Spring 2015
Mondays 4:15pm-6:15pm
Room 5383
Ph.D. Program in English
The Graduate Center, CUNY
Dr. Matthew K. Gold
mgold@gc.cuny.edu
Office Hours: 4108.01, W 4:30pm-6pm and by appointment (contact Kristin Leitterman kristinleitterman@gmail.com for appointments)
Private Course Group: http://commons.gc.cuny.edu/groups/text-transformations/
Public Course Blog: http://cuny.is/texttransform
Course Hashtag: #texttransform
Zotero Group: https://www.zotero.org/groups/text_transformations
--
As an increasing number of texts are digitized and made available for quantitative analysis of various kinds, algorithmic computation can be used to reveal patterns of affiliation and difference across them. Franco Moretti has argued that such opportunities have resulted in “a drastic loss of ‘measure’ . . . books are so human-sized; now that right size is gone.” What is the proper unit of the text in the digital age, if not the book? How do we understand texts that are “massively addressable at different levels of scale,” as Michael Witmore has suggested? And how do new levels of scale and “addressability” alter our understanding of literary history, not to mention our everyday practices of reading?
In this course, we will consider how “macroscopic” approaches to text analysis change our existing notions of textuality, particularly as they revise 1990s discussions of hypertext within the field of textual studies. The course will include a mix of theoretical investigation and hands-on experimentation; as we explore quantitative approaches to literary analysis, we will seek to oscillate between close and distant reading practices. We will also look at how digital textuality is being expressed through various media forms and consider how recent interactive scholarly texts are changing publishing workflows in and outside of the academy. Readings will include works and projects by Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Jerome McGann, Matthew Jockers, Amy Earhart, Matthew Kirschenbaum, Jerome McGann, Franco Moretti, Steve Ramsay, Lisa Rhody, Mark Sample, Dennis Tenen, Ted Underwood, Michael Witmore, among others. Text analysis and visualization tools to be used will include DH Box, D3, Gephi, MALLET, NLTK, Python, R, Voyant, among others. Workshop attendance will be required.
Tools/Software
Regex
NLTK
Python
MALLET
Unix/Linux
R
XLST
TEI
Git
Gephi
D3
TextWrangler
BBEdit
Excel
OpenRefine
Voyant Tools
R Studio
DH Box
Markdown
Pandoc
Resources
The Programming Historian http://programminghistorian.org/
Workshops
http://gcdi.commons.gc.cuny.edu/events/
--> Please see an updated list of resources, edited by students in the class, here: https://github.com/mkgold/texttransform/blob/master/tools-resources.md
--
Mon Feb 2
Introductions
Mon Feb 9
Provocations
- Franco Moretti - "The Slaughterhouse of Literature" (PDF)
- Michael Witmore - "Text: A Massively Addressable Object" http://dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/debates/text/28
- Roland Barthes, "The Death of the Author" (PDF)
- Michel Foucault, "What is An Author?" (PDF)
- Jacques Derrida, "The Book to Come" (from Paper Machine) (PDF)
- Matthew G. Kirschenbaum, "The .txtual Condition" (PDF)
- Steven J. DeRose, David G. Durand, Elli Mylonas, Allen H. Rehear, "What is Text, Really?" http://www.hki.uni-koeln.de/sites/all/files/courses/3226/Renear_ea-1997.pdf
- Recommended: Matthew G. Kirschenbaum, "What is an @uthor?" Los Angeles Review of Books http://lareviewofbooks.org/essay/uthor
Lab:
Understanding Regular Expressions - http://programminghistorian.org/lessons/understanding-regular-expressions
Wed Feb 18
Approaches to Textual Studies
- W. W. Greg, The Rationale of Copy-Text - http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-sb?id=sibv003&images=bsuva/sb/images&data=/texts/english/bibliog/SB&tag=public&part=2&division=div
- Fredson Bowers - Some Principles for Scholarly Editions of Nineteenth-Century American Authors http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-sb?id=sibv017&images=bsuva/sb/images&data=/texts/english/bibliog/SB&tag=public&part=17&division=div
- G. Thomas Tanselle, —, A Rationale of Textual Criticism (1989) (selections)
- D. F. McKenzie, Bibliography and the Sociology of Texts (Read "Bibliography and the Sociology of Texts" pp 7-77, available through the GC Library as a electronic resource)
- D. C. Greetham, Textual Scholarship. An Introduction (selections)
- Jerome McGann, A Critique of Modern Textual Criticism (selections)
- Jerome McGann, The Textual Condition_ - "The Socialization of Texts" (PDF)
- Rob Pope, "Prologue," from Textual Intervention
Lab: Dennis Tenen and Grant Wythoff, "Sustainable Authorship in Plain Text using Pandoc and Markdown" http://programminghistorian.org/lessons/sustainable-authorship-in-plain-text-using-pandoc-and-markdown
