LIT-204 Hidden Figures and Cultural Calculations (3)

This course explores what quantitative reasoning can tell us about literature, what literature can tell us about quantitative reasoning, and what they have to tell us about regimes of power and social inequity. Through fiction, film, and the Internet, the course studies the interfaces of data, culture, and power in our current moment and at specific moments in the past. Students apply the tools of literary and cultural analysis to examine the ways algorithms and other forms of data organization in contemporary technology establish, perpetuate, and at times work against social inequity. At the same time, they apply data analysis and other quantitative methods to provide context and depth to literary and cultural analysis. Students practice and refine tools and methods for identifying patterns, models, and other formal elements of literary and cultural texts; for processing and interpreting these elements in terms of the data they present; and for representing the results in quantitative frameworks such as logical propositions, graphs, charts, and maps. AU Core Integrative Requirement: Quantitative Literacy II. Usually Offered: fall and spring. Grading: A-F only. Prerequisite: completion of Quantitative Literacy I requirement.

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