ENG287H1: The Digital Text

ENG287H1F, Fall 2013
All lectures Tuesdays, 7-9pm
Classroom: MS 3153

Instructor: Adam Hammond
Office: N/A
Office Hours: N/A
E-mail: adam.hammond@utoronto.ca

He loved to feel the covers and turn over the pages of newly printed books...

This section of ENG287 is now completed. Adam Hammond now teaches at the University of Guelph, but this syllabus will remain archived here.

Ours is the first generation to study literature in the digital age. E-books are outselling paperbacks; online scholarly databases are superseding library stacks; new works are being composed, distributed, and consumed electronically. How fundamental is this shift toward digitization? How does it affect the nature of the literary text, and how does it impact our work as readers and critics?

This course explores the interpretive and creative possibilities opened up by the shift from print to digital forms, as well as the social consequences of this transition. We will use computer-assisted analysis and visualization to ask new questions about literature and to provide statistical grounds for answers to older questions—and we will learn how to integrate our findings meaningfully into our writing. By studying the technical foundations for the production of digital texts, we will learn how the encoding of literary texts affects the questions we can ask of them. By analyzing digital-born forms such as webcomics, hypertext, interactive fiction, flash poetry, and video games, we will question how such texts alter the role of the reader, change the nature of narrative, and affect the task of interpretation.

Students will gain hands-on experience with and develop skills in quantitative textual analysis and text encoding. Students will participate in the production of a TEI (Text Encoding Initiative) edition of James Joyce's short story "The Dead," which will be developed into a website entitled The (Living) Dead. No programming experience is required.

This is listed in Blackboard.

Marshall McLuhan's The Medium is the Massage (Gingko) is available from the University of Toronto Bookstore. Sword and Sworcery is available in an iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad version from the iTunes Store; in a Windows & Mac version via Steam (the Mac version is also available from the Mac App Store); and in an Android version from Google Play.

Any edition of James Joyce's short story "The Dead" is acceptable, including the free edition linked from the syllabus below.

There is a very nice print version of Dash Shaw's BodyWorld. You are not required to read BodyWorld in this form, but you may wish to. (Many past students have complained about the online version and praised the print version. Since this course is partly about the differences between digital and print, you may wish to try both.) The Beguiling on Markham and Bloor generally have BodyWorld in stock.

All other texts available for free online. (Links from syllabus below.)

Items in green are to be read/explored/tinkered with before attending lecture.
Items in black will be demonstrated during lecture; you are not required to visit them beforehand.
Tutorials during the period indicated by the diagonal striped () pattern will take place according to the Computer Lab Tutorial Schedule described below.

