PLATFORMS OF KNOWLEDGE IN A WIDE WEB OF WORLDS

Credit Hours: 3 · Graduate

The goal of this seminar is to explore, critique, and experience online platforms in the field of Digital Art History (e.g., image repositories, e-learning, publishing, collaborative research, crowd-sourced, etc.) that uphold the academic mission to disseminate knowledge by enabling teachers, students and researchers to discover, analyze, share information without regard to barriers of space and time, and publish work widely. Advanced digital technologies, after all, do allow researchers to handle large volumes of digitized images and texts, trace patterns and connections formerly hidden from view, recover the past in virtual environments, and bring the complex intricacies of works of art to light as never before. The latest tools and techniques, however, raise questions about what counts as expertise, who controls access to information, what gets lost in translation, what power is likely to shift from educational institutions to profit-seeking companies, how the privileging of quantification and metrics affects humanistic wisdom, and how academic autonomy and diversity can ultimately be disrupted. A final presentation is required.