For Penn Undergrads, New Digital-Humanities Minor Offers Unique Perspectives on Conventional Ideas

Whitney Trettien has a unique perspective on books. The work of this assistant professor of English sits at the intersection of digital humanities and Renaissance literature.

In her course “The Digital Lives of Books,” to be offered for the first time during the spring 2018 semester, she’s turning on its head the idea that books can be only what they’ve historically been: tangible objects with words printed on a page. The class will consider the evolution of where readers purchase these items, from physical store to online retailer, as well as how authorship has transformed and what Trettien describes as the “shady underbelly” of digital-book piracy.

​​​​​​​“I want students to understand the pressure points and the pivots,” Trettien says. “Digital technologies are changing our culture, our politics, how we interact. How are they changing literature and the literary landscape?”

Trettien is one of the Penn professors actively incorporating digital humanities into her curriculum, as part of a new minor spearheaded by the Price Lab for Digital Humanities.

The initiative right now includes courses from the departments of Anthropology, Classical Studies, East Asian Languages and Civilizations, History, History and Sociology of Science, Political Science, Religious Studies and Sociology in the School of Arts and Sciences; the Fine Arts department in the School of Design; the Computer and Information Science department in the School of Engineering and Applied Science; and the Annenberg School for Communication. But Stewart Varner, Price Lab’s managing director, said he hopes and expects the list of approved courses and number of partner departments to grow.

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