Lighting the Page: Digital Methods for Literary Studies (Spring 2018)

Tuesday, January 23

• First chapter of James Gleick, The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood
• Elizabeth Bishop, "One Art"

Prepare for this session by reading the Gleick chapter and preparing to apply its ideas to "One Art" in conversation with the class.

This day will also include an introduction to the course, an overview of the semester, and an exercise exploring affordances.

This assignment consists of two parts.

First, by 9:00 Tuesday evening, write a paragraph on our shared OneDrive document introducing yourself to the class. This assignment will both serve its obvious social purpose and ensure that everyone is accessing our OneDrive site smoothly.

Second, 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 Tuesday's discussion of The Information in relation to Bishop's poem. At the end of that discussion, the class will have divided into groups that want 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. I will provide a link to the page we will work on together.

The assigned readings for the day have 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, look at and play with the following examples of digital texts and ways to make them:

• Telescopic Text, "I Made Tea" and Alan Trotter's professional web page
• Language Is a Virus modules for Visual Poetry and Cutup Machine (with Tristan Tzara's "How to Make a Dadaist Poem)
• 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.

For this assignment, you will first need to sign up for and install hypothes.is, a Chrome extension or bookmarklet that will allow us to collectively annotate web pages. Here is a quick start guide for students.

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.

• 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

For any of the three assigned readings, write and bring to class a Five Elements analysis of your chosen piece, commenting on each of the five elements for roughly a couple of sentences: Data, Process, Surface, Interaction, and Context.

After discussing your Five Elements analyses, we will spend the rest of class getting accustomed to writing electronic literature in Twine.

• Charles Baxter on the Request Moment

Write a substantial scene* in Twine that involves (at any point) a "request moment" of the kind that Baxter describes. 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.

*If your use of the digital technology makes "scene" the wrong word for what you're doing, that's fine: write something of similar length and substance to a scene of a story, whatever its shape.

We will share and discuss your scenes in class.

By this time, we will have talked about the two dimensions of your final e-lit project. Bring a detailed description of each part of your proposed project to class. During class time, we will do an exercise that involves sharing and working on your ideas.

Create a working version of your final Twine project. This version does not need to be complete, but it needs to be substantial enough to show your classmates how your concept will work in practice. Come to class ready to share and workshop your project.

Come to class prepared to do a two-minute lightning presentation of your final Twine project. We will spend the second half of class trying out everyone's projects. Meanwhile, keep working on the Telescopic/analytical side of your elit portfolio.

ELECTRONIC LITERATURE PORTFOLIO DUE
VIA EMAIL TODAY AT 3:00 P.M.

• Jo Guldi, What is the Spatial Turn?
• Seth Long, Digital Maps and Social Data
• Justin O'Beirne, Google Maps's Moat

First, do the readings and take notes on them as you usually would. Then, by midnight the night before class, use hypothes.is to make two annotations (total) on two different readings. In each annotation, comment on how new questions and answers might arise for readers of literature from the application of geographical data and mapping to literary studies.

In class, we will work on an exercise (derived from Rachel Buurma) that demonstrates the extraction and mapping of geographical information from a text.

• Samuel Rebelsky, "A computer scientist's perspective on introductory data science"
• Matthew J. Denny and Arthur Spirling, "Text Preprocessing For Unsupervised Learning: Why It Matters, When It Misleads, And What To Do About It"
• Steph De Silva, "Starting a Data Analysis"

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 midnight the night before class, hypothes.is to annotate them with two issues or questions that they have prompted you to consider about using data science for literary analysis.

In class, we will discuss the uses of different kinds of data, especially in tabular and relational forms. We will do an exercise introducing the idea of metadata and talk about connections between literary study and data science.

• Edward P. Jones, "Lost in the City" (the story), from Lost in the City (the book)
• Civil War Washington
• "Map the History of Redlining, It Works"
• Raynard S. Kington, "The Long Tail of Jim Crow"

And two non-required readings added for additional context:

• David Alpert, Where DC Used to Bar Black People from Living
• Mapping Segregation in Washington, D.C.

One element of our shared project on Jones's writing will involve mapping the movements of Lost in the City and providing contextual information that helps the reader who does not know the geography of Washington, D. C. to understand the significance of those movements. Remembering our experience finding "the information" in Bishop's "One Art" at the beginning of the semester, bring to class notes on the kinds of information you see in "Lost in the City" that could benefit from research and explanation in that kind of project. That information could be geographical but also historical, cultural, political, or whatever else strikes you as important. As a starting point, we want to cast a wide net.

In class, we will discuss "Lost in the City" in historical context. We will also see what happens to our automated mapping techniques when we apply them to Jones's story, and we will set up our own data-gathering process for the story collection.

• The first part of Lost in the City: "The Girl Who Raised Pigeons" through "An Orange Line Train to Ballston"

Everyone will read all the assigned stories to prepare for discussion. The class will divide responsibilities for gathering geographic data and nominating other possible points of exploration in the stories.

In class, we will discuss the stories themselves as well as how to structure and clean the data we are gathering.

• The rest of Lost in the City: "The Sunday Following Mother's Day" through "Marie"

This assignment is the same as last Thursday's: Everyone will read all the assigned stories to prepare for discussion. The class will divide responsibilities for gathering geographic data and nominating other possible points of exploration in the stories.

