Winter 2021 Graduate Courses

Winter 2021

Digital Humanities 201: Introduction to Digital Humanities

Instructor: Miriam Posner

This course is an introduction to the Digital Humanities, its methods, theories, and applications in humanistic research. It covers a variety of digital tools and approaches to organize, explore, understand, present and tell stories with data. In this course, you will learn how to reverse engineer DH projects to understand how they were built; identify, use, and discuss the advantages and disadvantages of different tools and methodologies; develop strong humanistic research questions that can be answered through digital research methods; conduct original research; and build a collaborative digital project. You will also learn how to organize and clean data, develop charts, create spatial and network visualizations, work with a content management system, and use basic text analysis tools to explore qualitative data. Often the best digital humanities projects are the result of collaboration, so you will learn how to work effectively and efficiently in teams as you build project management skills.

Each unit will guide you through the development, analysis, and application of the skills listed under the course learning goals. In each unit, you will also critique examples of research projects that employ the methods and/or tools that you are learning. This class meets twice a week for interactive lectures and once a week in smaller lab sections; additional group work outside of the allocated class time will be necessary. We will discuss ways to organize in-person meetings, as well as ways to stay on track through virtual simultaneous and asynchronous group work. No prior experience is necessary, and there are no prerequisites.

Digital Humanities 299: Architectural Reconstructions on Broadway

Instructor: Anthony Caldwell

The historic theaters in Downtown Los Angeles are part of a rich cultural legacy that provides insight into the architectural practices of the early 20th century. This project investigates how these monuments were constructed, decorated, and used through in-depth archival research, photogrammetric modeling, and a variety of interactive visualizations including virtual and augmented reality platforms.
Students will identify a topic of interest and work in groups to produce an experience and documentation detailing their research, procedures, and process.

[Course will be listed under Professor Ashley Sanders Garcia but taught by Professor Caldwell.]

French 219: 19th Century

Instructor:

Readings in 19th-century literature, covering development of novel, lyric poetry, and theater from Romantic period to “fin-de-siecle.”

French 220: 20th Century

Instructor: Lia Brozgal

Overview, both historical and analytical, of 20th-century French literature set in context of several key critical topics that interrogate canonical interpretation.

German 263: Seminar: Literary Theory

Instructor: Kalani Michell

Seminar 1. Special focus on particular theoretical school or interpretive paradigm.

German 265: German Philosophy

Instructor: John McCumber

German philosophical tradition is one of most influential, difficult, and problematic Western world has known. Beginning with Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason and continuing through Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, and Heidegger to Arendt and thinkers of Frankfurt school, German philosophers have explored, more deeply and rigorously than any other Western thinkers, nature and limits (if any) of human mental activity. Results have been basic to social, political, and aesthetic theory as well as to philosophy itself. Exploration of thought of one member of that tradition by concentrating yearly on one exemplary text.

Italian 298: Variable Topics

Instructor: Massimo Ciavolella

Seminar focusing on themes and issues outside the uniquely Italian literature topics covered in regular departmental graduate courses.

Italian M241: Seminar: Political Geography of Italy

Instructor: John Agnew

Themes in political geography with particular emphasis on Italy.