This class will teach you how to surf (the Internet) and about the various ways that English studies have been transformed over the last few decades. Starting with some basic close-reading and analysis skills (aided by annotation at COVE Studio), we will then explore how those skills have been increasingly applied to new areas of inquiry (tv, film, culture, critical theory, and politics). Throughout, we will employ new digital tools that change the way we approach our subjects of inquiry, including Web annotation, timeline-building, gallery-building and GIS mapping. As we proceed, we will consider the nature of English studies: What is an English department and how does it relate to the rest of the university? What can you do with an English degree? Why is it necessary to fight for English in an increasingly STEM-oriented world? Djamila Bouhired, born in 1937 to middle-upper class parents in Algiers, Algeria, would prove to become the undisputedly most famous woman active in the FLN resistance of the Algerian Revolution (1952-62). She was the only figure that rose to international fame during the Revolution (Djamila Boupacha, another FLN (the Algerian National Liberation Front) member, reached similar fame post-independence). The movie Djamila l’Algerienne was released in 1958, the book Pour Djamila Bouhired released in 1957 (written by her later husband and defense lawyer, Jacques Vèrges and Georges Arnaud), and countless songs across the Maghreb were written in her honor.
This emblematic woman of war - this ‘Arab Joan of Arc’, as she would come to be called - began in a relatively privileged childhood, attending a French school in Algiers. An interview with Bouhired in 1971 shows just how deep the indoctrination of French sovereignty went into young Algerian...
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