Department of English

This course will take another look at the conventions of close reading in the context of the recent concept of distant reading. Distant reading, which has been made possible through data mining processes, is prevalent in Digital Humanities; however the strategy is mostly applied to novels. This course will apply distant reading to poetry and combine it with close reading. Texts will include Distant Reading by Peter Middleton, Graphs Maps Trees by Franco Moretti, as well as works by Emily Dickinson, T.S. Eliot, Gertrude Stein, Harryette Mullen, and Tan Lin.

    This course will be co-taught by Jena Osman, Temple University, and Bob Perelman, University of Pennsylvania; bureaucratically, it is two courses (Osman grading Temple students; Perelman grading Penn students) meeting at the same time and place.