551.336 (19S) Advanced Topics in Literature and Culture Studies: Interrogating the Public and Digital Humanities

Sommersemester 2019

Registration deadline has expired.

First course session
07.03.2019 14:00 - 16:00 N.0.27 On Campus
... no further dates known

Overview

Lecturer
Course title german Advanced Topics in Literature and Culture Studies: Interrogating the Public and Digital Humanities
Type Seminar (continuous assessment course )
Hours per Week 2.0
ECTS credits 8.0
Registrations 7 (20 max.)
Organisational unit
Language of instruction English
Course begins on 07.03.2019
eLearning Go to Moodle course
Remarks (english)

This seminar will include a 2-day excursion to Vienna.

Time and place

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Course Information

Intended learning outcomes

  • An understanding of the theories and methodologies that undergird work in the public and digital humanities, and the specific issues that attend to creating and disseminating narratives and interpretations for public audiences and online;
  • Insights into what it means to engage with difficult, troubling, and silenced histories and subjects relating to the study of the United States’ past and present, and an understanding of what different publics stand to gain from projects that challenge audiences to embrace critical perspectives;
  • An understanding of the tensions that exist between the production of public and digital humanities’ projects for commercial, civic, and entertainment purposes and the funding issues, politics, and market pressures that dictate why certain tropes and narratives dominate;
  •  An awareness of efforts to make the humanities “usable” in public policy debates and social activism;
  • A comparative perspective on how public and digital humanities work, as it is being generated in the United States, might inform the production of comparable work in Austria.

Course content

Engagement with the humanities is rarely confined to academic classrooms. Cultural and political interpretations of the past and present are produced by diverse individuals with a range of agendas. In the United States, museums, monuments, historic sites, walking tours, and public art installations represent just some of the mediums through which the public encounters American culture, history, and politics. In the twenty-first century, digital platforms such as online exhibitions, archives, and video games continue to radically transform how members of the public consume and engage the humanities.

This course provides a critical perspective on the theory, methods, practice, and politics of the public humanities, and is designed to familiarize students with the possibilities and challenges that come with producing and disseminating humanities content in nonacademic settings.  This class will also explore the ways in which public humanities projects can complement community advocacy work and civic engagement.

Although our focus will be on the public and digital humanities in the United States, a further goal of this course will be to use our studies to provide a comparative framework for making sense of where the public humanities stand in Austria, Europe, and across the world. To this end, we will analyze how different nations and peoples create public art, culture, and history, and what uses they assign these interventions.

Literature

There are no required books to be purchased for this course. I'll make all of the readings available as pdfs.

Examination information

Im Fall von online durchgeführten Prüfungen sind die Standards zu beachten, die die technischen Geräte der Studierenden erfüllen müssen, um an diesen Prüfungen teilnehmen zu können.

Grading scheme

Grade / Grade grading scheme

Position in the curriculum

  • Master's degree programme English and American Studies (SKZ: 812, Version: 18W.1)
    • Subject: Literature and Culture Studies (Compulsory elective)
      • 3.5 Advanced Topics in Literature and Culture Studies II ( 0.0h SE / 8.0 ECTS)
        • 551.336 Advanced Topics in Literature and Culture Studies: Interrogating the Public and Digital Humanities (2.0h SE / 8.0 ECTS)
          Absolvierung im 2. Semester empfohlen
  • Master's degree programme English and American Studies (SKZ: 812, Version: 11W.1)
    • Subject: Film, Literature and Culture Studies (Compulsory elective)
      • Advanced Topics in „Film, Literature and Culture Studies” ( 0.0h SE / 8.0 ECTS)
        • 551.336 Advanced Topics in Literature and Culture Studies: Interrogating the Public and Digital Humanities (2.0h SE / 8.0 ECTS)
  • Master's degree programme Game Studies and Engineering (SKZ: 992, Version: 17W.2)
    • Subject: Gebundenes Wahlfach (Compulsory elective)
      • Module: Game Studies
        • Advanced Topics in Film, Literature and Culture Studies ( 0.0h SE / 8.0 ECTS)
          • 551.336 Advanced Topics in Literature and Culture Studies: Interrogating the Public and Digital Humanities (2.0h SE / 8.0 ECTS)
            Absolvierung im 1., 2., 3. Semester empfohlen

Equivalent courses for counting the examination attempts

This course is not assigned to a sequence of equivalent courses