English Curriculum and Computing, Discussion Paper

<http://www.ualberta.ca/~dmiall/curriccomp.htm>

Computer Committee, November 14, 2000

Context | Resources and barriers | Current computer use | Mainstreaming humanities computing
First year (linked documents) | Further reading | Additional materials

---

In the Strategic Plan for the Department of English 2000-2005, Initiative #5 is "Mainstreaming humanities computing." This mentions the already high level of existing computer-related activity among faculty and graduate students, and points out the need to:

• assess existing computing courses as a part of our review of the undergraduate program;
• explore ways to introduce issues in humanities computing into some mainstream courses;
• explore and evaluate computer tools for writing, especially in first year courses;
• in computer courses explore the transformations in culture arising from the computer.

In the spirit of these proposals, the Computer Committee offers the following areas for discussion:

1. Context

2. Resources and barriers

While technology must be discussed on a variety of levels, in practical terms it will involve classrooms with computers and appropriate software, thus there are various logistical concerns:

• availability of technology to all instructors and all students -- perhaps over half of students now have their own facilities, but we cannot disadvantage the rest;
• availability of labs and smart classrooms that match our class sizes (particularly if our class sizes increase as faculty move to a 4 HCE load);
• creating a computer centre for writing with quiet spaces for individual writing, not usually provided in a computer lab, as well as small clusters of workstations for collaborative work;
• labs for class use that provide a computer for each student with fast online connections, and that support email and listservs;
• fostering a culture that considers a lab class a private space like a normal classroom;
• the availability of support staff to maintain the technology;
• the availability and cost of help to train students and/or instructors, including Faculty resources, ATL partnerships, etc.
• the ongoing cost of maintenance and regular hardware and software upgrades (how much will be borne by the university? by the Department? by faculty? by students?)

3. Current computer usage

To be provided (Terry Butler)

4. Mainstreaming humanities computing

5. Further reading

As our discussions continue, colleagues might want to locate published discussions of computing and literature (see selected online readings below), look at examples of computing resources for teaching, and visit web sites for current or recent courses in the area, including those offered by our own Faculty of Extension. For example:

• Katz, Seth R. "Current Uses of Hypertext in Teaching Literature." Computers and the Humanities 30 (1996): 139-148.
• McCarty, Willard. "Humanities computing as interdiscipline." Is Humanities Computing an Academic Discipline? IATH, University of Virginia, 5 November 1999. http://ilex.cc.kcl.ac.uk/wlm/essays/inter/
• New Media Writing, Faculty of Extension. See: http://karl.srv.ualberta.ca:50000/extweb/owa/summary_result?Program=NEW
• Introduction to Computing in the Humanities 1A03. Course at McMaster University. http://www.humanities.mcmaster.ca/~hccrs/ihchome.htm

Additional materials

1. Course outlines, from Technologies Curriculum Report (March 2000)

1. Literary computing. This course will explore the ways in which computers can be used to assist in studies of literature, particularly those that are based on close examination of textual material. It will begin with an examination of the World Wide Web, which has led to an explosion in the growth of computer usage. We will look at some issues in building Web sites for the literature, in terms of audience, longevity of the material, access tools and maintenance. The course will also look at the many different formats of electronic texts which now exist. We will assess the relative merits of these and, by encoding a small sample of material, gain an understanding of how markup and encoding can contribute to the interpretation of texts. We will explore some simple tools for the analysis and manipulation of electronic texts and examine their application for literary and linguistic studies. We will examine the application of basic descriptive and inferential statistics to text analysis. Finally, we will see how structured and relational databases can be used to store and analyse certain types of humanities-related material.

2. Hypertext theory. The prophecy that electronic writing will transform the nature of literary studies is one that is now heard with increasing frequency. It advocates have recently begun to put a new and powerful argument: computer technology for transmitting or representing texts within the medium of hypertext will allow us to bring these processes a major step nearer to the activities of actual readers. This in turn is revolutionizing understanding of the nature of textuality itself, in line with the claims of postmodern theorists from Barthes to Hillis Miller. If this is true, the forthcoming shift in the domain of the literary will be on a tectonic scale, analogous to that brought about in the visual arts by the invention of photography and film. In this course we will examine critically the arguments for the postmodern status of hypertext, and consider to what extent such accounts of electronic textuality agree with what is known about writing and reading, both theoretically and empirically. We will also study some of the pedagogical evaluations of hypertext in order to assess their role in teaching and learning.

