“Literature+.” University of Otago. 27 November 2015. (Lecture delivered as part of a series in New Zealand during Fulbright Specialist residency at U. Canterbury, October-November, 2015.)

  • Abstract: Starting with a talk by Alan Liu on his experience teaching the digital humanities in his Literature+ classes and other digital humanities classes (and on the larger issues of “hybrid pedagogy,” “MOOCs,” and “EdTech” in the background), this workshop is a chance for participants to think together about the future of teaching in the humanities. There are many past practices and formats of teaching that humanists have idealized—e.g., the tutorial on the “Oxbridge” model, the Socratic method or “dialectic” in a classical sense, the seminar, or, put in its most normalized modern mode, “class discussion”—even while humanists are caught up in such dreary antitheses to their ideal as large lecture courses titled “Introduction to …” regimented by teaching-assistant-led sections, patrolled by plagiarism-catching algorithms, and so on. How will humanist pedagogical ideals and practices adapt to the digital age? What is the relation, for example, between a Socratic seminar and either “hybrid pedagogy” or a MOOC with augmented peer-to-peer interactions?
  • Event announcement.