major due dates + course calendar
You will find below a tentative course calendar listing what we might read, write, and learn about this term. Assignment information will be available on our course site. Due dates will be posted here and on Canvas. You should expect to do at least some reading and writing to prepare for each class. I reserve the right to modify assignments and due dates to meet the needs of our class. I will NOT change due dates of formal writing projects without prior notice in person, through e-mail, and on our Canvas site.
week one, 0109
- guiding questions: who are we? what does home mean to us? what does the idea of home have to do with digital culture?
- read: Stegner, “A Sense of Place” (available in class)
- write: digital inventory (in-class survey)
week one, 0111
- guiding questions: what different ways can we explore the idea of home, losing home, and housing insecurity?
- read: selections from Evicted (on Canvas), “Beware the Open Plan Kitchen,” syllabus policies
- bring: digital devices + lab notebooks for lab 1: creating and curating digital material
week two, 0116
- guiding questions: what does it mean to inhabit a place? who is invited and excluded from “homey” spaces?
- read: find and read several posts of a blog related to the idea of “home” (I’ll provide a list of some); housing authority websites; Staples, “Night Walker” (on Canvas);
- due: see “Create a Website” project
week two, 0118
- guiding questions: what ideas of home are emerging in Glass Castle? how do these ideas conform/challenge your ideas of what it means to be at home?
- read: Glass Castle (roughly the first half)
- due: first blog post
- bring: digital devices + lab notebooks for lab 2: the materiality of text
week three, 0123
- guiding questions: class generated
- read: Glass Castle
- due: discussion questions
week three, 0125
- guiding questions: what are maps? what can maps tell us about the home, literature, digital culture? can maps lie?
- read: readings about mapping (TBA); optional: rent and watch the movie version of Glass Castle
- due: second blog post
- bring: digital devices + lab notebooks for lab 3: digital mapping
week four, 0130
- guiding questions: what is reading in the digital age? what is close reading? what methods can we use for literary analysis?
- read: “The Reading Brain in the Digital Age”
- due: reading analysis
week four, 0201
- guiding questions: why are we fascinated by haunted houses? what does reading Poe in the original offer that other forms of the story don’t?
- re-read: “The Fall of the House Of Usher”
- bring: digital devices + lab notebooks for lab 3: distant reading
- blog: create and start work on page about home; comment on classmate’s blogs (5 done by week 5)
week five, 0206
- guiding questions: class generated critical questions about Poe, home, digital culture
- read: Edgar Allan Poe National Historic Site, explore the Frankenstein project, read up on “unessays”
- due: critical discussion questions about Poe, digital project analysis
week five, 0208
- pause + review: where should our exploration go in the second half of the term? what have we learned about home? about digital culture? about using digital tools for literary and cultural analysis? [take midterm survey]
- read: read about the Citizen Archivist, browse The Edgar Allan Poe Digital Collection
- bring: digital devices for lab 4: materiality of text, digital archives
- due: lab notebook for midterm check — in-class, Friday in my office (102 plc) between 2-3:30, online by Sunday night
week six, 0213
- guiding questions: what is different about reading graphic novels? what does “home” mean in Fun Home?
- due: ideas for your unessay
- read: Fun Home, chapter 1; listen to Broadway musical
- due: reading log, continued
week six, 0215
- guiding questions: class generated about Fun Home, graphic novels, multimodality
- read: Fun Home, chapter 2; “Quantitative Analysis of Culture Using Millions of Digitized Books,”
- due: discussion questions, supporting articles as needed
- bring: digital devices for lab 5: data, spreadsheets, visualizations make sure your reading log is up-to-date
- due: blog post 3 due at the end of the week (don’t forget about Poe!)
week seven, 0220
- guiding questions: data revisited: what is data? what relationship does the humanities have to data? how can make informed judgments about/with data? how can we use data to inform unessay projects?
- read: Fun Home, chapter 3; read/listen to interview with Alison Bechdel
- due: unessay proposal
week seven, 0222
- guiding questions: your insights from chapter 1, chapter 2 + 3; can reading be a social activity?
- read: Fun Home, chapter 4
- due: sign up for Hypothes.is account, read the Quick Start guide
- bring: digital devices for lab 6: social annotation
- blogs: read each other’s blogs; read + summarize comments on your blog; comment on others
week eight, 0227
- guiding questions: what can we do with what we know now?
- read: Fun Home, chapter 5, “The digital humanities is not about building, it’s about sharing,”
- due: knowledge inventory (TBA)
week eight, 0301
- guiding questions: what can we do with what we know now?
- read: Fun Home, chapters 6-7
- due: unessay “drafts” (whatever that means for your project–you must bring something to discuss in class!)
- bring: digital devices for lab 7: peer review of unessays
- don’t forget blog post 4!!!
week nine, 0306 slides
- guiding questions:how does your blog fit into our community of inquiry? what critical questions from class have been most relevant to you? what are your key insights from the term?
- read: review your blog!; read example Pressbook
- due: sign up for Pressbook account
- due on Friday: blog post 4
- write: comments — 10 by class on Tuesday; 2 points added to everyone’s blog assignment if every blog post 4 has a comment.
- bring: digital device for lab 8.1: digital publishing workshop
week nine, 0308
- guiding questions: what opportunities are there for digital publishing?
- work on: final exam: due by Sunday night (0311)
- work on: unessay project
- bring: digital devices for lab 8.2: digital publishing workshop
week ten, 0313 + 0315
Guest lecturer Heidi Kaufman!!! Readings/lab details TBA!
- review freewrites, labs, ideas about home; gather artifacts representing your idea of home
FINAL PROJECTS DUE
- unessay, final lab notebooks due digitally, Wednesday, March 21 — 2 bonus points for submitting all work by midnight March 17
- pressbook chapter (the new blog post 5) due Friday, March 16, 5 p.m.