HS 691 Introduction to Theories of Digital Humanities

HS 691 Introduction to Theories of Digital Humanities

This course is a part of special topics in HSS set, and is titled “Introduction to Theories of Digital Humanities”. It primarily targets the doctoral students in Humanities and Social Sciences, who have an interest in developing their research in thematic areas that concern or are laterally connected to the Digital studies field. The course will attempt at developing a space in order to understand the conceptual threads related to the broad and emerging field of “Digital Humanities”. The attempt in this course is to understand the fundamental theoretical groundings of this field. We will intensively discuss theoretical and analytical texts that open various understandings of the field from the perspective of a humanities and social sciences collective. As a reading group, the plan is to “read” texts in detail and build a case for understanding the term “Digital Humanities” itself. We will begin by assessing the term techne, move into “technology” and further into “Digital technology” and its impact on human race. This course is also an attempt towards moving into a research cluster that creates a common primer for advanced studies in Digital Cultures and New Media.

AIM 

The larger goal of the course is to provide a foundational understanding of cultural and media related theories. The course will attempt to prepare doctoral researchers in Humanities and Social Sciences to negotiate their own position in this growing framework of digital research in Humanities. It will also prepare them to handle the word “digital” with responsibility and caution in their studies and provide them an insight into texts that are largely accepted in the DH study circles.

REFLECTIVE READINGS 

• Berry, David M. “The Computational Turn: Thinking about Digital Humanities”, Culture Machine, 2011.
• Burdick, Anne, Johanna Drucker, Peter Lunenfeld, Todd Presener, Jeffery Schnapp. Digital Humanities, MIT Press, Open Access. (Selected Pieces)
• Krisch, Adams. “Technology Is Taking Over English Departments” The false promise of the digital humanities”, New Republic, 2014.
• Liu, Alan. “The Meaning of Digital Humanities”, PMLA, 128(2).
• Schreibman, Susan, Ray Siemens, John Unsworth. A New Companion to Digital Humanities, 2nd Edition, United States: Wiley Blackwell, 2015.
• G. Kirschenbaum, Matthew. “What Is Digital Humanities and What’s It Doing in English Departments?” ADE Bulletin 150, 2010.
• Hentschel, Klaus. Visual Cultures in Science and Technology: A Comparative History

“Managing an Established Digital Humanities Project: Principles and Practices from the Twentieth Year of the William Blake Archive”

• Wyver, John. The Moving Image: An International History of Film, Television & Radio – Basil Blackwell Ltd in Association with the British Film Institute, 1989

THEORETICAL TRAJECTORY 

• Adorno, Theodore. Critical Models: Interventions and Catchwords, New York: Columbia University Press, 1963.
• Bakhtin, Mikhail. “Discourse in the Novel”, Dialogic Imagination, Texas: University of Texas Press, 1981.
• Bourdieu, Pierre. The Field of Cultural Production, United States: Columbia University Press, 1993.
• Castells, Manuel. The Rise of the Network Society, The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture Vol. I. Cambridge, MA; Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1996.
• Eagleton, Terry. Culture, Yale: Yale University Press, 2016.

— “Art, Criticism and Laughter: Terry Eagleton on Aesthetics”.

• Foucault, Michel. “Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias”, in Architecture /Mouvement/ Continuité October, 1984; (“Des Espace Autres,” March 1967 Translated from the French by Jay Miskowiec)
• Jameson, Fredric. Late Marxism: Adorno, or, The Persistence of the Dialectic. London and New York: Verso. 1990.