Instructor: Louise Hamlin (chair); Karol Kawiaka, Architecture; Brian Miller, Photography; John Wilson, Architecture

Overview: Computer technology is now a standard tool in the fields of both architecture and photography. It has broadened the frontiers and changed working methods in both, and produced work that was previously unimaginable. Professionals in both disciplines make daily use of the technology and every professor will expect to see and use it in the classroom. Computer technology is necessary as an instructional and design tool for the classroom and to enable our students to compete with their peers outside Dartmouth. Knowledge of it is required for many summer jobs, internships, graduate programs, and full-time employment opportunities. As part of their college education, we must provide students with this resource. This project proposes to set up a cluster of computers, printers, and scanners that will enable the Studio Art department to fully integrate computing into its curriculum in the fields of architecture and photography.

Instructor: Jerry Rutter, Classics Department

Overview: The Classics Department proposes to take advantage of Quicktime VR as a mode of graphic presentation, and of its uniquely designed Foreign Study Program [FSP] to Greece as an existing curricular venue, to design and produce a series of 360-degree panoramas of ancient Greek archaeological sites and the contemporary landscapes in which these sites are located. Dartmouth undergraduates will participate in all aspects of the production and use of these visual teaching aids.

Selection and design of the panoramas, as well as the shooting of the images required for them, will be an academic activity on the Greek FSP in which students will work in teams and for which they will receive a grade as part of the off-campus courses Greek and Roman Studies [GRS] 30-31 (the Greek FSP is offered every two years). The panoramas will be used in class in Greek history (GRS 14-15, one offered every year; also GRS 11 and 19, one of which is likewise offered every year) and archaeology (GRS 20, 21, 22; all three courses are taught every two years), as well as in the introductory course in Classical archaeology (GRS 6, offered annually). By mounting the panoramas on our Web server, we would make these visual aids available to colleagues in allied departments at Dartmouth (e.g. Art History, for use in AH 21 and 22; History; Religion; Geography) as well as to interested students and faculty at other institutions.

Site: http://www.dartmouth.edu/~cpano/

Instructor: Karen Gocsik, Director of Composition

Overview: On the World-Wide Web, there is a unique opportunity to create a virtual community for faculty teaching writing, and to establish the fundamentals for a common first-year writing experience for students as well. This web site, by providing students and professors with a common resource for composition instruction, will:

1. Provide a common “space” in which all students and professors can contribute to a growing discussion about writing;
2. Delineate a common understanding of the writing process, providing students and professors with a shared vocabulary as well as with a shared sense of the challenges involved in producing good academic prose;
3. Define in a very particular fashion the elements necessary to a paper’s academic excellence, thereby establishing a more common criteria of assessment among professors, and a more common understanding of the institution’s expectations among students.

The web site will seek to find ways to make composition more central to the campus by linking the Composition Center more fully to other disciplines, to libraries and their resources, and to other student services. The web site will not be limited to Dartmouth’s first year writers and their teachers, but will provide guidance for students and for the teaching of students at all stages of their academic careers, Because Dartmouth lacks any formal writing instruction beyond the first year, it is important for the web site to provide advice on upper level writing tasks — including writing a thesis or a culminating experience project. Finally, the web site will be used as a tool to train tutors and writing assistants, providing training materials, exercises, and “interactive” videos (one is already produced) aimed at improving peer tutoring techniques.

Site: http://www.dartmouth.edu/~writing/materials/about.html

Instructor: Thomas H. Luxon, English Department

Overview: One of the most annoying obstacles to studying Milton is also one of its greatest strengths: Milton’s poetry and prose is highly allusive, and thus its study is intertextual. It sometimes seems as if Milton had all the learning of the ages (science, philosophy, classics, theology, rabbinics, and history) at his fingertips. Undergraduates are often snowed by the enormous learning Milton exhibits in Paradise Lost and elsewhere.

The World Wide Web and hypertext offer a virtual (though partial) solution to this problem, and thus a way to take advantage of Milton’s learnedness when teaching undergraduates. Most of Milton’s poetry is now available in electronic form for easy downloading. A group of scholars, organized by Richard Creamer of the University of Richmond, is transcribing Milton’s prose. Soon the entire corpus will be available in electronic format.

This project will create a website that will become a study center for Milton’s poetry and prose, where HTML versions of his works are 1) presented in standard formats, 2) hypertextually linked amongst themselves for ease of study and reference, 3) hypertextually linked to other sites that represent Milton’s huge body of learning, and 4) searchable both as parts and as a whole.

Site: http://www.dartmouth.edu/~milton/reading_room/contents/index.shtml

Instructor: Juan Medrano-Pizarro, Spanish and Portuguese Department

Overview: This multimedia piece, based on the work of the Chilean poet Enrique Lihn, explores the role that new technologies have in the teaching of literature, the common ground between literature , music, and the visual arts, and the possibility of reaching a wider audience through the use of the World Wide Web.

The project will consist of a bilingual, illustrated presentation of the events of Lihn’s life, a recorded interview, a bilingual anthology of Lihn’s work, a multimedia presentation, and a complete bibliography of his writing and a selected critical bibliography. The multimedia presentation is a production of Lihn’s poem “Penas de extrañamiento” in which text, voice, images, and music will recreate the urban and cinematographic landscape of the imaginary New York constructed by Lihn’s writing. (Des)Encounters is not only a pedagogical tool for the teaching of Contemporary Latin-American Poetry and a prototype for the future development of the Latin-American poets database, but also a space to explore the possibilities of the interaction of literature and digital art.