Text
[1] Prof. Katherine Rowe‘s blue-haired
avatar was flying across a grassy landscape
to a virtual three-dimensional re-creation of
the Globe Theater, where some students
[5] from her introductory Shakespeare class at
Bryn Mawr College had already gathered
online. Their assignment was to create
characters on the Web site Theatron3 and
use them to block scenes from the gory
[10] revenge tragedy ''Titus Andronicus,'' to see
how setting can heighten the drama. ''I‘ve
done this class before in a theater and a
lecture hall, but it doesn‘t work as well,'' Ms.
Rowe said, explaining that it was difficult
[15] for students to imagine what it would be like
to put on a production in the 16th-century
Globe, a circular open-air theater without
electric lights, microphones and a curtain.
Jennifer Cook, a senior, used her laptop
[20] to move a black-clad avatar center stage.
She and the other half-dozen students
agreed that in ''Titus,'' the rape, murders and
final banquet — when the Queen
unknowingly eats the remains of her two
[25] children — should all take place in the same
spot. ''Every time someone is in that space,''
Ms. Cook said, ''the audience is going to say,
''Uh oh, you don‘t want to be there.‘ ''
Students like Ms. Cook are among the
[30] first generation of undergraduates at dozens
of colleges to take humanities courses '
even Shakespeare ''that are deeply
influenced by a new array of powerful digital
tools and vast online archives. Ms. Rowe‘s
[35] students, who have occasionally met with
her on the virtual Globe stage while wearing
pajamas in their dorm rooms, are
enthusiastic about the technology.
At the University of Virginia, history
[40] undergraduates have produced a digital
visualization of the college‘s first library
collection, allowing them to consider what
the selection of books says about how
knowledge was classified in the early 18th
[45] century. At Hamilton College, students can
explore a virtual re-creation of the South
African township of Soweto during the 1976
student uprisings, or sign up for ''e-black
studies'' to examine how cyberspace reflects
[50] and shapes the portrayal of minorities.
Many teachers and administrators are
only beginning to figure out the contours of
this emerging field of digital humanities, and
how it should be taught. In the classroom,
[55] however, digitally savvy undergraduates are
not just ready to adapt to the tools but also
to explore how new media may alter the very
process of reading, interpretation and
analysis. ''There‘s a very exciting generation
[60] gap in the classroom,'' said Ms. Rowe, who
developed the digital components of her
Shakespeare course with a graduate student
who now works at Google. ''Students are
fluent in new media, and the faculty bring
[65] sophisticated knowledge of a subject. It‘s a
gap that won‘t last more than a decade. In
10 years these students will be my
colleagues, but now it presents unusual
learning opportunities.'' As Ms. Cook said,
[70] ''The Internet is less foreign to me than a
Shakespeare play written 500 years ago.''
Bryn Mawr‘s unusually close partnership
with Haverford College and Swarthmore
College has enabled the three institutions to
[75] pool their resources, students and faculty. In
November students from all three
participated in the first Digital Humanities
Conference for Undergraduates.
Jen Rajchel, one of the conference
[80] organizers, is the first undergraduate at Bryn
Mawr to have a digital senior thesis accepted
by the English department: a Web site and
archive on the American poet Marianne
Moore, who attended the college nearly a
[85] century ago. Presenting a Moore poem on
the Web site while simultaneously displaying
commentary in different windows next to the
text (as opposed to listing them in a paper)
more accurately reflects the work‘s multiple
[90] meanings, according to Ms. Rajchel. After all,
she argued in the thesis, Moore was acutely
aware of her audience and made subtle
alterations in her poems for different
publications — changes that are more easily
[95] illustrated by displaying the various versions.
The Web presentation of Moore‘s poetry also
allows readers to add comments and talk to
one another, which Ms. Rajchel believes
matches the poet‘s interest in opening a
[100] dialogue with her readers.
Particularly inspiring to Ms. Rajchel is
that her work doesn‘t disappear after being
deposited in a professor‘s in box. The site,
which includes scans of original documents
[105] from Bryn Mawr‘s library, was (and remains)
viewable. ''It really can go outside of the
classroom,'' she said, adding that an
established Marianne Moore scholar at
another university had left a comment.
[110] Doing research that lives outside the
classroom is also what drew Anna Levine, a
junior at Swarthmore, to digital humanities.
Over the summer and after class, she and
Richard Li, a senior at Swarthmore, worked
[115] with Rachel Buurma, an assistant professor
of literature there, to develop the Early
Novels Database for the University of
Pennsylvania‘s Rare Book and Manuscript
Library, which enables users to search more
[120] thoroughly through fiction published between
1660 and 1830. ''I am the one doing all the
grunt work,'' Ms. Levine said of her tasks,
which largely involve entering details about a
novel into the database. ''But one of the
[125] great things is as an undergraduate, it really
enables me to participate in a scholarly
community.''
In a Swarthmore lounge where Ms.
Buurma‘s weekly research seminar on
[130] Victorian literature and culture meets, Ms.
Levine and a handful of other students
recently settled into a cozy circle on stuffed
chairs and couches. As part of their class
work, they have been helping to correct the
[135] transcribed online versions of Household
Words and All the Year Round, two 19th-
century periodicals in which Charles Dickens
initially published some novels, including
''Great Expectations,'' in serial form. On a
[140] square coffee table sat a short stack of
original issues of the magazine that a
librarian had brought from the college‘s
discussed how the experience of reading
[145] differs, depending on whether the text is
presented in discrete segments, surrounded
by advertisements or in a leather binding;
whether you are working in an archive,
editing online or reading for pleasure.
[150] Those skeptical of the digital humanities
worry that the emphasis on data analysis will
distract students from delving deeply into the
heart and soul of literary texts. But Ms.
Buurma contends that these undergraduates
[155] are in fact reading quite closely.
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/March 21, 2011.
According to the text, students at the University of Virginia have been able to
