Seminar in Research Practices
Class Information
Instructor: Bloom, Stahmer
CRN: 44519
Time: M 12:10-3:00
Location: Remote Instruction
Description
English 280: Social Justice and the Digital Early Modern
This course aims to open up a conversation about the political and ethical stakes of research and teaching in the digital humanities by investigating digital projects in early modern studies. In and out of early modern studies, the subfield of digital humanities has sometimes been criticized for ignoring or sidelining race, gender, and social justice concerns. This course will explore the grounds for this critique and think about ways to address it by closely examining a range of digital tools being used by early modernists. How have digital projects in early modern studies been enabled or handicapped by the affordances of the tools available for project design? To what extent have major digital projects re-enacted or subverted social justice paradigms inherited from the early modern objects they collect and present? What questions and approaches are easiest to answer or pursue with these tools? What sorts of tools would need to be developed or altered to help early modernists pursue different questions, and particularly to account for social justice issues? What needs to happen to make the field of DH, in and out of early modern studies, more conducive to participation by scholars of color and women?