Date	Tutorial	Lecture
Sep. 10	(None)	Introduction: Is Literature Dying in the Digital Age? Nicholas Carr, "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" Clay Shirky, "Why Abundance is Good: A Reply to Nick Carr" Nicholas Carr, "Why Skepticism is Good: My Reply to Clay Shirky" Sven Birkerts, "A Know-Nothing's Defense of Serious Reading & Culture: A Reply to Clay Shirky" Clay Shirky, "Why Abundance Should Breed Optimism: A Second Reply to Nick Carr"
Sep. 17	(None)	Marshall McLuhan, The Medium is the Massage
Sep. 24	Carr/Shirky/Birkerts, The Medium is the Massage	Computer-Assisted Textual Analysis TAPoR, Voyant Tools, Wordle, ManyEyes Project Gutenberg, Project Gutenberg Australia TTR Comparison Tool Articles mentioned in lecture: James M. Hughes et al.', "Quantitative patterns of stylistic influence in the evolution of literature"; Laura Miller's response on Salon.com, "Are Literary Classics Obsolete?"; Stephen Marche's response, "Literature is Not Data," in the LA Review of Books; and the series of responses to Marche's response, also in the LA Review of Books.
Oct. 1	Computer-Assisted Textual Analysis	Rescuing Texts That Weren't Happy As Printed Books T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land as an iPad app; in HTML at Representative Poetry Online; and in genre-bending form at He Do the Police in Different Voices. William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell as HTML text (under "The Works in Illuminated Printing") and Java-enabled images (or JPEGs) at The Blake Archive
Oct. 8	Rescuing Texts	The Universal Library Jorge Luis Borges, "The Library of Babel" (on Blackboard) Virginia Woolf, excerpt from A Room of One's Own (on Blackboard) Nicholas Carr, "The Library of Utopia" OED, UTL Catalogue, Google Books, Internet Archive, Digital Public Library of America, JSTOR, Project Gutenberg Australia, EEBO, Modernist Journals Project, Google Ngram Viewer.
Oct. 15	Assignment #1 Due. The Universal Library	Introduction to Our Class Project, The (Living) Dead James Joyce, "The Dead" (official class edition on Blackboard; first edition on Internet Archive; plain text edition of Dubliners at Project Gutenberg) Erich Auerbach, "The Brown Stocking," Mimesis (optional; on Blackboard.)
Oct. 22	Our Class Project	The Technical Side of Our Class Project: TEI Andriaan van der Weel, excerpt from Changing our Textual Minds (on Blackboard.) TEI By Example, Tutorials 0, 1, 2, 3 The Rossetti Archive, The Yellow Nineties Online
Oct. 29	TEI	Born-Digital Fiction: The Practical Side Dash Shaw, BodyWorld
Nov. 5	TEI / BodyWorld	Born-Digital Fiction: Interactivity Stephen Marche, Lucy Hardin's Missing Period Emily Short, Galatea (scroll down on linked page)
Nov. 12	Fall Break — No class.
Nov. 19	Assignment #2 Due. Lucy Hardin and Galatea.	Born-Digital Fiction: Multimedia Kate Pullinger and Chris Joseph, Inanimate Alice, Episodes 1 and 3 Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries, "Dakota."
Nov. 26	Inanimate Alice and YHCHI.	Born-Digital Fiction: the (Indie) Video Game Superbrothers, Jim Guthrie, Capy, Superbrothers: Sword and Sworcery EP Leonard Shlain, "The Alphabet Versus the Goddess" (two-page summary on Blackboard)
Dec. 3	Essay Due. Exam strategies and S:S&S EP.	Digital Texts and the Literary Marketplace Guest: Jared Bland, Books Editor, The Globe and Mail Exam Review and Preview of "Class-Sourced Edition"

Tutorial groups meet in computer labs (rather than the usual tutorial rooms) according to this schedule. If you have any questions, contact your TA.

DATE	LAB	TA GROUP
Oct. 1	RW109	Kathleen and Erin
Oct. 8	RW109	Melissa and Matt
Oct. 29	RW109	Kathleen
Oct. 29	UC261	Erin
Nov. 5	RW109	Melissa
Nov. 5	UC261	Matt

Assignment #1: Quantitative Analysis (3 pages): 15%
Assignment #2: Text Encoding (2 pages plus electronic tagging submission): 15%
Essay (6 pages): 25%
Participation in tutorial: 10%
Final examination: 35%

All assignments and papers are due in tutorial. They will be accepted up until one week after the due date, with an automatic deduction of three percentage points per day, up to a maximum of 21%. Work will not be accepted beyond a week after the due date except in the most extraordinary of circumstances. Any paper submitted over the weekend will be counted as submitted the following Monday and deductions will be calculated accordingly. For information on where and how to submit late papers, please see this page.

Plagiarism, paper purchase, or other forms of academic dishonesty will not be tolerated. Refer to the University of Toronto's Code of Behaviour on Academic Matters (search for "plagiarism.")

The University of Toronto is committed to accessibility. If you require accommodations for a disability, or have any accessibility concerns about the course, the classroom, or course materials, please contact Accessibility Services.