Mon Feb 23
Hypertext
- Vannevar Bush, "As We May Think" http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-may-think/303881/
- Ted Nelson, Literary Machines
- Jerome McGann, "The Rationale of Hyper-Text" http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/public/jjm2f/rationale.html
- Jay David Bolter, Writing Spaces (selections)
- George Landow, Hypertext 3.0 (selections)
- Giles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus (selections)
Lab: Mark up, by hand, a 500-word text using HTML and CSS HTML tutorial: http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/Guide/ ; CSS tutorial: http://www.csstutorial.net/css-intro/introductioncss-part1.php ; Also check out Lynda.com, available through the library
Mon Mar 2
Distant Reading 1
- Franco Moretti - Graphs, Maps, Trees (Read Maps, Trees -- PDF)
- Jean-Baptiste Michel, et al., "Quantitative Analysis of Culture Using Millions of Digitized Books" (PDF)
- Daniel Rosenberg, "Data Before the Fact" (PDF)
- Goldstone and Underwood “The Quiet Transformations of Literary Studies" https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/bitstream/handle/2142/49323/QuietTransformations.pdf?sequence=2
- Lisa M. Rhody, "Topic Modeling and Figurative Language" http://journalofdigitalhumanities.org/2-1/topic-modeling-and-figurative-language-by-lisa-m-rhody/
Lab: Topic Modeling exercises with MALLET
Mon Mar 9
Distant Reading 2
- Matthew Jockers, Macroanalysis (selections)
- Matthew Jockers, Text Analysis With R for Students of Literature (selections)
- Matthew Jockers/Annie Swafford blog post exchange about Syuzhet
Lab: Exercises from Jockers
Mon Mar 16
Deformance
- Samuels, Lisa, and Jerome McGann. “Deformance and Interpretation.” New Literary History 30.1 (1999) : 25–56. (PDF)
- Stephen Ramsay, Reading Machines (PDF)
- Stephen Ramsay, “The Hermeneutics of Screwing Around” http://quod.lib.umich.edu/d/dh/12544152.0001.001/1:5/--pastplay-teaching-and-learning-history-with-technology?g=dculture;rgn=div1;view=fulltext;xc=1#5.1
- Mark Sample, "Notes Towards a Deformed Humanities" http://www.samplereality.com/2012/05/02/notes-towards-a-deformed-humanities/
- Mark Sample, "A protest bot is a bot so specific you can’t mistake it for bullshit: A Call for Bots of Conviction" https://medium.com/@samplereality/a-protest-bot-is-a-bot-so-specific-you-cant-mistake-it-for-bullshit-90fe10b7fbaa
- Johanna Drucker, SpecLab (PDF)
Lab: Make a twitter bot or markov chain generator
- Resources: Darius Kazemi, "How to make a Twitter bot" http://tinysubversions.com/2013/09/how-to-make-a-twitter-bot/index.html
- Patrick Rodriguez, "Making Twitterbots with Google Apps Script (Part 1)" http://thelightaesthetic.com/making-twitterbots-with-google-apps-script-part-1/
- Rob Dubbin, "The Rise of Twitter Bots" http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/the-rise-of-twitter-bots
- Mary C. Long, "How to Make a Twitter Bot in Five Minutes" http://www.adweek.com/socialtimes/twitter-bot/479038?red=at
- Write a blog post about your bot experiments
Mon Mar 23
Editions (Guest: Dennis Tenen)
- Jerome McGann, A New Republic of Letters (PDF)
- Amy Earhart, “Can Information Be Unfettered? Race and the New Digital Humanities Canon” http://dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/debates/text/16
- Amanda Gailey, A Case for Heavy Editing: The Example of Race and Children’s Literature in the Gilded Age http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/idx/e/etlc/9362034.0001.001/1:4?g=dculture;rgn=div1;view=fulltext;xc=1#4.1
- John Bryant, The Fluid Text (PDF)
- Allen H. Renear, "Text Encoding" http://www.digitalhumanities.org/companion/
- Julia Flanders, "What is the TEI" ( http://www.wwp.northeastern.edu/outreach/seminars/tei.html ) and "Basic Manuscript and Physical Document Encoding" http://www.wwp.northeastern.edu/outreach/seminars/_current/presentations/manuscript_encoding/basic_manuscript_encoding_00.xhtml
Lab: TEI Markup: mark up a short text
Mon Mar 30
Book History
- Robert Darnton, “What is the History of Books?” Daedalus 111 (1982) (PDF)
- Paul Duguid, "Material Matters: Aspects of the Past and the Futurology of the Book" http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~duguid/SLOFI/Material_Matters.htm
- Adrian Johns, The Nature of the Book (Introduction and Chapter Two) (GC Library Electronic Resource) https://libsearch.cuny.edu/F/69XI87E93M21BHXHLQ7CU8HBCB1MFD22UM4N7DMQYS2LXELBJV-17038?func=item-global&doc_library=CUN01&doc_number=006902571&year=&volume=&sub_library=AL001
- From The Cambridge Companion to the History of the Book: (PDF)
- Leslie Howsam, "The Study of Book History"