3. Hypertext writing. The course is a nontraditional "immersion" laboratory (3-hour classes). We will explore and analyse visual and verbal aspects of electronic writing as well as selected earlier experimental approaches to reading and writing in, for instance, poetry and film. While we develop introductory skills in hypertext writing, electronic graphics, scanning photographs, animation, sound, and video, etc., we will be required to analyse some of the contextual issues concerning electronic communication and virtuality. The lab will be structured around a series of writing experiments, intensive readings, group projects, as well as the production of an individual hypertext by each participant. Brown University describes their hypertext workshops (offered since 1991) as "providing an opportunity for writers to experiment with the nonlinear, multidimensional, interactive space of the computer." Our course will do this and more! As incoming students become more proficient in computing, the course will be adapted to include more critical thinking about writing and technology, especially in relation to other media.

4. Cyberculture. The subject of study is cyberculture and virtual communities. What began as a small group of people communicating over the Internet in the days before the invention of a windows-type Web browser has now been transformed into a multi-faceted international virtual world, with many subcultures interacting over the Internet, using textual and graphical means of communication. We will examine who forms and has access to these communities (haves and have nots), the types of communities (social, professional, commercial, self-help) and the electronic mediums they use, and the forms of representation in use, including the issues of power, and gender that these raise. We will examine the debate about virtual reality, and consider the relation of VR to narrativity, the body, and identity. Students will examine the Internet as well as some of the speculative fiction from which conceptions of cyberspace have developed (e.g., Gibson's Neuromancer).

• The Electronic Labyrinth: Christopher Keep, Tim McLaughlin, robin (University of Victoria). A useful, if now a little dated, primer to a number of core concepts for understanding hypertext.
• Carol Guyer, Written on the Web. On the state of hypertext fiction.
• Modern Fiction Studies 43.3, Fall 1997. A collection of essays edited by N. Katherine Hayles on the topic 'Technocriticism and Hypernarrative.' Authors include Michael Joyce, Stuart Moulthrop, Marie-Laure Ryan, and Robert Markley. (U of A access only)
• Barbara Page, Women Writers and the Restive Text: Feminism, Experimental Writing and Hypertext. Journal of Postmodern Culture 6.2 (January 1996). (U of A access only). On the implications for feminism of 'nonlinear, antihierarchical and decentered writing.'
• Jerome McGann, The Rationale of HyperText (1995).
• Jerome McGann, Radiant Textuality (1996).
• David Golumbia, Hypercapital. On the politics of information access and its hidden liabilities.
• Nancy Kaplan, E-Literacies.
• John Unsworth, Electronic Scholarship or, Scholarly Publishing and the Public. See also other online papers by Unsworth listed here.
• Alan Liu, Transcriptions: Literary History and the Culture of Information: "a series of web pages designed to tease out connections between literary artifacts and material technology, in the past (the relation between literature and the book) for the sake of understanding the present (the relation between literature and new media)."
• James H. Coombs, Allen H. Renear, and Steven J. DeRose, Markup Systems and the Future of Scholarly Text Processing (1987).
• Allen Renear and Jerome McGann, speakers in What is text? A debate on the philosophical and epistemological nature of text in the light of humanities computing research. ACHALLC99, University of Virginia, June 1999.
• Computers and Texts, journal/newsletter of the CTI Centre for Textual Studies, Oxford.
• Computers in the Humanities Working Papers, University of Toronto
• The EText Pages: information, resources
• Palinurus: The Academy and the Corporation (Alan Liu). Includes critical reviews of technology-based initiatives (click on Featured Controversies, and watch left-hand frame).

Document compiled on behalf of the Computer Committee, Department of English, University of Alberta, by David S. Miall

November 14th 2000 / Revised February 26th 2001