Course Type: Undergraduate

Undergraduate course

English 197: Introduction to Digital Humanities (Spring 2024)

This is the main course website. There is also a course Canvas site for uploading assignments.

Quarter: Spring 2024
Class Meeting Time: Tues & Thurs, 2:00-3:15pm
Location: South Hall 2623
Instructor: Alan Liu | Office Hours: Tue, 3:30-4:30 or by appt., South Hall 2521


Voyant Tools analysis of William Wordsworth’s The Prelude (1850 version).

This course introduces important types and methods of the digital humanities (“DH”). Topics include the emergence of digital humanities as a field, “distant reading,” text encoding, text analysis (including various methods of quantitative analysis, topic modeling, and “word embedding”), artificial-intelligence “large language models,” social network analysis, and GIS mapping. A key aspect of the course is the balance it seeks between ideas and technology. Far-reaching ideas about literature and other areas of social and cultural life are reexamined from a technological perspective, and, reciprocally, current technology is thought about in relation to far older and more extensive domains of technê (human arts and skills).

The course gives students a hands-on introduction to  digital humanities methods and tools through weekly practicums designed for beginners. (No previous technical experience or expertise is required.) Other assignments include two “project proposals” (proposals for digital-humanities projects that are explained and planned out but, due to time constraints in an academic quarter do not have to be executed).

English 25 (2023 Spring)

English 25: Literature and the Information, Media, and Communication Revolutions

Quarter: Spring 2023
Class Meeting Time: MWF, 1:00-1:50pm
Location: Life Sciences Building 1001
Instructor: Alan Liu | Office Hours: (No office hours this week, May 31) Wed. 2-3 pm (location: SH 2521)

How have language, reading, and literature responded to revolutions in media, communication, and information technology? This course introduces the history and theory of the major changes in human discourse that have led up to our current information age. Readings in literary and artistic works exemplify the creative artist’s response to these changes.
Manicule  See also the 1-credit honors section English 25S led by Prof. Liu, which may be taken by Honors Students enrolled in English 25 in addition to their regular section. Add codes may be requested from Prof. Liu, (The first meeting of the English 25S honors section will be April 10.)

Logo from original UCSB English Dept's Transcriptions Center -- Literature & Culture of Information site, c. 1998

Logo from original 1998 website of UCSB English Dept’s Transcriptions Center for studies in old and new media, communication, and information. (See the current Transcriptions site)

 

Sections

Teaching Assistants

  • Baker, R (“Baker”),
    Office Hours: M 10:30 am – 1:30 pm (location: outside the Summit Cafe in the Library, NW corner)
  • Fulmer, Alice,
    Office Hours: Th 1-4 pm (location: South Hall 2607B — the Medieval Literatures office inside the English Department’s “Collaborative Research Center”)
  • Leach, Ryan,
    Office Hours: W 2:30-3:30 pm (location: Zoom meeting address: https://ucsb.zoom.us/j/3788813797)

 

Sections

Enroll Code TA Meeting Time Location
18085 Baker M 4:00- 4:50 GIRV 2123
18093 Baker M 5:00-5:50 HSSB 1237
18101 Leach T 9:00- 9:50 HSSV 1227
18119 Leach T 10:00-10:50 HSSB 1215
18127 Fulmer T 4:00- 4:50 HSSB 1228
18135 Fulmer T 5:00- 5:50 HSSB 1231

Highlights of the Course
(see Schedule & Assignments for more information)

Course content units:

  • Literature Across Media Ages
  • The Communication/Information Age — Information’s impact on what we mean by “meaning”
  • The Postindustrial & Neoliberal Age — Information’s impact on work and power
  • Processing Literature — Information’s impact on the way we study literature

Key readings:

  • Novelists: Thomas Pynchon (The Crying of Lot 49), William Gibson (Neuromancer)
  • Media theorists: Marshall McLuhan, Walter Ong, N. Katherine, Lev Manovitch, etc.
  • Historians and theorists of communication/computing: Claude Shannon, Warren Weaver, Vannevar Bush, etc.
  • Business historians & theorists on the information age: Joseph Schumpeter, Shoshana Zuboff, Peter Senge, Manuel Castells, etc.
  • Critics, cyberlibertarians, and hackers of the information age: John Perry Barlow, Critical Art Ensemble, Donna Haraway, Jodi, etc.
  • Theorists and practitioners of the new “digital humanities”: Franco Moretti, The Stanford Literary lab, Ted Underwood, etc.
  • Theorists of digital “deformance” and “glitch”: Lisa Samuels, Jerome McGann, Mark Sample, Rosa Menkman, etc.

