LFU:online

The aim of this course is to familiarize students with methods of analyzing and theorizing various forms of academic, educational, and journalistic visualization.

This course is concerned with various kinds of visualizations. Visualizations render information visible that would be hard to understand by non-visual means. We will analyze the mechanics of visual communication, ways of translating data into images, and the advantages and disadvantages of visualization in comparison with other means of communication. The course focuses on three uses of visualization especially relevant for students: visualization in the Humanities, in school education, and in journalism.
Research in the natural and social sciences often relies on visualization to make sense of data, especially of so-called big data. However, in recent years research in the Humanities, mainly in Digital Humanities projects, is increasingly concerned with data processed by computers, which often needs visualization to be intelligible.
In school education, knowledge is often most effectively conveyed by visual means, not necessarily by contemporary digital technologies such as interactive whiteboards, but also by schematic graphics in schoolbooks and stylized drawings by the teacher.
Along with written texts and photographs, print journalism uses infographics, which are presented in dynamic and interactive form in online journalism. Documentaries and television reports also feature animated visualizations of events that are too complex to show by other means or that have not been filmed.
We will examine these three uses of visualization from a variety of theoretical and methodological perspectives.

Lecture inputs, research, presentations, discussion

Active participation, written analyses, presentation, research paper (10–15) pages

As far as possible, course materials and selected secondary sources will be posted on OLAT.

Prerequisite for the Bachelor's Programme (612): positive completion of compulsory module 19, for the Teacher Training Programme (Lehramtsstudium: 344): VO2: Introduction to American Literary Studies

For the Teacher Training Programme (Lehramtsstudium: 344): PS2: American Culture.

Due to substantial differences in the allocation of ECTS-Credits in various curricula (teacher training program - BA/MA English and American Studies), the requirements for this course vary. Information will be provided by the instructor at the beginning of the course.