Data & Dames
British Women Writers & Information Technology
 Mary Shelley |
 Mary Seacole |
 Ada Lovelace |
As a study of women writers through a survey of significant poetry, drama, fiction, nonfiction, and/or film, this course focused on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century women poets, novelists, journalists, and life writers whose work addresses the British empire and issues of data, including but not limited to data collection, numbers, science, journalism, health, and finance.
The goals of this class were threefold: recover and expand knowledge about women’s contributions to information science and related social activism, consider and question what constitutes data and the role of the observer in data collection, and conduct and evaluate our own original research on women writers in the course. In working towards these goals, the class required close readings of primary texts and secondary texts from academia and popular culture.
In working towards these goals, the class required close readings of primary texts and secondary texts from academia and popular culture. Speaking to the course’s theme of data and information, class projects included creating Pinterest visual bibliography and using a listicle analyze education in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
Full Schedule of Readings and Assignments
A few of the Frankenstein listicles:
- https://nephinam.wordpress.com/2016/10/06/monster-by-education-5-terrible-life-lessons-that-doomed-frankensteins-monster/
- https://www.buzzfeed.com/taektrash/the-top-5-most-important-parts-of-frankensteins-m-2lze2?utm_term=.dgZzQZDQY#.uyxGW0OWy
- https://www.buzzfeed.com/hooplehead/frankensteins-monsters-education-a-listicle-2lzeu
For the final project, the students contributed articles and social media feeds to our very own virtual Victorian newspaper and submitted analytical and reflective essays on their chosen texts and authors: https://enggsw279fall2016.wordpress.com/.