Key assignments:

  • Short essay in which you imagine what computing will be like in the year 2050.
  • Short essay on Thomas Pynchon’s novel.
  • Short essay on Being Human in the Digital Age
  • Also, required ungraded assignments:
    • Spreadsheet & Short Essay: spreadsheet comparing work life of a student and your imagined life in your desired future career, accompanied by short essay on “Being Human in the Age of Information Knowledge Work”
    • Text-analysis exercise on a work of literature accompanied by short commentary.

Exams: (mostly “factual” in nature)

  • Mid-term exam
  • Final exam

 

English 146DS: Data Stories: Theory and Practice of Data-driven Narratives in the Digital Age (Winter 2023)

Quarter: Winter 2023
Class Meeting Time: Tues & Thurs, 2:00-3:15pm (Pacific time)
Location: HSSB 2202
Instructor: Alan Liu | Office Hours: Tue. 3:30-4:30, South Hall 2521
Co-instructor: Leila Stegemoeller | Office Hours: W 3:30-4:30, South Hall 2509

Graphic in form of Venn diagram illustrating concept of data narratives. (Brent Dykes, CC BY-SA 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons)
Brent Dykes, CC BY-SA 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons

“Data Stories” introduces students to an increasingly important genre of discourse in today’s society: data-driven narrative–e.g., as it appears in journalism; science, medical, and political reporting; business or government writing; and even some literary and artistic forms. The course draws on research areas with deep roots in the humanities such as narrative theory, genre theory (especially of story-driven forms spanning from prehistorical oral epics to the modern and postmodern novel), and media theory. It brings those approaches into conjunction with readings about, and examples of, data journalism and data visualization to ask this central question: how do you make a good story out of data? More fully, what is a “good” data story—one that is both impactful and socially or ethically good (by contrast, for example, with “fake news”)? Students will also learn from ethnographic research about how older societies told good data stories (e.g., how practical and social “data” was traded around the campfire at night in oral cultures). After learning about the theory and structure of narrative forms, data forms, and visualization forms, students will be asked to create a project in which they take a dataset and create a narrative about it that includes data visualizations.

In Winter 2023, “Data Stories” will be co-taught by Professor Alan Liu and Ph.D. student Leila Stegemoeller (teaching assistant this year for the English Department’s Transcriptions Center for Digital Humanities and New Media). “Data Stories” counts as an elective for the English Department’s Literature & Culture of Information (LCI) specialization for English majors.

Credits: While this undergraduate course builds on parts of Alan Liu’s earlier 2019 graduate course on “The Humanities and Data Science,” it also draws on ideas for readings, dataset sources, or assignments volunteered by individuals (Rebecca Baker, Teddy Roland, Tyler Shoemaker, Madeleine Sorapure) or scavenged from courses and resources elsewhere (e.g., Alberto Cairo’s video lessons on “Annotation and Narration”; Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic’s Storytelling with Data: Let’s Practice!; Miriam Posner’s 2017 “Introduction to Digital Humanities” course; and Melanie Walsh’s “Introduction to Cultural Analytics & Python” course). Special thanks to Teddy Roland for collaboration on creating the first instance of this course in Spring 2021 and co-teaching it.

English 197: Introduction to Digital Humanities (Fall 2022)

This is the main course website. There is also a course Canvas site for uploading assignments.

Quarter: Winter 2022
Class Meeting Time: Tues & Thurs, 3:30-4:45pm
Location: South Hall 2623
Instructor: Alan Liu | Office Hours: Tue, 4:50-5:30 or by appt., South Hall 2521

This course introduces important types and methods of the digital humanities (“DH”). Topics include the emergence of digital humanities as a field, “distant reading,” text encoding, text analysis (including various methods of quantitative analysis, topic modeling, and “word embedding”), artificial-intelligence “large language models,” social network analysis, and GIS mapping. A key aspect of the course is the balance it seeks between ideas and technology. Far-reaching ideas about literature and other areas of social and cultural life are reexamined from a technological perspective, and, reciprocally, current technology is thought about in relation to far older and more extensive domains of technê (human arts and skills).

