English
Undergraduate Seminar
Class Time TBD
Contagion is a common feature of the Victorian literary imagination. And for good reason: contagious diseases proliferated in the 19th century, when transmission theories and treatment methods were still in flux. Many Victorian novels explicitly represent these epidemic illnesses, which might afflict specific characters or connect whole communities through networks of infection. But in addition to indexing the physical body’s very real susceptibility to communicable disease, the figure of contagion also harbors significant symbolic potential. What exactly did contagion mean for British writers in the 19th century? Who or what is identified as contagious in Victorian novels—and why?
As an aid to our comparative analysis, we’ll learn to use digital humanities tools Hypothesis and Palladio, which enable collaborative annotations of electronic texts and visual mapping of data. Using these programs, course participants will work together on a semester-long project of mapping contagion across Victorian novels: a “contact tracing” exercise that will allow us to make compelling connections among many different representations of contagion.
Link to Vergil
Note: only courses offered during the two previous semesters have active Vergil links.