- Karen Attar, "Books in the library"
- Sydney Shep, "Books in Global Perspectives"
- Peter Stoicheff, "Materials and Meanings"
- James Raven, "The Industrial Revolution of the Book"
- Jon Bath and Scott Schofield, "The Digital Book"
Lab: Visit to a local archive
- Final Project Abstract/Proposal Due (one page or less)
Mon Apr 6 - Spring Break
Mon Apr 13
Visualizing Textual Data
- Edward Tufte, Envisioning Information (PDF)
- Edward Tufte, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information (PDF)
- Lev Manovich, "What is Visualization?" - http://manovich.net/content/04-projects/062-what-is-visualization/61_article_2010.pdf
- Johanna Drucker, "Humanities Approaches to Graphical Display" http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/5/1/000091/000091.html
- Ben Fry, the preservation of favoured traces http://benfry.com/traces/
- Google N-Gram Viewer - https://books.google.com/ngrams
- Bookworm - http://bookworm.culturomics.org/
- Flowing data - http://flowingdata.com/
- Visual Complexity - http://www.visualcomplexity.com/vc/
Lab: Create a data visualization using Gephi, D3, or another tool
Mon Apr 20
Electronic Literature, Media Archaeology, and the Textual Apparatus (Guest: Steve Jones )
- Agrippa Files Website http://agrippa.english.ucsb.edu
- Matthew G. Kirschenbaum, with Doug Reside and Alan Liu, “No Round Trip: Two New Primary Sources for Agrippa.” http://agrippa.english.ucsb.edu/kirschenbaum-matthew-g-with-doug-reside-and-alan-liu-no-round-trip-two-new-primary-sources-for-agrippa
- James J. Hodge, “Bibliographic Description of Agrippa (a book of the dead).” http://agrippa.english.ucsb.edu/hodge-james-bibliographic-description-of-agrippa-commissioned-for-the-agrippa-files
- Jussi Parikka, What is Media Archaeology? (PDF)
- Lisa Gitelman, "Near Print and Beyond Paper: Knowing by *.pdf" from Paper Knowledge (PDF)
- Steven E. Jones, "Second Life, Video, Games, and the Social Text" (PDF)
- Lori Emerson, Reading Writing Interfaces (PDF)
Lab: Show and tell: bring in, and be ready to describe, an old piece of equipment or storage media containing information relevant to your work
Mon Apr 27
12 - No Class
Mon May 4
13 - Perspective and Dimensionality
- Edwin A. Abbot, Flatland (please buy)
- Jerome McGann, "Marking Texts of Many Dimensions" http://www.digitalhumanities.org/companion/
- David Hoover, "Quantitative Analysis and Literary Studies" http://www.digitalhumanities.org/companionDLS/
- Sarah Allison, Ryan Heuser, Matthew Jockers, Franco Moretti, Michael Witmore, "Quantitative Formalism: an Experiment" http://litlab.stanford.edu/?page_id=255
- Johanna Drucker, "Humanistic Theory and Digital Scholarship" http://dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/debates/text/34
Lab: Play the recently revamped Ivanhoe game http://ivanhoe.scholarslab.org/
Mon May 11
14 - Social Texts, Social Writing, Social Reading
- Kathleen Fitzpatrick, "Networking the Field" http://www.plannedobsolescence.net/networking-the-field/
- Andrew Piper, "Sharing," from Book Was Here (PDF)
- Andy Stauffer, "The Nineteenth-Century Archive in the Digital Age" (PDF)
- Ray Siemens, Meagan Timney, Cara Leitch, Corina Koolen, and Alex Garnett, with the ETCL, INKE, and PKP Research Groups, "Toward Modeling the Social Edition: An Approach to Understanding the Electronic Scholarly Edition in the Context of New and Emerging Social Media" - http://web.uvic.ca/~siemens/pub/2012-SocialEdition-LLCFinal.pdf
Explore Projects:
- Debates in the Digital Humanities - http://dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu
- Scalar - http://scalar.usc.edu/
- Book Traces - http://www.booktraces.org/
- Bruno Latour, An Inquiry into Modes of Existence - http://www.modesofexistence.org/
- Medium - http://medium.com
Lab: TBA
Mon May 18
15 - student presentations
--
Syllabus Acknowledgements:
I consulted the following syllabi while creating this one; thank you to their authors for making them public:
- Jonathan Gross, Depaul University, 471: Bibliography and Literary Research - http://condor.depaul.edu/jgross/english471.pdf
- Alan Liu - Digital Humanities: Introduction to the Field http://eng236introdh2013f.pbworks.com/w/page/67396717/Schedule
- Textual Studies Syllabus http://www.docstoc.com/docs/126763288/Textual-Studies-Syllabus
- Ben Schmidt http://benschmidt.org/HDA15/?page_id=10
- Ted Underwood “Distant-Reading the Long Nineteenth Century" http://tedunderwood.com/2015/01/16/syllabus-for-a-graduate-seminar/
I appreciated feedback from the following scholars on a draft version of this syllabus:
- Matthew Kirschenbaum
- Steven E. Jones
- Lisa Rhody
- Brian Croxall
--
Twitter List
He
re is a twitter list of some of the scholars we will be studying this semester.