We will work with your data and ideas during the first half of class. Then we will decide on the contours of our digital project together, assigning tasks as necessary to create it.

• Dos and Don'ts on Designing for Accessibility
• WAVE web accessibility tool

The assignment for today will involve research and writing for our digital project.

In class, we will do a workshop on mapping our geographic data from Lost in the City.

Continued project work as determined by our progress so far.

Completion of Lost in the City project work, as determined collectively in class.

LOST IN THE CITY REPORT DUE
VIA EMAIL TODAY AT 3:00 P.M.

In the body of an email (not an attachment), send me a reflection on the Lost in the City project of about 500 words. This reflection should include a) a description of the specific contributions you made to the project, b) some specific things you learned in the process, c) any obstacles or problems you encountered, and d) any contributions from classmates that were especially helpful to you or that you especially admired.

• 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 third and final unit on computational text analysis. Do the readings carefully, then, by midnight 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.

At the end of class, we will talk to Dr. Jeremy Dean, the director of education for hypothes.is. Dr. Dean will be able to stay after class for a bit for further conversation.

• Andrew Goldstone and Ted Underwood, "What can topic models of PMLA teach us about the history of literary scholarship?"
• Benjamin M. Schmidt, "Words Alone: Dismantling Topic Models in the Humanities"

For each of the two articles, by midnight the night before class, use hypothes.is to identify a specific sentence that you find to be the thesis of the piece. Come to class ready to discuss elements of the article that the thesis you have identified does and does not capture.

In class, we will do exercises involving counting words by hand and with machines. Then we will experiment with basic topic modeling.

Spring 2018 adjusted schedule: today's assignment remains the same. Class will consist of working through a Twitter Bot-building exercise that Christina and I have constructed. Christina will be available during the class session, and you will help each other out as you move through the exercise. The workshop instructions are here, and you are welcome to get a head start on them before you come to class. Setting up a Twitter account in advance would be especially helpful.

• Mark Sample, "A Protest Bot Is a Bot So Specific You Can't Mistake It for Bullshit"
• Article about Pentametron and the bot itself
• Every Rat in NYC
• Other Twitter bots: tiny star fields and This Is Just To Say (based on "This Is Just To Say," by William Carlos Williams)

Aside from the readings, your homework is, first, to follow the provided instructions for setting up a Python-based concordance tool. Then you will spend at least two hours improving your Python programming skills. If you are a beginner, I recommend starting with this Codecademy course. If you have more experience, I can offer other possibilities.

To assist you with the technical side of these tasks, Christina and I will hold workshop hours where you can work on the assignments and get help as neeeded.

In class, we will have a Twitter bot-building workshop.

• Ben Blatt, Nabokov's Favorite Word Is Mauve, introduction and chapters 1 and 2
• Anne Enright, "Diary"
• Christopher Ingraham, "The 'i before e, except after c' Rule Is a Giant Lie"

Your assignment involves two pieces of writing:

1. 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 midnight 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.
2. Bring to class a numbered set of instructions for testing the "i before e rule" given a lexicon (word list) of English words. Imagine that you are writing the instructions not for a computer--this is not a programming exercise--but for a human with extraordinary willingness to spend a great deal of time following your instructions. Make your instructions as precise and useful as possible, with the goal of producing a method superior to the one described in the article.

In class, we will discuss your assignments in the first hour, then do some hands-on Python work exploring ways to replicate and build on Blatt's methods.

• Ben Blatt, Nabokov's Favorite Word Is Mauve, chapters 3 and 9
• Christopher Curley, "Chopping the Words Out of Famous Books Creates Pretty Punctuation Art"
• Examples of sous rature, or "writing under erasure," from Alan Liu's tweet
• 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)

Bring to class, in writing, one idea of some way to adapt or extend the kind of work you've read about for today.

• Ben Blatt, Nabokov's Favorite Word Is Mauve, chapters 4 and 5
• Pierre Bourdieu, "The Forms of Capital"
• Roopika Risam, "Navigating the Global Digital Humanities: Insights from Black Feminism"

Bring to class a substantial paragraph that connects any point from today's Blatt chapters to at least two of the other readings, using at least one quoted passage from each of the readings.

For today's class, review your records of the class so far: this syllabus, your writings and notes, your classmates' writings, your recollections. Spend about two hours doing this review, taking notes along the way about areas in which additional work (by you or your classmates) might add insight or open up new questions.

After completing that review, consolidate your ideas into your top two for each of three categories:

1. Work you might want to do yourself
2. Work that a classmate might want to do individually
3. Work that would be appropriate for two or more classmates to do collaboratively

Project work as collectively determined by the class.

By midnight the night before class, and preferably earlier to enable conversation, make two separate comments on projects other than your own. Each comment should consist of a couple of sentences or so and some substance. Possible starting points: what excites you about the project, what obstacles you foresee, what alternatives or new elements the project person/team might consider.

Type the comments into our shared project proposal document, using font colors to distinguish your text from the surrounding text. If you see comments on your own proposal and want to respond to them, go for it.

Project work as collectively determined by the class.

Project work as collectively determined by the class.

Project work as collectively determined by the class, as well as wrapping up the class with last-day conversation and reflection.

FINAL PROJECT DUE BY NOON

Note: this is the due date and time determined by the registrar's final exam schedule. Because I am not allowed to accept work after Friday at 5:00, you will not be able to use an extension for this assignment.