Schedule & Readings

Class Schedule

n.b. Keep in mind that some of this schedule could change throughout the quarter. However, if anything changes I’ll be sure to give you plenty of advance notice.

Tuesdays we will meet as a group on Zoom; Thursdays you will work independently.

Workshops for Thursday will be posted immediately after Tuesday’s class, to the Workshops page.

Date Material
Week 1  
Thu 1 Apr Introductions
Week 2  
Tue 6 Apr The Story of Your Life (clips from Arrival)
by Thu 8 Apr Workshop: Stop Sign
Week 3  
Tue 13 Apr The Staple of News, Acts I-III
by Thu 15 Apr Workshop: How Books are Made
Week 4  
Tue 20 Apr The Staple of News, Acts IV & V
by Thu 22 Apr Workshop: EEBO, XML, & Digital Editing
Week 5  
Tue 27 Apr Areopagitica, The Narrative of Frederick Douglas Ch. 1, 6, & 7
by Thu 29 Apr Workshop: Networks
Week 6  
Tue 4 May Dickinson poems, When Novels Were Bad for You, Sea and Spar Between
by Thu 6 May No Workshop, work on midterm
Week 7  
Mon 10 May Midterm Essay Due
Tue 11 May Selections from Americanah
by Thu 13 May Workshop: Text as Interface
Week 8  
Tue 18 May Station Eleven
by Thu 20 May Workshop: Poetry chatbot
Week 9  
Tue 25 May Station Eleven, more from Algorithms of Oppression
by Thu 27 May Workshop: Building a search engine
Week 10  
Tue 1 June Lightning Presentations and Wrap-Up
by Thu 3 June Workshop: Work on your Final Projects (meet w/ me individually)

Course Materials

Most of our course materials will be PDFs (posted to the Files section of canvas), or links shared in the schedule above. For your own convenience, and to make our longer readings easier, you may consider purchasing the two books listed below. However, having physical copies of these is not a prerequisite for the class: if you can’t get these books for any reason, simply let me know, and we’ll work it out.

  • Ben Jonson The Staple of News (ISBN 9780719059063)
  • Emily St. John Mandel Station Eleven (ISBN 0804172447)