Workshop: The Digital Humanities Manifesto & Lecture

     Professor Jeffrey T. Schnapp will meet with students and researchers
     and discuss his Digital Humanities Manifesto (
     www.stanford.edu/~schnapp/Manifesto%202.0) and the projects that he
     has developed at the Stanford Humanities Lab (
     www.stanford.edu/group/shl/cgi-bin/drupal/).

     Lecture: The Statistical Sublime. Futurism and Numbers | Tuesday,

     March 23, 2010 | 5:30 - 7:00pm | Room 4003 | FedEx Global Education
     Center | UNC-Chapel Hill

     Numbers have always been integral to poetry, from the quantitative
     metrics of ancient verse to Dante’s definition of poetry as numeri
     regolati and beyond. Likewise, they have forever undergirded
     compositional principles in the visual arts with their golden
     sections and metaphysical ratios. Yet it is only in the 20th century
     that they move from the backstage out onto the catwalk of cultural
     communication. Futurism plays a decisive role in this shift,
     insisting from the outset that it will sing a world of human
     multitudes navigating a sea of that newest fruit of the contemporary
     physical and social sciences: statistics—statistics regarding
     productivity, mobility, opinion, speed. The Statistical Sublime
     sketches an overall portrait of number and mathematical notation in
     Futurist theory and practice, Italian and Russian. It tells the tale
     of how, extending Kant’s mathematical sublime, Futurism enacts a
     détournement of the tools of the new positivist rationality.

     Reception to follow. Free parking after 5pm at the FedEx Global
     Education Building.

     Jeffrey T. Schnapp (www.stanford.edu/~schnapp/) is the Rosina
     Pierotti chair and professor of French and Italian and Comparative
     literature at Stanford University. He is the founder and director of
     the Stanford Humanities Lab. Though primarily anchored in the field
     of Italian studies, Prof. Schnapp has played a pioneering role in
     several areas of transdisciplinary research and led the development
     of a new wave of digital humanities work. His research interests
     extend from antiquity to the present, encompassing the material
     history of literature, the history of 20th century architecture and
     design, and the cultural history of science and engineering. Jeffrey Schnapp was 

also an original member of the HASTAC Steering Committee.

     Sponsors: The Center for European Studies, The Department of Romance
     Languages and Literatures, The Department of Communication Studies,
     Interdisciplinary Program in Cinema, ScreenArts and Student Congress,
     The Department of English and Comparative Literature, The Department
     of Romance Studies (Duke University), Information Science +
     Information Studies (Duke University), The Program in Literature
     (Duke University).

     For information contact: Federico Luisetti luisetti@email.unc.edu
     Richard Cante rcante@email.unc.edu