Prof. Tim Duket
Senior Seminar, 10th edition, spring, 2007
Odysseus Themes
HP 252.01 Odysseus Themes (Spring 2007: 3 credit)
We revisit Homer’s archetypal character Odysseus and explore his reappearances and allusive influence in literature. Each semester concentrates on selected works: readings for 2007: Odyssey, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night and Tempest (text and film) and Joyce’s Ulysses (text and film). Each member of the seminar develops an original project incorporating other media (digital image, sound or film) along with text.
HP 252 applies digital media to the study of texts from the Honors Program humanities curriculum. The seminar gives the student experience and skills in the use of digital files in humanities composition and research. This is done while revisiting Homer and other authors. Students should expect to leave the seminar with writing and thinking skills enhanced by the ability to incorporate hypertextual techniques and modes of thinking into their research, compositions, and other presentations. This advanced seminar is for juniors developing their ability to research and execute an honors thesis, seniors completing the requirements of the program with an original research project, and others merely interested in Odysseus polytropos, Prospero and “Poldy” Bloom.
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Prof.Tim Duket, instructor
Office hours Tuesday and Thursday mornings in Gasson 102
Email duket@bc.edu and phone 552-1955
Monday, 3-6 in Gasson 112 Jenks Honors Library
Required books 
Homer, Odyssey (tr. Fagles, Lombardo, Lattimore, et al.)
Ovidius Naso, Metamorphoses, tr.Charles Martin (Norton)
William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Shakespeare, The Tempest
James Joyce, Ulysses (on line text)
Resources and suggested books
ArtSTOR (online art database)
Film versions of Twelfth Night and The Tempest
W.B. Stanford, The Ulysses Theme
Course website www2.bc.edu/~duket/252hp.html
WebCT
Personal computer – bring your own laptop if possible
Dreamweaver, CoffeeCup, or Nvu html software
Updated January 18, 2007
Archive: Previous seminars (1997-2006)
Under the course title "Odysseus to Ulysses" each seminar combined a reprise of texts from the honors curriculum and digital projects inspired by revisiting them.
Each seminar created dynamic projectst that embed different modes of considering information/reaction/reflection/interpretation into its structure (hypertext CD, website, database, tutorial, etc.). Three examples of this from earlier seminars are (1) a Virtual Purgatory (2000 and 2001) providing an introduction to a first reading of Dante's Purgatorio, (2) an annotated guide to Krista Wolf's novel Cassandra (2002) and (3) an electronically annotated text of Joyce's Ulysses (2004) inserting Joycean biographical hyperlinks in that novel. The seminar first revisits selected texts, concurrently developing a sufficient level of technical skill, and then designs and executes projects. Such projects are analogous to conventional seminar papers but have other goals, audience and form, while offering the same challenge and satisfactions.
Students should expect to leave the seminar with writing and thinking skills enhanced by the ability to incorporate hypertextual techniques and modes of thinking into their research, compositions, and other presentations. Those anticipating this new paradigm for reading and authoring content material in future years should find this seminar enlightening and practical.
Books remain the cornerstone of the discussion. Homer, Odyssey provides the backbone. Joyce's novel Ulysses is assumed to be the prototypical hypertextual text (what a mouthful!). Required books, course expectations and the calendar are linked to this page.
The class meets Tuesday from 3-6 in Gasson 308 and/or O'Neill 245. We will also use the Interactive Multimedia Lab. Each student has a PC with wireless connections. Web development will rely on Dreamweaver (as needed). Seminars will include both seminar-style discussion and computer-based dialogue.
Participants will also have personal web pages used for the seminar. A template for the course will include links to each participants HP252 page. Workshops for creating these pages will be provided in the first week of the course. All levels of experience with HTML, Photoshop, and Digital Photography are welcomed..
Final project. Each participant will develop one web-based document for the seminar. Last year's seminar (2005) produced a hypertext guide to Joyce's "Oxen of the Sun" chapter, a project called htmlHamlet including scenes from three different film versions of the play, and several hot-linked commentaries on Ulysses. The seminar the year before developed a hypertext guide to the novel Cassandra by Krista Wolf. 2006 stressed audio recording and the use of sound files (mp3, etc.) for academic purposes, generating six unique projects (1.) Middle English Electric Company (video), (2) Emily Dickinson set to music (web pages with audio files), (3) Angela Carter's musical allusions, (4) voicing poetry (Flash), (5) Hamlet sings the Blues (web pages with audio files and video clips from Olivier's Hamlet).