The course gives students a hands-on introduction to  digiral humanities methods and tools through weekly practicums designed for beginners. (No previous technical experience or expertise is required.) Other assignments include two “project proposals” (proposals for digital-humanities projects that are explained and planned out but, due to time constraints in an academic quarter do not have to be executed).

English 25 (2022 Spring)

This is the older 2022 version of English 25. For the Spring 2023 version, go here.

English 25: Literature and the Information, Media, and Communication Revolutions

Quarter: Spring 2022
Class Meeting Time: MWF, 1:00-1:50pm
Location: Girvetz 1004
Instructor: Alan Liu | Office Hours:  SH 2521, Wed. 2-3 pm

How have language, reading, and literature responded to revolutions in media, communication, and information technology? This course introduces the history and theory of the major changes in human discourse that have led up to our current information age. Readings in literary and artistic works exemplify the creative artist’s response to these changes.
Manicule  See also the 1-credit honors section English 25S led by Prof. Liu, which may be taken by Honors Students enrolled in English 25 in addition to their regular section. Add codes may be requested from Prof. Liu, (The first meeting of the English 25S honors section will be April 4.)

Logo from original UCSB English Dept's Transcriptions Center -- Literature & Culture of Information site, c. 1998

Logo from original UCSB English Dept’s Transcriptions Center — Literature & Culture of Information site, c. 1998. (Current Transcriptions site)

 

Sections

Teaching Assistants

  • Qiaoyu Cai,
    Office Hours: SH 2432-U (or Zoom), F 3-5 pm
  • Maria Job,
    Office Hours: Zoom, W 3-4 pm
  • Scott Kneece,
    Office Hours: Zoom, Th. 2-3 pm

 

Sections

Enroll Code TA Meeting Time Location
18598 Maria Job W 4:00- 4:50 SH 2623
18606 Maria Job W 5:00-5:50 SH 2623
18614 Scott Kneece R 9:00- 9:50 SH 2635
18622 Scott Kneece R 10:00-10:50 SH 2635
18630 Qiaoyu Cai M 4:00- 4:50 SH 2635
18648 Qiaoyu Cai M 5:00- 5:50 SH 2635

Highlights of the Course
(see Schedule & Assignments for more information)

Course content units:

  • Literature Across Media Ages
  • The Communication/Information Age — Information’s impact on what we mean by “meaning”
  • The Postindustrial & Neoliberal Age — Information’s impact on work and power
  • Processing Literature — Information’s impact on the way we study literature

Key readings:

  • Novelists: Thomas Pynchon (The Crying of Lot 49), William Gibson (Neuromancer)
  • Media theorists: Marshall McLuhan, Walter Ong, N. Katherine, Lev Manovitch, etc.
  • Historians and theorists of communication/computing: Claude Shannon, Warren Weaver, Vannevar Bush, etc.
  • Business historians & theorists on the information age: Joseph Schumpeter, Shoshana Zuboff, Peter Senge, Manuel Castells, etc.
  • Critics, cyberlibertarians, and hackers of the information age: John Perry Barlow, Critical Art Ensemble, Donna Haraway, Jodi, etc.
  • Theorists and practitioners of the new “digital humanities”: Franco Moretti, The Stanford Literary lab, Ted Underwood, etc.
  • Theorists of digital “deformance” and “glitch”: Lisa Samuels, Jerome McGann, Mark Sample, Rosa Menkman, etc.

Key assignments:

  • Short essay in which you imagine what computing will be like in the year 2050.
  • Short essay on Thomas Pynchon’s novel.
  • Short essay on Being Human in the Digital Age
  • Also, required ungraded assignments:
    • Spreadsheet & Short Essay: spreadsheet comparing work life of a student and your imagined life in your desired future career, accompanied by short essay on “Being Human in the Age of Information Knowledge Work”
    • Text-analysis exercise on a work of literature accompanied by short commentary.

