This is the website containing the teaching material related to DIGITAL HUMANITIES: The Digital Humanities and U.S. Literary Studies, taught by Cristina Di Maio (Fall 2026).

The course provides a general introduction to the Digital Humanities with a focus on U.S. Literary Studies. We will explore various approaches and methodologies, and we will experiment with digital tools and techniques. We will engage with debates around this field of study, such as the problem of defining the digital humanities, offering an overview of recent critical approaches and applications (e.g., DH and intersectionality). Students will learn how to analyze digital projects and design their own small-scale digital humanities project.

We will cover the following topics: Introduction to DH for U.S. literary studies; Digital Humanities: history, methods, definitions; Critical Approaches to DH; Minimal Computing; Distant Reading; Digital Archives; Visualization and Mapping;  AI and Literary Studies; Annotation; Videogames as a Cultural/Digital Text; DH and U.S. Literature: authors and projects.

This course will introduce students to the following digital tools: Google Sites; Hypothes.is; Google N-Grams; Voyant Tools; GoogleMaps; StoryMaps; TimelineJs.

The digital projects we will analyze include: The Yellow Wallpaper Edition; African American Women Writers of the 19th Century; Documenting The American South; Emily Dickinson Electronic Archives; Gloria Naylor Archive; “REALIZING THE DREAM OF A BLACK UNIVERSITY” & OTHER WRITINGS PARTS 1 & 2 by Toni Cade Bambara;  A History of Domestic Work and Worker Organizing; Living Nations, Living Words.

The Lab Sessions will be the following: Building a website with Google Sites; Designing your DH project; Workshop on the Students DH Projects; Annotation; Text Mining; Mapping; Experimenting with AI; Exploration of DH tools.