AML 5017 Spring 2019 Kilgore

This seminar explores the academic creation of digital archives, the critical practice of their usage, and the way that web-based humanistic inquiry transforms our models and methods for reading, analyzing, and understanding literary corpora. We will take up this topic by focusing on the outstanding digital archives of three singular poets—William Blake, Emily Dickinson, and Walt Whitman. While my hope is that we’ll experiment and play with all the functional possibilities of the archives, we'll primarily approach each poet’s work according to the unique design of his or her corpus and respective archive: for Blake, "Poetry and the Image"; for Dickinson, "Poetry and the Manuscript”; for Whitman, “Poetry and the Edition.” Attendantly, we will read scholarship devoted to studying Blake, Dickinson, and Whitman in the Digital Age; and students will in turn develop and produce their own critical analysis of one poet vis-à-vis some aspect of the online archive.