Data and Culture
ENGL 249
Fall 2024
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01
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What does the mass digitization of the print cultural record mean for the making and study of literature, art, and culture? This course introduces students to the critical and cultural study of data by introducing key debates around the meaning of data in the humanities. Like "slow food"--a movement where diners, farmers, and chefs rethink what and how we produce and consume--we will explore data as local, embedded, and requiring careful critical reflection. How can computational tools help us to understand art and literature? What do digital archives reveal (or obscure) about the people who make them? What kinds of writing have, historically, been seen as "uncreative" or automatable and what might this reveal about ideas of labor, gender, race, class, and computation? We will explore the foundations of this field while also discussing concerns that emerge when accessing and maintaining digital cultural artifacts in time and across global and local contexts. Weekly readings will introduce concepts for understanding the cultures (and cultural artifacts) that produce and are produced by data and key techniques that humanities researchers use to organize, mediate, and analyze digital sources. This course will draw on a range of critical traditions, including history of the book, media studies, science & technology studies, computational literary studies, and critical data studies. Students will explore these methods through reflection papers, short code assignments, exercises in data curation and critique, and final projects. Course meetings will alternate between discussions and workshops with data from local libraries and special collections, including Olin Library Special Collections & Archives. |
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| Credit: 1 |
Gen Ed Area Dept:
HA ENGL |
| Course Format: Discussion | Grading Mode: Graded |
| Level: UGRD |
Prerequisites: None |
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Fulfills a Requirement for: None |
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Past Enrollment Probability: 50% - 74% |
| SECTION 01 |
Major Readings: Wesleyan RJ Julia Bookstore
Readings include digital interfaces, cultural datasets, charts, GoodReads reviews, 1990s-era digital history projects, as well as literary works by Gertrude Stein, Emily Dickinson, Toni Morrison, Arthur Conan Doyle, Alan Turing; and theory by Donna Haraway, Richard So, Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, Ruha Benjamin, Lauren Klein, Lisa Gitelman, Roopika Risam, and Simone Browne.
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Examinations and Assignments:
Three short written responses, critical data/code exercises, final project |
Additional Requirements and/or Comments:
Contributes to the fulfillment of the following English major requirements:
British Literature, Theory
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| Instructor(s): Eckert,Sierra Times: .M.W... 01:20PM-02:40PM; Location: DWNY200; |
| Total Enrollment Limit: 19 | | SR major: 3 | JR major: 4 | | |
| Seats Available: 2 | GRAD: X | SR non-major: 0 | JR non-major: 2 | SO: 6 | FR: 4 |
| Drop/Add Enrollment Requests | | | | | |
| Total Submitted Requests: 8 | 1st Ranked: 0 | 2nd Ranked: 1 | 3rd Ranked: 1 | 4th Ranked: 0 | Unranked: 6 |
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