John Scott, "Social Network Analysis," Sociology 22 (2988): 109-27 (access through UCSB Library Proxy server)
• Optional: Alan Liu, "From Reading to Social Computing" (draft essay; see also figures for essay) [locked resource; course login required]
• Text Analysis for Truth Finding or "Deformance"?
• Lisa Samuels and Jerome J. McGann, "Deformance and Interpretation," New Literary History 30, No. 1 (Winter, 1999): 25-56 (access through UCSB Library Proxy server)
• Jerome J. McGann, "Rethinking Textuality" (also available in print as chap. 5 of his Radiant Textuality: Literature After the World Wide Web [Palgrave, 2001]
• Stephen Ramsay, "Toward an Algorithmic Criticism," Literary and Linguistic Computing 18.2 (2003): 167-174 (access through UCSB Library Proxy server)

Teams to be formed in class on this date. [Students may choose instead to work individually on projects supporting their dissertations.]

Class 4 (April 26) — Beyond Close vs. Distant Reading 

• Deformance Theory
• Lisa Samuels and Jerome J. McGann, "Deformance and Interpretation," New Literary History 30, No. 1 (Winter, 1999): 25-56 (access through UCSB Library Proxy server)
• Jerome J. McGann, "Rethinking Textuality" (also available in print as chap. 5 of his Radiant Textuality: Literature After the World Wide Web [Palgrave, 2001]
• Stephen Ramsay, "Toward an Algorithmic Criticism," Literary and Linguistic Computing 18.2 (2003): 167-174 (access through UCSB Library Proxy server)
• Mark Sample, "Notes Towards a Deformed Humanities" (2012)
  
• The Challenge of Visualization
• Andrea Lau and Andrew Vande Moere, "Towards a Model of Information Aesthetics in Information Visualization," Proceedings of the 11th International Conference Information Visualization, 4-6 July 2007: 87-92
• Explore the following:
•  Data visualization tools and visualization types / examples in Toy Chest
• Other Ways to Perform Literature Than to "Analyze," "Interpret," and "Critique": Lessons from student projects in previous undergraduate and graduate versions of this Literature+ course:
• Undergrad: 2008 | 2009
• Grad: 2008 | 2010

At least one team-meeting outside class by this date to begin brainstorming. (For details, see Assignments)

Class 5 (May 3) — Project Idea Presentations

 Choose a literary work (or part of a work) that the team will work on.  Present to the class your team's rationale for choosing the work and at least two initial project ideas. (For details, see Assignments)

Class 6 (May 10) — Workshop

(Alan out of town this day)

Create an annotated bibliography of 5 research resources related to your team's project (including not only items from the relevant secondary, theoretical, or technical literature but also at least one online or downloadable tool that might be added to the Toy Chest). (For details, see Assignments)

Class 7 (May 17) — Workshop

 Write 4-page research report on one of the items in your annotated bibliography. (For details, see Assignments)

Class 8 (May 24) — Workshop 

Class 9 (May 31) — Workshop 

Class 10 (June 7) — Final Presentations 

Formal presentations of team projects. (For details, see Assignments)

(June 11)

Final essay or other form of combined analytical/reflective/creative thinking about your team project or its primary literary work due. (For details, see Assignments)