Exams: (mostly “factual” in nature)

  • Mid-term exam
  • Final exam

 

English 146DS: Data Stories: Theory and Practice of Data-driven Narratives in the Digital Age (Winter 2022)

Quarter: Winter 2022
Class Meeting Time: Tues & Thurs, 2:00-3:15pm (Pacific time)
Location: SSMS 1005
Instructor: Alan Liu | Office Hours: Thur. 3:30-4:30 (in Zoom at https://ucsb.zoom.us/j/796874043 during January 2022; in person beginning in Feburary  in South Hall 2521)
Co-instructor: Rebecca Baker | Office Hours: Tue: 11:30-1:30 & by appt. (in person in South Hall 2509, with simultaneous office-hours Zoom at https://ucsb.zoom.us/j/9717309292)

Graphic in form of Venn diagram illustrating concept of data narratives. (Brent Dykes, CC BY-SA 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons)
Brent Dykes, CC BY-SA 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons

“Data Stories” introduces students to an increasingly important genre of discourse in today’s society: data-driven narrative–e.g., as it appears in journalism; science, medical, and political reporting; business or government writing; and even some literary and artistic forms. The course draws on research areas with deep roots in the humanities such as narrative theory, genre theory (especially of story-driven forms spanning from prehistorical oral epics to the modern and postmodern novel), and media theory. It brings those approaches into conjunction with readings about, and examples of, data journalism and data visualization to ask this central question: how do you make a good story out of data? More fully, what is a “good” data story—one that is both impactful and socially or ethically good (by contrast, for example, with “fake news”)? Students will also learn from ethnographic research about how older societies told good data stories (e.g., how practical and social “data” was traded around the campfire at night in oral cultures). After learning about the theory and structure of narrative forms, data forms, and visualization forms, students will be asked to create a project in which they take a dataset and create a narrative about it that includes data visualizations.

In Winter 2022, “Data Stories” will be co-taught by Professor Alan Liu and Ph.D. student Rebecca Baker (teaching assistant this year for the English Department’s Transcriptions Center for Digital Humanities and New Media). “Data Stories” counts as an elective for the English Department’s Literature & Culture of Information (LCI) specialization for English majors.

Credits: While this undergraduate course builds on parts of Alan Liu’s earlier 2019 graduate course on “The Humanities and Data Science,” it also draws on ideas for readings, dataset sources, or assignments volunteered by individuals (Rebecca Baker, Teddy Roland, Tyler Shoemaker, Madeleine Sorapure) or scavenged from courses and resources elsewhere (e.g., Alberto Cairo’s video lessons on “Annotation and Narration”; Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic’s Storytelling with Data: Let’s Practice!; Miriam Posner’s 2017 “Introduction to Digital Humanities” course; and Melanie Walsh’s “Introduction to Cultural Analytics & Python” course). Special thanks to Teddy Roland for collaboration on creating the first instance of this course in Spring 2021 and co-teaching it.

English 25 (2021 Spring)

English 25: Literature and the Information, Media, and Communication Revolutions

Quarter: Spring 2021
Class Meeting Time: MWF, 1:00-1:50pm (Pacific time)
Location: Lectures given synchronously at this Zoom URL (passcode required after March 29) (Lectures will also be recorded)
Instructor: Alan Liu | Office Hours:  Wed. 2-3 pm (Office hours Zoom)

How have language, reading, and literature responded to revolutions in media, communication, and information technology? This course introduces the history and theory of the major changes in human discourse that have led up to our current information age. Readings in literary and artistic works exemplify the creative artist’s response to these changes.

