You might dismiss what Bryn Mawr undergraduate Jennifer Cook says about Shakespeare as callow, but to deny its pertinence would be foolish. The world is slowly tipping toward those for whom the Internet is more familiar than the contents of any book, and nothing less than a reorganization of knowledge is inevitable. Assistant professor Katherine Rowe’s remark about the rapidly-closing gap between the new fluency and the old is sparkling.

Many teachers and administrators are only beginning to figure out the contours of this emerging field of digital humanities, and how it should be taught. In the classroom, however, digitally savvy undergraduates are not just ready to adapt to the tools but also to explore how new media may alter the very process of reading, interpretation and analysis.

“There’s a very exciting generation gap in the classroom,” said Ms. Rowe, who developed the digital components of her Shakespeare course with a graduate student who now works at Google. “Students are fluent in new media, and the faculty bring sophisticated knowledge of a subject. It’s a gap that won’t last more than a decade. In 10 years these students will be my colleagues, but now it presents unusual learning opportunities.”

As Ms. Cook said, “The Internet is less foreign to me than a Shakespeare play written 500 years ago.”

Drop me a line at rjk@dailyblague.com
This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 22nd, 2011 at 8:00 pm.