In this paper, I show how, as a philologist, William Strunk’s approach to language was a rich historical and rhetorical experience far from the prescriptivism E.B. White ascribes to him in the first edition of The Elements of Style (1959). An interesting historical parallel exists between Strunk’s tenure as a PhD student in philology at Cornell…[Read more]

The attached syllabus was written for my Spring 2017 Freshman Year Seminar course “How We Read.” This was a freshman-only seminar oriented towards introducing how different fields ask questions and solve problems. From the course description: “In this seminar, we explore the histories, sciences, and technologies of reading. Guest lectures and…[Read more]

The attached syllabus was written for my Spring 2017 graduate course “Technologies of Literary Production.” From the course description: “This course has two complementary goals. The first is to introduce the history of technologies used to produce and circulate literature, from the parchment upon which Beowulf is written to the social media…[Read more]

Syllabus for digital literature course

Peer review’s importance in academic research and scholarship suggests that it may present a particularly challenging and useful design problem for the digital humanities. How might scholars who are particularly engaged with the challenges presented by networks for the gathering, structuring, and analysis of data work together to develop flexible…[Read more]

Syllabus for a graduate level methods survey (introductory) course for the digital humanities. Taught Fall 2016 at Dartmouth College for the Masters of Arts in Liberal Studies (MALS) program.

Steering committee’s opening roundtable for conference on the present and future of digital humanities at UVA: the career path of a feminist who embraced “A Cyborg Manifesto,” learned to love bibliography, libraries, and technology, and urges cross-pollination: “thrilling tedium of growing things together,” getting our hands dirty in humanist…[Read more]

Recent theorizations of archival silence signal a heightened and expanding concern with information that is lost, concealed, destroyed or simply not available for scholarly use. As our access to the archive becomes more dependent upon technologies of the interface, scholars exhibit increasing concern about the impact of digital affordances and…[Read more]

Scholars have long been interested in networks. Networks of scholarly exchange, trade, kinship, and patronage are some of the many such longstanding subjects of study. Recent and ongoing digital humanities projects are now considering networks with fresh approaches and increasingly complex datasets. At the heart of these digital projects are…[Read more]

The presentation is a Powerpoint slide show that covers the new MLA 8 documentation for classroom use. The presentation covers the nine core elements, with brief explanations and examples of how to properly use them in writing citations.

The presentation is a Powerpoint slide show that covers the new MLA 8 documentation for classroom use. The presentation covers the nine core elements, with brief explanations and examples of how to properly use them in writing citations.

This infographic represents an in-progress attempt by the #Humetrics team at TriangleSCI to pin down values that, if encouraged and incentivized in the academy, would enrich and improve humanities scholarship. It is meant to start a conversation. What are we missing? See more about the process and thinking behind this approach at…[Read more]

This infographic represents an in-progress attempt by the #Humetrics team at TriangleSCI to pin down values that, if encouraged and incentivized in the academy, would enrich and improve humanities scholarship. It is meant to start a conversation. What are we missing? See more about the process and thinking behind this approach at…[Read more]

“Carbon and Conferences (Again)” offers one person’s experience of trying to get to the Austin MLA conference by a means other than airplanes. It asks fellow MLA members for more collective, mindful attention to the carbon footprint of the conference generally. While acknowledging the intellectual and personal joy in face to face encounters, it…[Read more]

In this paper we present a statistical method for inferring historical social networks from biographical documents as well as the scholarly aims for doing so. Existing scholarship on historical social networks is scattered across an unmanageable number of disparate books and articles. A researcher interested in how persons were connected to one…[Read more]

Most critics of contemporary literature have reached a consensus that what was once called “postmodernism” is over and that its signature modes—metafiction and irony—are on the wane. This is not the case, however, with videogames. In recent years, a number of self-reflexive games have appeared, exemplified by Davey Wreden’s The Stanley Parable (…[Read more]

Anxieties abound regarding the ostensible obsolescence of the book. Exploring whether the book is in fact becoming obsolete — and what it might mean if it were — requires thinking distinctly about the specific material form of the book (the codex) and about the content that it has long carried. If the form were to change — becoming digital, for i…[Read more]