Alan Liu

[Go to Course Site] This course works on two parallel tracks:
          On one track, students are introduced to methods and tools of the digital humanities–text encoding, data-mining and text analysis (including the cutting-edge approach known as “topic modeling”), social network analysis, mapping, and visualization. These provide extra leverage when reading individual texts or small collections of texts, and really come into their own when reading materials that literary interpretation previously had no way to handle–e.g., “big data” collections of texts or hybrid collections of texts (e.g., novels and newspapers of the nineteenth century). Each class in the early weeks of the course will introduce students to concepts, methods, and tools in the digital humanities, and require “practicums” in which students experiment with the tools in exploratory ways.
          On a second track, the course is an experiment in collaborative project-making. With the help and supervision of the instructor, we’re going to use the new digital methods to make a class project demonstrating the digital reading of literature…. [more]

[Go to Course Site] Digital technologies and methods have recently become important in the humanities as scholars use the new tools not only to help read and write about literary, historical, and artistic materials in traditional ways but in new ways influenced–not just communicated by–the new media forms. Literature+ is a course that draws on the new fields of “digital humanities” and “new media studies” to ask students to think about, and experiment with, how new digital methods enhance the study of literature.
          Students choose a literary work and use digital methods to model, map, visualize, text-analyze, social-network-analyze, blog, or otherwise interpret it using new tools and media. How can such methods augment or change our understanding of literature by comparison with other methods of literary interpretation? What is the relation, for example, between “close reading” of literary texts and “distant reading” methods that identify trends in language or themes across thousands of texts?… [more]

[Go to Course Site] In recent years, digital methods of text analysis, data mining, mapping, visualization, social network analysis, and media studies have set up a collision between two broad approaches to the study of literature. One is “close reading” as it emerged in the 20th century from such methods as the American New Criticism and Russian Formalism. The other is “distant reading” as it is now emerging in the 21st century through “digital humanities” methods. This course immerses students in the ideas and practices of the original New Critics, the theory and practices of the digital humanities, and the broader debate in literary studies today about the nature of interpretive reading (including “surface reading” and “slow reading”). Our aim is bring to view and discuss the underlying literary, aesthetic, philosophical, and social issues at stake in the debate between close reading and distant reading.
          Students are asked to do some small-scale, hands-on digital practicums; but no advanced digital-technology experience is required…. [more]

[Go to Course Site] An introduction to modern literary theory focusing on important intellectual movements from the early 20th century to the present. Readings in American New Criticism, Russian Formalism, structuralism, deconstruction, poststructuralist feminist theory, cultural criticism, and digital humanities…. [more]

[Go to course site] Digital technologies and methods have recently become important in the humanities as scholars use the new tools not only to help read and write about literary, historical, and artistic materials in traditional ways but in new ways influenced–not just communicated by–the new media forms. Literature+ is a course that draws on the new fields of “digital humanities” and “new media studies” to ask students to think about, and experiment with, how new digital methods enhance the study of literature.

Students choose a literary work and use digital methods to model, map, visualize, text-analyze, social-network-analyze, blog, or otherwise interpret it using new tools and media. How can such methods augment or change our understanding of literature by comparison with other methods of literary interpretation? What is the relation, for example, between “close reading” of literary texts and “distant reading” methods that identify trends in language or themes across thousands of texts?

The course begins with discussion of selected readings and demos of digital tools to set the stage. Readings include: Franco Moretti’s Graphs, Maps, Trees, Ryan Heuser and Long Le-Khac’s “A Quantitative Literary History of 2,958 Nineteenth-Century British Novels,” Lisa Samuels and Jerome McGann’s “Deformance and Interpretation,” and Stephen Ramsay’s “Toward an Algorithmic Criticism.” Demos include online or downloadable tools from a Digital Humanities Resources for Student Project-Building site made available to the class (most can be used by non-programmers to create interesting projects).

After the initial unit of the course, students break into teams, choose a literary work, and collaborate in workshop/lab mode to produce a proof-of-concept digital project. Collaboration will occur both face-to-face and virtually in the class wiki. Individual students also create an annotated bibliography, research reports, and a final essay reflecting on their project.

This course counts for the English Department’s Literature and Culture specialization and also welcomes students from the College of Creative Studies and other majors.

Course site: http://english149-w2008.pbwiki.com/

Course Description: Because of the recent, shared emphasis in many fields on digital methods, scholars in the humanities, arts, social sciences, and sciences increasingly need to collaborate across disciplines. This course reflects theoretically and practically on the concept of literary study by asking students to choose a literary work and treat it according to one or more of the research paradigms prevalent in other fields. Students, for example, can choose a story or poem to model, simulate, map, visualize, encode, text-analyze, sample, storyboard, blog, or redesign as a game, database, hypertext, or virtual world. What are the strengths and weaknesses of literary interpretation, close reading, or theory by comparison with other research methods?

The course begins with discussion of selected readings and demos to set the stage. Readings 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. Demos include: the NetLogo agent-modeling environment, the Scratch visual programming environment, digital mapping tools, text-analysis programs, “mashup”-creation tools, the Ivanhoe literary interpretation game, visualization/ pattern-discovery tools, machinima tools, Second Life, and other resources usable by non-programmers to create interesting projects.

After the initial unit of the course, students break into teams, choose a literary work, and collaborate in workshop/lab mode to produce a “proof-of-concept” final project. Collaboration will occur both face-to-face and virtually in the 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.

This course counts for the Literature and Culture specialization. It is a 5-unit course that includes some lab time (for collaborative work and learning digital tools) outside the scheduled class hours.

Course site: http://transcriptions.english.ucsb.edu/curriculum/courses/overview.asp?CourseID=295

Course description: This introductory lecture course studies contemporary information culture from the viewpoint of the humanities. What is information, and why is it so important that it not only affects our economy, politics, and society but also our culture (the culture of “cool,” it has been called) and our arts (the “new media” literatures, arts, music, and games). The course brings writings about information society together with works of new-media literature and art to study the following aspects of information: information as media, communication, and “new media”; information as work and power; and information as identity (see the Schedule page for details). Required readings are in print (e.g., Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49, William Gibson’s novel, Neuromancer), on the Web, and on CD-ROM (M. D. Coverley’s hypertext novel, Califia).

Assignments include some Web-authoring at the beginner’s level. No pre-existing technical skills are needed, but the ability to access the Web is necessary to do the online readings.

This course counts toward the English Dept’s specialization in Literature and the Culture of Information.

Course Wiki (co-produced with students): https://liu.english.ucsb.edu/wiki1/index.php/Main_Page

Course Description: This is a UCSB undergraduate research workshop or practicum (limited to 15 students) in which participants break into teams to pursue research related to literature and the culture of information. (The course may be counted for the English Department’s Literature and Culture of Information specialization.) The theme of this instance of the course is the relation between “creative” and “collaborative” models of authorship. Students will publish research into these topics on a collective, online research Web site produced through a “wiki” publishing and editing environment that enacts the process of creative collaboration. (Indeed, the collaborative wiki publishing environment will itself be one of the topics of the course.) Readings will include primary and secondary texts spanning from the era of Romanticism to recent theories and practices of “authorship,” “creativity,” “collaboration,” “innovation,” “peer-to-peer,” “intellectual property,” “open source,” “blogs,” etc.