Syllabus for English 240
Lighting the Page: Digital Methods in Literary Studies

• Chapter One of James Gleick, The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood

First day: Introductions and course outline

First (brief) assignment, due by the end of today. (Normally, assignments here are due before class, but because this is the first day, this one is due after class.)

First, go to the Self-introductions document in our class OneDrive folder and introduce yourself.

Then, find your Classwork Document and type "Hello, World!" in the space for the first assignment, so that we can ensure that all the Classwork Documents are up and running.

• Elizabeth Bishop, "One Art" (PWeb Documents)

Assignment for the classwork document: by 11:00 p.m. on the day before class, write a paragraph about how you might think about "One Art" in terms of information. In your paragraph, cite at least one specific passage from Gleick and at least two moments from "One Art."

As a class, we will conduct an initial "environmental scan" of work in the digital humanities, with an emphasis on literary studies. The basis for our scan will be Thursday's discussion of The Information in relation to Bishop's poem. At the end of that discussion, each of you will have a topic for which to investigate the work being done relating do different kinds of literary information. The groups and then the class will work together to create a wiki-style compilation of the results of our scan, in the document created for that purpose in our OneDrive folder.

As a way of understanding where this kind of work can take you, read Roopika Risam's roundtable essay on Expanding the Digital Black Atlantic, which offers a focused examination of one area of the digital humanities. (If Risam's piece happens to include information useful to your own work on this assignment, you are welcome to draw on it.)

The assignment: by 11:00 the night before class, post at least 200 words about your topic in the environmental scan shared document, with links or citations to at least two things that you discuss.

In class, we will talk about the scan, then take a first look at electronic literature and get set up with the annotation tool hypothes.is. You can get started on the hypothes.is setup in advance if you like. Here is a quick start guide for students.

The assignment for today has two components: first, read this chapter, which will provide the framework for many of our conversations about electronic literature:

• Noah Wardrip-Fruin, "Five Elements of Digital Literature" (PWeb Documents section)

Second, after you have read the Wardrip-Fruin chapter completely, go back and use hypothes.is to make two annotations of different kinds on it: one that points to something you do not understand or that prompts a question, and one that explains a connection or new idea that the chapter sparked in your thinking. Complete this assignment by 11:00 the night before class so that I can use your annotations to structure our discussion.

In class, we will return to affordances and "One Art" in light of today's readings.

• Illya Szilak and Cyril Tsiboulski, Queerskins: A Novel
• "AH," by Young-hae Chang Heavy Industries (as web video or as java-based website)
• Ana María Uribe, Tipoemas y Anipoemas
• Furtherfield, The 27th. El 27.
• CMG, "creak, creak"

Side note: Many of our examples come from the Electronic Literature Organization's collections of e-lit, which you are welcome (but not required) to explore further.

By 11:00 the night before class, write a "Five Elements" analysis of one of the stories assigned for today and post it to your classwork document. Your analysis should list Wardrip-Fruin's five elements, each followed by at least 50 words explaining how you would think of your chosen story in relation to that element.

In class, we will talk about the electronic literature pieces and then get everyone set up with Twine, the software platform used to create "creak, creak." You do not need to use your own computer to install Twine--you can do it on a classroom machine and then share files with yourself--but you can bring your own machine to class if you'd like to. We will be using Allison Parrish's introductory tutorial, installing the software and working at least through "Saving and Sharing Your Game." (Your story/game can be tiny, as long as it works.) You can get started before class if you want to, but it is not required. Be sure that you are working with Twine version 2.x and the Harlowe story format. In class, you'll have time to ask questions, troubleshoot, and add to your new Twine skillz.

• Charles Baxter on the Request Moment

This is the first assignment that will lead to the Electronic Literature Project. In Twine, create three separate, short prototypes of a "request moment." Each of them can be short--just enough to make the situation clear--but make sure that your each of them features not just an ordinary question but a true Baxterian request: one forces a choice by the requestee because saying yes will involve giving up some autonomy to perform the requested action. As Baxter says, such a request can reveal power relationships and social dynamics in your scene (and then your story).

With our discussions of electronic literature in mind, do your best to use the affordances of Twine to create a reading experience that combines the traditional (pre-digital) request moment with the new ways of writing that the digital format allows. If you are stuck thinking of a starting point, you may wish to use another piece of literature--whether digital or not--as an inspiration or starting point. Just be sure to acknowledge your source and transform the inspiration into something new.

