Mar 29, 2024  
2021-2022 Hill Book (Class of 2025) 
    
2021-2022 Hill Book (Class of 2025) [ARCHIVED HILL BOOK]

LC 214 - Learning Community: The Age of Information

One Credit
Offered Periodically

This Learning Community combines the emergent techniques of the digital humanities with information theory and literary and cultural analysis to explore the moral, ethical, and philosophical questions posed by texts that explore the modern state as an information system. During the first half of the semester, we will study Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Zamyatin’s We,  Kafka’s “In the Penal Colony,” Calvino’s T-Zero, and Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49, focusing on issues of empathy, social justice, cultural memory, individual freedom, and state power.  In tandem, we will learn how to use computational tools for cultural and literary analysis, including text encoding, analysis, annotation, and mining. This broad survey of tools and digital humanities theory will set the stage for the semester’s second-half focus on W.G. Sebald’s towering novel, Austerlitz. We will put our analytical and digital skills to use to collaborate on producing a deeply layered and extensive digital archive edition of the novel, incorporating documents, audio recordings, visual art, film, and 360° VR video.

Course Applies to: Digital Humanities
Note: LC 214 is the equivalent of DIG 201 - Digital Design Studio . Students must also take ENG 390  as part of this Learning Community.