Logo from original UCSB English Dept's Transcriptions Center -- Literature & Culture of Information site, c. 1998

Logo from original UCSB English Dept’s Transcriptions Center — Literature & Culture of Information site, c. 1998. (Current Transcriptions site)

 

Highlights of the Course
(see Schedule & Assignments for more information)

Course content units:

  • Literature Across Media Ages
  • The Communication/Information Age — Information’s impact on what we mean by “meaning”
  • The Postindustrial & Neoliberal Age — Information’s impact on work and power
  • Processing Literature — Information’s impact on the way we study literature

Key readings:

  • Novelists: Thomas Pynchon (The Crying of Lot 49), William Gibson (Neuromancer)
  • Media theorists: Marshall McLuhan, Walter Ong, N. Katherine, Lev Manovitch, etc.
  • Historians and theorists of communication/computing: Claude Shannon, Warren Weaver, Vannevar Bush, etc.
  • Business historians & theorists on the information age: Joseph Schumpeter, Shoshana Zuboff, Peter Senge, Manuel Castells, etc.
  • Critics, cyberlibertarians, and hackers of the information age: John Perry Barlow, Critical Art Ensemble, Donna Haraway, Jodi, etc.
  • Theorists and practitioners of the new “digital humanities”: Franco Moretti, The Stanford Literary lab, Ted Underwood, etc.
  • Theorists of digital “deformance” and “glitch”: Lisa Samuels, Jerome McGann, Mark Sample, Rosa Menkman, etc.

Key assignments:

  • Short essay in which you imagine what computing will be like in the year 2050.
  • Short essay on Thomas Pynchon’s novel.
  • Short essay on Being Human in the Digital Age
  • Optional: Spreadsheet & Short Essay: spreadsheet comparing work life of a student and your imagined life in your desired future career, accompanied by short essay on “Being Human in the Age of Information Knowledge Work”
  • Optional: Text-analysis exercise on a work of literature accompanied by short commentary.

Exams: (mostly “factual” in nature)

  • Mid-term exam
  • Final exam

 

English 146DS: Data Stories: Theory and Practice of Data-driven Narratives in the Digital Age (Winter 2021)

Quarter: Winter 2021
Class Meeting Time: Tues & Thurs, 12:30-1:45pm (Pacific time)
Location: Course meets synchronously at this Zoom URL (password required)
Instructor: Alan Liu | Office Hours:  Tue. 2-3 pm (Zoom details)
Co-instructor: Teddy Roland | Office Hours: Thurs. 2-3 pm (Zoom details)

Graphic in form of Venn diagram illustrating concept of data narratives. (Brent Dykes, CC BY-SA 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons)
Brent Dykes, CC BY-SA 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons

“Data Stories” introduces students to an increasingly important genre of discourse in today’s society: data-driven narrative–e.g., as it appears in journalism; science, medical, and political reporting; business or government writing; and even some literary and artistic forms. The course draws on research areas with deep roots in the humanities such as narrative theory, genre theory (especially of story-driven forms spanning from prehistorical oral epics to the modern and postmodern novel), and media theory. It brings those approaches into conjunction with readings about, and examples of, data journalism and data visualization to ask this central question: how do you make a good story out of data? More fully, what is a “good” data story—one that is both impactful and socially or ethically good (by contrast, for example, with “fake news”)? Students will also learn from ethnographic research about how older societies told good data stories (e.g., how practical and social “data” was traded around the campfire at night in oral cultures). After learning about the theory and structure of narrative forms, data forms, and visualization forms, students will be asked to create a project in which they take a dataset and create a narrative about it that includes data visualizations.

In Winter 2021, “Data Stories” will be co-taught by Professor Alan Liu and Ph.D. student Teddy Roland (teaching assistant this year for the English Department’s Transcriptions Center for Digital Humanities and New Media). “Data Stories” counts as an elective for the English Department’s Literature & Culture of Information (LCI) specialization for English majors.

Credits: While this undergraduate course builds on parts of Alan Liu’s earlier 2019 graduate course on “The Humanities and Data Science,” it also draws on ideas for readings, dataset sources, or assignments volunteered by individuals (Teddy Roland, Tyler Shoemaker, Madeleine Sorapure) or scavenged from courses and resources elsewhere (e.g., Alberto Cairo’s video lessons on “Annotation and Narration”; Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic’s Storytelling with Data: Let’s Practice!; Miriam Posner’s 2017 “Introduction to Digital Humanities” course; and Melanie Walsh’s “Introduction to Cultural Analytics & Python” course). Special thanks to Teddy Roland for collaboration on creating the first instance of this course in Spring 2021 and co-teaching it.

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