In the OneDrive folder for the prototypes, create a subfolder with your name and upload your three prototype HTML files. We will share and discuss your prototype moments in class.

Your assignment for today has two parts, both due by 11:00 the night before class:

First, in your classwork document, write at least 100 words about what you learned from workshopping your prototype moments in class.

Second, create a substantial scene expanding one of your prototype request moments. Place the scene in the appropriate folder in our OneDrive Twine area.

Twine tech day! Prepare for today's class by looking at the rest of Allison Parrish's introduction, the Twine wiki, or other people's Twine stories to find an effect you would like to create in your own story, such as changing its appearance or adding a javascript action. Spend about two hours researching and working on this effect. We will use class time to share and troubleshoot your techniques.

So that we can share ideas and techniques, by 10:00 the night before class, everyone will enter a summary of what they are working on in the shared Tech Day document in our OneDrive Twine folder.

Create a working version of your final Twine project. This version does not need to be complete, but it needs to be complete enough to show your classmates how your concept will work in practice. It should include at least three substantial scenes, meaning interactions that are separated from one another by the locations, times, or characters involved. Put your project in the appropriate folder in our Twine OneDrive area by 11:00 the night before class. Come to class ready to share and workshop your project.

Come to class prepared to do a one-minute lightning presentation of your final Twine project. We will spend the second half of class trying out everyone's projects.

ELECTRONIC LITERATURE PROJECTS DUE by 5:00 TODAY. Send me a set of links that allow me to read all three components of your project.

In the spirit of this Working Differently Day, we will not have our regular class session. Instead, we will enjoy a change of pace and share pieces of culture we enjoy in a Google form. You will each enter at least three pieces of culture by the end of Tuesday, and we will use them later in the course.

• Samuel Rebelsky, "A computer scientist's perspective on introductory data science"
• Ali Hamza, "Effectively Pre-processing the Text Data Part 1: Text Cleaning"
• Duke University Libraries, "Introduction to Text Analysis: Cleaning/Parsing"

None of these readings anticipate using the methods of data science for literary study, but you will read them with that context in mind. By 11:00 the night before class, use hypothes.is to annotate them with two issues or questions that they have prompted you to consider about using data science for literary analysis. You should post a total of two annotations; just avoid posting both annotations on the same piece.

In class, we will discuss the uses of different kinds of data, especially in tabular and relational forms. We will use our "pieces of culture" to talk about data and metadata in literary studies.

• Edward P. Jones, "Lost in the City" (PWeb Documents)
• Episode of the Spectacular Vernacular podcast with Jessi Greiser about Race, Language, and Belonging in Washington D.C.

In your classwork document, by 11:00 the night before class, note a specific place where the language of the story strikes you as adding something unexpected--something you would not gather from a summary of the plot. Write at least 100 words explaining what struck you about your chosen moment.

Building on our work from Tuesday, enter your spatial information from the story into our Google form by 11:00 the night before class. We will use the results in class.

• Catherine D'Ignazio and Lauren Klein, "The Power Chapter," from Data Feminism
• Catherine D'Ignazio and Lauren Klein, "What Gets Counted Counts," from Data Feminism
• Kevin Kelly, "One Dead Media"
• You may enjoy exploring this page and the linked materials about punch-card technologies

By 11:00 the night before class, use hypothes.is to annotate one place in data feminism where you want to offer a question or related observation for possible discussion in class.

• Heather Froelich, "Moby Dick Is about Whales, Or Why Should We Count Words?"
• Reading from Writing Analytically about word-counting (PWeb Documents)

By hand (without computer assistance), do the Writing Analytically word-counting exercise on Natalie Houston's short essay on text analysis. Bring your results to class.

• Creating text files from your documents (Class OneDrive Folder)

By 11:00 the night before class, create a plain text file (with the .txt extension, as explained in the reading for today) that contains at least 3,000 words of your own academic writing. Use the handout for today to guide your creation of the file, then upload it to the Class Corpus folder in our OneDrive area.

