Module One: Building Blocks, Shaping Texts
August 30 – September 8
Code/scripting languages: XHTML, CSS, JavaScript
Texts: “Johnny Mnemonic”, Causer & Terras, “Crowdsourcing Bentham: beyond the traditional boundaries of academic history.”
Case Studies: Transcribe Bentham, Livingstone Online
Reflection Post & Comments
Culminating Assignment: a multi-page website hosted on our course Netspace.
You will build your own website – shaping texts for presentation and publication. Learning HTML and CSS will provide you with the foundations of markup language – how we tell a computer, or millions of computers, how we want people to read our texts, give them style and emphasis. Learning JavaScript will make those published texts interactive, to help readers participate in the reading experience.
Module Two: Playing with Texts
September 13 – October 6
Code/scripting languages: JavaScript, Python
Texts: [TBD]
Case Studies: Playfic, Mustard, Music, and Murder, Open Sorcery, Images Across a Shattered Sea, Pretty Sure.
Reflection Post & Comments
Culminating Assignment: a complex multi-action text adventure game that is hosted on Netspace.
You will write your own text adventure game. Expanding your understanding of JavaScript and learning Python will help you to understand logic and narrative. As part of the culminating assignment we will play and give feedback on one another’s games.
Module Three: Encoding While Decoding
October 11 – November 3
Code/scripting languages: TEI-XML, CSS, XSLT, JavaScript)
Texts: [TBD]
Case Studies: Map of Early Modern London, Women Writers Project, 18th Connect
Reflection Post & Comments
Culminating Assignments:
1) A thoroughly marked up diplomatic and interpretive text (choice of four)
2) A “versioned” text (choice of two)
3) An assigned marked-up essay for publication on the Map of Early Modern London platform.
You will negotiate the meanings rooted within texts. Through close reading you will analyze people and places and the worlds they inhabit(ed). You will work data and metadata. You will build your own miniature digital edition and work on texts produced by other scholars – helping them to publish their work. You will also “mark up” images and give them context, and create hooks between texts and images.
Module Four: Roll Your Own
November 8 – December 6
Development and submission of final project.
