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Tuesdays 12.30-13.50 Rutherford 2.05A
(from Tuesday 18 January 2000)
Thursdays 12.30-13.50 HC 2.17
Tuesday and Thursday sessions January 11 and 13 will be
in HC 2.17
Objectives
This course will explore the ways in which computers can be used to assist
in the study of humanities disciplines, particularly those that are based
on textual material. It will begin with an examination of the World Wide
Web, which has led to an explosion in the growth of computer usage. We
will look at some issues in building Web sites for the humanities, in
terms of audience, longevity of the material, access tools and maintenance.
The course will also look at the many different formats of electronic
texts which now exist. We will assess the relative merits of these and,
by encoding a small sample of material, gain an understanding of how markup
and encoding can contribute to the interpretation of texts. We will explore
some simple tools for the analysis and manipulation of electronic texts
and examine their application for literary and linguistic studies. We
will examine the application of basic descriptive and inferential statistics
to text analysis. We
will
briefly look at hypertext: a few examples and a little of the theory.
Finally, we
will see how structured and relational databases can be used to store
and analyse certain types of humanities-related material.
Student registering
for the course must have up to date GPU access (i.e., know your ID and
password).
Required
texts
Geoff Barnbrook, Language and Computers. Columbia UP, 1997
Course pack of readings (in
bookstore)
Library reserve
Barnbrook
(as above)
J. F. Burrows, Computation into Criticism: A Study of Jane Austen's
Novels and an Experiment in Method. Oxford: Clarendon, 1987.
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