Courses

This class is about Renaissance humanists and how we can use digital means, as well as traditional ones, to study them. Our particular focus is on the ways people were connected in the renaissance -- as patrons, as readers, as travelers, as correspondents. Students will gather data about the travels and connections of their individual humanists. Then, working in groups, they will form databases and use mapping and network analysis on their data to chart interconnections between these historical figures over time.

Describing the dynamic interaction of places, times, languages, identities, cultural formats, dominant and marginal narratives that characterize diasporic culture appears to require a multidimensionality that the “map” metaphor seems to elude.

The digital revolution has changed the way we interact with the world, with other people, and with our culture. This course will investigate the ways in which technological change has affected the study of human beings. Our goal will be to look critically at how technological media (and the various forms of mediation they involve) condition the kinds of questions we ask as humanistic scholars. However, we will also study how technology alters the very way human beings think.

Many products of human invention — political speeches, product reviews, status updates on Twitter and Facebook, literary texts, music, and paintings — have been analyzed, not uncontroversially, as “data”.

Trying to bridge the gap between artists and critics, this exciting course engages in the critical making of digital literature together with the writing of scholarly essays on related topics. “Electronic Literature: A Critical Writing & Making Course” is a hybrid class that combines humanities literary analysis with the teaching of digital tools and resources through practical, hands-on work.

The practice and theory of contextual instrument design for use in musical expression is explored. Students create new instruments and performance environments using a variety of physical interaction paradigms, programming practices, and musical processes emerging from the UC Berkeley Center for New Music and Audio Technologies (CNMAT). Building on the methodologies established in Music 158A, the course develops aesthetic, analytic and technical skills through discussion, empirical study, and collaborative engagement.

This course will provide graduate students the critical technical skills necessary to conduct research in computational social science and digital humanities, introducing them to the basic computer literacy, programming skills, and application knowledge that students need to be successful in further methods work. The course is divided into three main sections: skills, applications, and community engagement. The “skills” portion will introduce students to basic computer literacy, terminologies, and programming languages - i.e. Unix Shell, R, Python, and Git.

In this seminar we will study the wall paintings of palaces, temples, and tombs from pre-Hispanic Mexico, Guatemala, and Peru with an emphasis on the early periods prior to the Aztec and Inca empires. Secondarily, we will examine colonial, modern, and contemporary legacies of indigenous painting in Latin America and the United States. Readings will come from art historical and archaeological literature, as well as critical sources on space and proxemics, the built environment, and embodiment and subjectivity.

Explore the intersection of music and computers using a combination of scientific, technological, and artistic methodologies. Musical concerns within a computational frame are addressed through the acquisition of basic programming skills for the creation and control of digital sound. Will learn core concepts and techniques of computer-based music composition using the Cycling74/MaxMSP programming environment in combination with associated software tools and programming approaches created by the Center for New Music and Audio Technologies.