• Episode of the Tech + Art Podcast with Kate Compton
• Article about Pentametron and the bot itself
• Every Rat in NYC
• Other Twitter bots: tiny star fields, This Is Just To Say (based on "This Is Just To Say," by William Carlos Williams), Multi-Scale Truchet Patterns, Taco Hell

Before class, begin working through a Twitter Bot-building exercise that Christina Brewer (my student collaborator on the first version of this course) and I have constructed. The workshop instructions are here. Unless you run into technical trouble, complete the steps at least to the point where you have successfully generated a sample Tweet. You will continue to work on your bot (or bots) in class.

Before class, paste the latest version of your bot code in your classwork document.

• Lou Burnard, Introduction to What Is the Text Encoding Initiative?
• Natalie M. Houston, "Text Analysis", from the MLA Commons
• Matt Kiser, "Introduction to Natural Language Processing (NLP)"

Today's discussion will set up our unit on computational text analysis. Do the readings carefully, then, by 11:00 the night before class, use hypothes.is to annotate one of the readings with a question that the readings prompted you to consider.

In class, we will talk about the advantages and disadvantages of the TEI and NLP. We will do an exercise using the techniques of the TEI.

• Code-reading exercise (OneDrive Folder)
• 99 Percent Invisible, The Backward Index (short article and brief video; optionally, you can also listen to the beginning of the "mini-stories" podcast episode, whose first segment covers the backward index as well)

Work through the code-reading exercise and follow the directions for sharing your responses.

• Ted Underwood, "Topic Modeling Made Just Simple Enough"
• James Lee et al., ""Linked Reading: Digital Historicism and Early Modern Discourses of Race around Shakespeare's Othello" (also available as a PDF in our PWeb Documents folder)

By 11:00 the night before class, make an entry in your classwork document about the Lee article. Identify a specific sentence that you find to be the thesis of the piece, and write a brief note about why you chose your sentence.

In class, we will compare the affordances of topic modeling and the TEI and do a hands-on exercise in topic modeling.

• Ben Blatt, Nabokov's Favorite Word Is Mauve, introduction and chapters 1 and 2
• Anne Enright, "Diary"

The Blatt chapters and the Enright piece both address points of literary style and even methods of counting, but they do so from different perspectives: Blatt's method involves computing, for instance, whereas Enright concerns herself with structures of social power. By 11:00 the night before class, use hypothes.is to annotate the Enright piece with one way in which you might merge these kinds of thinking, either by adding an Enright-like concern with social issues to Blatt's methods or by applying something like Blatt's methods to a point that Enright raises.

• Ben Blatt, Nabokov's Favorite Word Is Mauve, chapters 3 and 9

By 11:00 the night before class, post in your classwork document at least 150 words about one idea of some way to adapt or extend the kind of work you've read about for today.

We will discuss the readings and then spend some class time working with Voyant Tools, guided by this set of instructions. You do not need to do anything with Voyant in advance, but you can check it out if you're curious.

• Ben Blatt, Nabokov's Favorite Word Is Mauve, chapters 4 and 5

By 11:00 the night before class, post in your classwork document at least 150 words about one idea of some way to adapt or extend the kind of work you've read about for today.

Stylometry day! Prepare at least two text files or your own writing, of at least 1000 words each, that you would like to contribute to our stock of texts for trying out stylometry. Put some time into the file preparation: make sure they work with our Python interface, for instance, and think about what bits need to be cleaned to make them ready for stylistic analysis. We will spend class time working with different kinds of stylometry scripts. By 11:00 the night before class, upload your files to the stylometry day folder in our OneDrive area.

To name your files, use 240, then the name you use for class (your first name, according to the U.S. convention) and the numbers 2 and 3. So if I used my first name, mine would be

• 240Erik2.txt
• 240Erik3.txt

Project prototype day! By 11:00 the night before class, write in your classwork document at least 100 words about each of three ways you might approach your final project. You can try out more than one entirely different ideas for the project, or you might try out multiple approaches to the same project. However you approach the prototyping, make sure you use this opportunity to be creative and to give your classmates a range of ideas they can respond to. We will workshop your prototypes in class.

Project work day! By 11:00 the night before class, write three paragraphs of at least 100 words each, following this structure:

Paragraph 1: How did your thinking change as a result of Thursday's prototype workshop? What specific suggestions or ideas would you like to thank your classmates for? Paragraph 2: What is your current sense of what you will do for your final project? Paragraph 3: How will you spend our Tuesday class time making progress on the project?

Last day of class! We will gather to reflect on the semester and lament the lack of more class days.

FINAL PROJECT DUE BY NOON