English C181

Other Readings and Media

Online readings.

Description

This course introduces tools and methods of the Digital Humanities as they can be used in studying the art and literature of the early modern period. Our focus is on how, around 1600, things were in motion: people, but also objects and ideas. By 1600, more than a century had gone by since the invention of printing, the 'discovery' of the Americas, and the adoption of near-mass-production methods in artists' workshops. Technologies of navigation and mapping made travel more possible, and both texts and images were being widely distributed for both economic and ideological reasons. Digital tools offer us ways to track, visualize, and interpret some of these mobilities.

The class will be broken into three loosely interrelated projects across disciplines (history, art history, literature), each of which will involve both individual and group work. In each project you will gather and interpret data, will learn a digital tool or set of tools, and will develop a sense of how working digitally in this field changes the scope and potential of the questions that we, as humanists, ask of our cultural materials.

There are no prerequisites for this course. We certainly do not expect that you know any coding, but we welcome anybody who does!

This course is cross-listed with History of Art C109.

This course satisfies the pre-1800 requirement for the English major.

PLEASE NOTE:  This class has (as of Oct. 25) been approved as a new course.  You can now go ahead and enroll in it (or, if you cannot enroll directly, put yourself on the wait list).