F1621 Digital Tools for the Humanities: Critical Perspectives (Cultural Heritage Sp. track)

Maximum Class Size: 19. All sessions in the Mac Lab

Course Description. 

New digital tools are revolutionizing instruction in the humanities around the world.  This course will explore some of the most powerful of these new tools and their ramifications for the ways that students in the future will engage with literature, history, art, linguistics, and music. Throughout the course students will have opportunities to investigate underlying philosophical, aesthetic, and moral issues related to the digitalization of the humanities.  In particular, we will draw upon the rich cultural heritage of Italy to inquire after what the difference is, for example, between seeing the Piazza San Marco in person and seeing digitally enhanced versions on-line. Is there no substitute for the viewing of the Piazza in person, or are there some ways in which a digital representation actually is superior?  Is there a way in which the original and the digital can interact with one another to shape an optimal experience for the viewer? Likewise, how does the experience of listening to a Youtube clip of an aria from an opera compare to the experience of listening to it in the Fenice Opera House in Venice? Can one experience amplify and enrich the other—or are there some trade-offs that all students of art and culture should be aware of?

To explore these issues, the course will provide paired sets of activities for each class session that will compare and contrast original works of the humanities with digital representations. Students will have opportunities to engage with new digital tools and will develop their own protocols for assessing the tools that will be reviewed in class collaboratively.  At the same time, students will read a variety of far-reaching analyses of new technologies to illuminate the myriad ways in which habits and taste are being constantly reformed.

In the final third of the course the emphasis of the readings will be on the future of the humanities in an age of increased technological consumption and production.  These will lead towards a culminating final paper in which students will advance their own independent interpretations of the digitalization of the humanities in the future.

Anticipated learning outcomes:
Students will learn to develop their skills as independent thinkers, incisive and critical writers, and collaborative interpreters of the humanities in their original and in new digitized formats.  They will explore works of art, literature, and music and will inquire after their impacts with and without digitalized representations.  They will learn to advance arguments in favor of their interpretations and to anticipate and respond to the critiques of others.  Students will complete course having a achieved a more sophisticated and nuanced appreciation of the humanities and their digital representations.

Required preliminary knowledge:
Students need to have a freshman-level knowledge of the humanities along with some skill and curiosity in exploring and interpreting new technologies.