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Dear List Members,<br><br>
Since we had a thread about pedagogical experiments a little while ago, I
thought I would send along the course description for Alan Liu's graduate
course, which can also be seen at
<a href="http://www.english.ucsb.edu/courses-detail.asp?CourseID=2010" eudora="autourl">
http://www.english.ucsb.edu/courses-detail.asp?CourseID=2010</a><br><br>
Liz<br><br>
<h2><b>ENGL 236: Studies in Literary Criticism and Theory :
Literature Plus: Cross-Disciplinary Models of Literary
Interpretation</b></h2><b>Winter 2008<br>
Instructor:</b>
<a href="http://www.english.ucsb.edu/people-detail.asp?PersonID=25"> Alan
Liu</a> <br>
<b>Meets on:</b> R 11:00 AM - 1:30 PM SH 2509 <br>
<b>Prerequisites:</b> Graduate standing <br><br>
Because of the recent, shared emphasis in many fields on digital methods,
scholars in the humanities, arts, social sciences, and sciences
increasingly need to <b>collaborate across disciplines</b>. This course
reflects theoretically and practically on the new,
<b>digitally-facilitated interdisciplinarity</b> by asking students to
choose a literary work and treat it according to one or more of the
research paradigms prevalent in other fields of study. <br><br>
Students, for example, could choose a story or poem to
"<b>model</b>," "<b>simulate</b>,"
"<b>map</b>," "<b>visualize</b>,"
"<b>encode</b>," "<b>text-analyze</b>,"
"<b>sample</b>," <b>analyze statistically</b>,
"<b>storyboard</b>," "<b>blog</b>," or redesign as a
"<b>game</b>," "<b>database</b>,"
"<b>hypertext</b>," or "<b>virtual
world</b>."<br><br>
What are the strengths and weaknesses of one kind of research paradigm by
comparison with others, including the new paradigms in the literary field
that some scholars have recently called "<b>distance
reading</b>" (as opposed to "close reading") and
"<b>modeling</b>"? For instance, what is the relation between
"<b>interpreting</b>" and <b>data-mining</b> or
<b>visualizing</b>? <br><br>
The course begins with discussion of selected readings and demos to set
the stage. <b>Readings</b> include: Franco Moretti's Graphs, Maps, Trees,
Willard McCarty's Humanities Computing, and Katie Salen and Eric
Zimmerman's Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals, and Jerome McGann
and Lisa Samuel's essay on "Deformance and Interpretation."
<b>Demos</b> include: the NetLogo agent-modeling environment, the Scratch
visual programming environment, digital mapping tools, text-analysis
programs, the Ivanhoe literary interpretation game, visualization/
pattern-discovery tools, Second Life, and other resources usable by
non-programmers to create interesting projects. <br><br>
After the initial unit of the course, students break into teams, choose a
literary work, and collaborate in <b>workshop/lab mode</b> to produce a
"proof-of-concept" final project. <b>(Alternatively, students
may work individually on projects designed to support or complement their
intended dissertation topics.)</b> Collaboration will occur both
face-to-face and virtually in a class wiki (possibly supplemented by
virtual meetings in the UCSB English Department's new Second Life
instructional space). Final projects can be digital, video, acoustic,
material, social, or some combination, but some digital representation
must be created that can be exhibited on the class wiki or in the English
Department's gallery space in Second Life. Individual students also
prepare research reports as well as write a final essay reflecting on the
project. (Auditors participate in projects and minor assignments.)
<br><br>
<x-sigsep><p></x-sigsep>
Elizabeth Losh<br>
Writing Director<br>
Humanities Core Course<br>
HIB 188<br>
University of California, Irvine<br>
Irvine, CA 92697<br>
949-824-8130<br>
lizlosh@uci.edu<br>
<a href="http://eee.uci.edu/faculty/losh" eudora="autourl">
http://eee.uci.edu/faculty/losh</a></body>
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