The reading group is suspended for the Spring semester.
What are the digital humanities (DH) and what are the critical frameworks that inform the field? This reading group is meant as a wide ranging exploration of DH and computational methods broadly understood.
For the academic year 2020-2021, the reading group is broadly structured to focus on:
- theoretical background in the Fall Semester;
- methodological concerns in the Spring Semester
Schedule for Spring 2020:
- Organizational Meeting: Tuesday, January 21st, 5:o5 to 6:30PM in Gross Hall, Room 355. To get the conversation started, please read, Matthew L. Jockers, Macroanalysis: Digital Methods & Literary History (2013), pp. 3-32 (Part I). A digital copy for Duke Students is here: https://find.library.duke.edu/catalog/DUKE005846000.
The UNC library also has a digital copy.
- Monday, February 10th: Ted Underwood, Distant Horizons, chapters 1 and 2 (digital copy available here). Gross Hall 355; 5:05 pm to 6:30pm. Light refreshments will be served!
- Wednesday, March 4th: Ted Underwood, Distant Horizons, chapter 3 (digital copy available here). Gross Hall 304B.
Wednesday, March 25th. Gross Hall 318.Wednesday, April 15th. Gross Hall 318.
Schedule for Fall 2019:
- Tuesday, September 10th–“required” readings : Nan Z. Da, “The Digital Humanities Debacle” AND Ted Underwood, “Dear Humanists“; recommended readings: Nan Z. Da, “The Computational Case against Computational Literary Studies” and the subsequent Forum on Critical Inquiry.
- Tuesday, October 1st:
- “required” reading: Franco Moretti, “The Slaughterhouse of Literature” [this can be found in Moretti’s Distant Reading (2013) or in Modern Language Quarterly, vol. 61, no. 1 (2000)];
- recommended reading: Moretti, Franco. “Style, Inc. Reflections on Seven Thousand Titles (British Novels, 1740–1850).” Critical Inquiry 36, no. 1 (2009): 134-58 [N.B.: My choice here is guided by Moretti’s own reflections in the headnotes to these essays in Distant Reading].
- Please note the updated location below.
- Tuesday, October 22nd:
- “required” reading: Katherine Bode, “The Equivalence of ‘Close’ and ‘Distant’ Reading; or, Toward a New Object for Data-Rich Literary History” in Modern Language Quarterly 78:1 (March 2017).
- recommended reading: Benjamin M. Schmidt, “Do Digital Humanists Need to Understand Algorithms?”, Debates in the Digital Humanities 2016
- Please note the updated location below.
- Tuesday, November 19th:
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- “required” reading: William G.Thomas, “Computing and the Historical Imagination“. AND: Fernand Braudel and Immanuel Wallerstein, “History and the Social Sciences: The Longue Durée”
Review (Fernand Braudel Center) Vol. 32, No. 2, COMMEMORATING THE LONGUE DURÉE (2009), pp. 171-203
- recommended reading: Andrew Goldstone and Ted Underwood, “The Quiet Transformations of Literary Studies:What Thirteen Thousand Scholars Could Tell Us,” New Literary History, vol. 45 no. 3, 2014, p. 359-384. doi:10.1353/nlh.2014.002
- Please note the updated location below.
- “required” reading: William G.Thomas, “Computing and the Historical Imagination“. AND: Fernand Braudel and Immanuel Wallerstein, “History and the Social Sciences: The Longue Durée”
Starting on October 1st, we will be meeting in Gross Hall, Room 318 from 5:00-ish PM to 6:30-ish PM. Light refreshments will be served.
This reading group is organized with the co-sponsorship of the Rhodes Information Initiative at Duke and the Digital Humanities Initiative at FHI.
