English Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2766
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Item Hacking Literature: Reading Analog Texts in a Digital Age(2014) Dinin, Aaron; Smith, Martha Nell; English Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Evangelists of the digital age, in the immediacy of its adolescence, often describe digital technologies as "revolutionary" (e.g. "the digital revolution") and as having a world-changing impact on human cultural interactions. However, by considering digital media from a temporally scaled vantage point spanning thousands of years, Hacking Literature proposes ways in which the digital age might also be introducing "world-saming" technologies that are as likely to reinstantiate cultural norms as they are to create new ones. Hacking Literature finds evidence for its arguments by considering examples of similar technological innovations prevalent in "revolutionary" technologies of information storage and dissemination: that of differently mediated literary texts. Using arguably iconic examples from Homer, Shakespeare, Eliot, and Dickinson (an epic, a drama, a novel, and poetry), and creating analogies between those texts and, respectively, the Linux kernel, Internet security protocols, the history of the World Wide Web, and the world's most successful blogging engine, Hacking Literature describes ways in which literary media and digital media appear to undergo similar kinds of technological transformations. The project then analyzes these similarities to suggest possible opportunities for using software development concepts as entry points for literary analysis, as critical lenses for reading that meld technology and humanities.Item Digital (In)Humanities: Re-reading Digital Archives as a Form of Cultural Expression(2009) Dinin, Aaron; Nell Smith, Martha; English Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)A 2007 PMLA article discussing the Walt Whitman Archive juxtaposed narrative and database as competing forms of cultural expression. This article incited a flurry of responses which continued to use the database and narrative comparison. Dinin, in his article "Digital (In)Humanities," reassesses the terms of the digital archive debate, arguing that the terms "narrative" and "database" are both constricting and misleading. The juxtaposition shouldn't be database versus narrative to see which one becomes the dominant form of cultural expression because narrative, he argues, is a form of database. The more proper juxtaposition, as presented by the paper, is one that places "digital archive" alongside "narrative" because both are products of database and both are forms of cultural expression. Dinin, in his article, then goes on to explore the potential of digital archives as a form of cultural expression.Item Remapping Dickinson and Periodical Studies(2004-04-27) Satelmajer, Ingrid; Smith, Martha N.; English Language and LiteratureMy dissertation addresses Emily Dickinson's neglected periodical poems of the 1890s. In examining these poems, it 1) updates and recasts the narrative of Dickinson's posthumous production and 2) challenges long-held assumptions about periodical culture that have contributed to that culture's neglect. Since circulation figures of the periodicals easily exceeded sales figures for Dickinson books in the 1890s and some poems remained uncollected until almost the mid-twentieth century, these poems are vital for understanding the reception and publishing history of Dickinson's poetry. Further, the movement beyond authorial intention in textual studies encourages us to look at "unsanctioned" texts like Dickinson's periodical poems. My project unseats the book-centered nature of production and reception narratives and challenges larger perceptions about the presentation and distribution of American poetry in the nineteenth century, foregrounding the central role periodicals played in fostering and recording readers' desire for the genre. This project initially examines how Dickinson's periodical texts worked in concert with the marketing of the four Dickinson books published in the 1890s: POEMS (1890), POEMS (1891), LETTERS (1894), and POEMS (1896). In such places as the children's magazine ST. NICHOLAS, the Dickinson editorial team of Thomas Wentworth Higginson and Mabel Loomis Todd sought out broader markets and worked to create an image of the poet that would increase the public's appetite for her. The periodicals, however, served as more than mere "handmaidens" to the books. My project employs archival research to examine how Higginson and Todd's editorial production of Dickinson after the author's death clashed with similar efforts in SCRIBNER'S MAGAZINE and the INDEPENDENT by Susan Dickinson (Dickinson's sister-in-law), an editor whose work has been ignored in part because her successes were realized solely in periodicals. But Dickinson's publication record also reveals that periodicals were not a transparent medium for the expression of editorial intention. The reader-based rejection of Dickinson in the CHRISTIAN REGISTER reveals the active role readers played in periodical culture. And in the YOUTH'S COMPANION, an early media giant, the concerns of a sizable and powerful institution trumped those of any author or author-based editor.