The emergence of a reality organized around the Internet is provoking a profound crisis of identity in which the older principles of self-orientation and communitarian identification lose their effectiveness. What concepts, what methods do we need to understand the “knowledge space” in which we live an increasing part of our life? How can we orient our individual and professional identity within it?

This course will study the reconfiguration of literary studies in the context of the transformation introduced by the use of Internet and digital technologies in our cultural, personal and social identity. At the same time, it will develop digital literacies in using and creating digital artefacts that will complement in a practical dimension the theoretical insights discussed in the first part of the course. Students will engage in new ways of reading, writing, translating and interpreting literary texts in an hypertextual digital environment; also, they will learn to appreciate the increasing interdisciplinarity of knowledge in Digital Humanities.

Digital Cultures is divided in four modules. In the first one we will study in a speculative perspective the key terms in digital cultures: space and time, cyberspace, collective intelligence, network, hypertext, virtuality and actuality. In the second module we will engage the cognitive dimension of computer technology focusing on digital research, topic modeling, textual analysis, close and distant reading. In the third module, we will address and perform the remediation of literature in social and new media. The last module will focus on the dark side of internet and address question of ethics, privacy and surveillance.

Finally, we will discuss the future of the book and examine a variety of digital projects focused on the literature and culture of Medieval, Early Modern and Modern times, including (but not limited to) the Oregon Petrarch Open Book, the Pico Project, the Galileo Library Project, and the ARTFL Encyclopédie Project.

The class is taught in English. Undergraduate students doing their assignments in French, Italian or Spanish may apply the credits of this course toward their specific minor or major. MA students will have the option of focusing their work in one of the four literary periods in which the MA coursework is divided.

Requirements: Participation  (30%); Personal Blog (20%); Final Project (30%). Students may choose ONE of the following options for the final project: a) 2 brief essays (4 pages each for undergraduate; 8 pages for graduate students); b) 1 long essay 6-8 pages (undergraduate); 12-16 pages (graduate); c) Translation in French or Spanish of the Twitter edition of Francesco Petrarca Canzoniere realized by previous students of this course; d) Production of a "remediation" of a literary work to be discussed with the teacher. For example a group of students may produce new Tweets staging a Twitter dialogue between the poems of Petrarca and Eighteenth-century Italian woman poet Pellegra Bongiovanni; e)  A structured expansion of the personal blog; f) Production of one digital artifact (podcast or video) to illustrate one of the aspect discussed in the course. Final Presentation: an advanced draft of the final project (20%)