DH Meet-Up Recap: WLLC Spring 2024 Courses

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Graduate students in attendance for the DH Meet-Up on Nov. 9.

On Thursday, Nov. 9, the World Languages and Digital Humanities Studio (JBHT 207) hosted a Digital Humanities Meet-Up that showcased spring WLLC courses that feature a digital or media component and/or explore a digital aspect. Faculty and graduate students discussed 11 courses that span several areas of study in both language and culture.  

Below is the list and individual summaries of the courses being offered this spring:  

SPAN 4874: Creative Writing in Spanish - "Spaces of intemperie" (Erika Almenara) 
TuTh: 2 to 3:15 p.m.
Professor Almenara will bring her expertise and research into this creative writing course on "Spaces of intemperie," which explores themes of belonging, healing, love, friendship, vulnerability, queerness and what it means to exist. Last fall, Almenara organized a reading of the poems created by her students in the course.  

FREN 4113: Survey of French Theatre (Maria Comsa) 
MWF 3:05 to 3:55 p.m. 
Created by professor Comsa, this upper-level French course will explore and visualize four centuries of French theater by using Voyant, an open-source web application and DH tool for performing text analysis. Students will collaborate in the target language to build a web page and/or other digital modalities of expression. Comsa's course placed second in the World Culture & DH Futures Project Pitch held at an earlier DH Meet-Up this semester.

WLLC 398V-002/575V-002: Digital Humanities Special Topics - "Videogames and Human Agency" (Curtis Maughan) 
TuTh: 2 to 3:15 p.m., JBHT 255 
In this course with professor Maughan, students will explore how human agency can be created through videogames by focusing on a collection of serious videogames, including Through the Darkest of Times, in which players lead a resistance group in Berlin during the Nazi era. Students will engage with critical theories through a range of media studies and philosophical texts, including C. Thi Nguyen's Games: Agency as Art. This course is open to undergraduate and graduate students; no prerequisites.  

FREN 3003: "Around the World in 75 Minutes" (Annie Doucet) 
TuTh: 11 a.m. to 12:15 p.m.
Professor Doucet will take FREN 3003 students on a tour of the French-speaking world, expanding to all locations in the Francophonie with virtual explorations with Google VR & AR. Students will be able to interact with their virtual surroundings to navigate areas they may not otherwise be able to visit in person and engage with French-speaking regions in their target language (French).  

CLST 3023; GREK 4043; LATN 4033: Greek & Roman Theatre (Daniel Levine and Joy Reeber) 
TuTh: 11 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. 
Professors Levine and Reeber will explain what went on in ancient Greek and Roman performances spaces and how such performances reflected the ideas and social constructs of the times, as well as the impact on human interaction. Students will learn how the ideas have taken shape over time and across a range of media, from analog to digital.   

WLLC 398V-009: Special Topics Taught in English - "Carnival in Latin America" (Renato Amado) 
MWF: 3:05 to 4:20 p.m. 
This Special Topics course with professor Amado will explore the origins of "Carnival," the worldwide festive celebration, and the relationship between Carnival and national identity. "Carnival in Latin America" will investigate the diverse ethnic origins of Carnival and Carnival beyond Rio de Janeiro.  

ARHS 4423/4423H/6423; CLST 4423: Roman Art & Archaeology (Rhodora Vennarucci) 
Students in this course will trace the development of Roman visual and material culture from the Archaic through Late Antique periods, exploring how material objects and visual imagery both shaped and were shaped by different social groups and cultural identities. Students will analyze an authentic Roman artifact at the University Museum and will be transported to the past with virtual reconstructions of Roman houses and shops. This course is open to undergraduates, honors and graduate students. 

AAST 3353: Black Digital Storytelling (Chy'Na Nellon) 
TuTh: 11 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. 
This course will explore the landscape of digital humanities from a standpoint of Black diasporic scholarship and praxis. Students will create a group DH project using the parameters of Black DH as a guide. Currently, Nellon is a researcher at the WLDH Studio and a Ph.D. student in comparative literature and cultural studies.  

SPAN 4073: Introduction to Hispanic Linguistics (Heather Offerman)
MWF 12:55 to 1:45 p.m.

Professor Offerman's course will look at the science of language, focusing specifically on Spanish, with comparisons to English as well. Students will look at the main features of the Spanish linguistic system through a series of quantitative and qualitive methodologies. The course will include "laboratory" days in which speech will be analyzed in class.

Faculty from the Department of World Languages, Literatures and Cultures attend the DH Meet-Up on Nov. 9.

Additionally, there were two special entries from Spanish teaching assistants Guillermo Pupo Pernet and Isidoro Villa Ligero, both of whom are also Ph.D. candidates in comparative literature and cultural studies. Pupo Pernet described a proposed a course titled "Transmediating the 18th Century," in which students will explore the historical context of the 18th century and its influence on global knowledge. Additionally, students will critically assess travel accounts, illustrations, maps and modern video game representations of 18th-century history.  

Villa Ligero discussed a podcast project from his Intermediate Spanish II (SPAN 2013) course last spring, which he proposed to continue this coming spring. The project, "NWA Habla Español Podcast Project: Entrevistas de Trabajo," had student pairs leading a podcast, in which they recorded a five-minute mock job interview in Spanish. Students learned practical interview skills as well as critical conversational skills in the target language.

The final DH Meet-Up of the semester, "AI in the Classroom," will be held from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. on Nov. 30 in the studio (JBHT 207). This interdisciplinary panel will discuss case studies and draw from their in-class experience with AI. The panelists are: 

• Maggie Fernandes (English)   

• Ken Muessig (Global Campus)  

• Guillermo Pupo Pernet (Comp Lit and Cultural Studies)  

• Curtis Maughan (World Languages, Literatures & Cultures and Digital Humanities)

Please RSVP for the Meet-Up using this form: https://forms.office.com/r/7LC35XFzTC.