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Heuristic Futures: Reading the Digital Humanities through Science Fiction

Dargue, Joseph W
http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5294-3260
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1439301885

Abstract Details

2015, PhD, University of Cincinnati, Arts and Sciences: English and Comparative Literature.
This dissertation attempts to highlight the cultural relationship between the digital humanities and science fiction as fields of inquiry both engaged in the development of humanistic perspectives in increasingly global digital contexts. Through analysis of four American science fiction novels, the work is concerned with locating the genre’s pedagogical value as a media form that helps us adapt to the digital present and orient us toward a digital future. Each novel presents a different facet of digital humanities practices and/or discourses that, I argue, effectively re-evaluate the humanities (particularly traditional literary studies and pedagogy) as a set of hybrid disciplines that leverage digital technologies and the sciences. In Pat Cadigan’s Synners (1993), I explore issues of production, consumption, and collaboration, as well as the nature of embodied subjectivity, in a reality codified by the virtual. The chapters on Richard Powers’ Galatea 2.2 (1995) and Vernor Vinge’s Rainbows End (2006) are concerned with the passing of traditional humanities practices and the evolution of the institutions they are predicated on (such as the library and the composition classroom) in the wake of the digital turn. In the final chapter, I consider Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother (2008) as a digital call to arms that, through an impassioned portrayal of hacktivism and the struggle for digital privacy rights, rejects the invasive political laws established in the U.S. since 9/11 and enabled by digital technologies.
Laura Micciche, Ph.D. (Committee Chair)
Charles M. Henley, Ph.D. (Committee Member)
Jennifer Glaser, Ph.D. (Committee Member)
Gary Weissman, Ph.D. (Committee Member)
207 p.
American Literature
science fiction; digital humanities; technology; posthumanism; postmodernism; humanities

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Dargue, J. W. (2015). Heuristic Futures: Reading the Digital Humanities through Science Fiction [Doctoral dissertation, University of Cincinnati]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1439301885

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Dargue, Joseph. Heuristic Futures: Reading the Digital Humanities through Science Fiction. 2015. University of Cincinnati, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1439301885.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Dargue, Joseph. "Heuristic Futures: Reading the Digital Humanities through Science Fiction." Doctoral dissertation, University of Cincinnati, 2015. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1439301885

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

ucin1439301885
624
© 2015, some rights reserved.Creative Commons License Heuristic Futures: Reading the Digital Humanities through Science Fiction by Joseph W Dargue is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at etd.ohiolink.edu.
This open access ETD is published by University of Cincinnati and OhioLINK.