Directed by George Landow
Content: Literature, English
Context32 is a corpus of 1350 documents and 2600 links created using Intermedia software designed at IRIS . The text documents included biographical sketches of each author studied in the course and essays on particular aspects of the author (e.g., "Tennyson and Evolutionary Theory"). The documents were intended to provide students with a wide range of authors (e.g., Pope, Dickens), literary movements (e.g., Neoclassicism, Victorianism), and some sense of the historical continuities of major forms (e.g., epic and mock-epic, the realistic novel).
Beginning in 1984, Intermedia was used to construct Context 32, a set of materials developed to support a course English 32, taught by George Landow at Brown university. The redesigned, computer-assisted version of English 32 has essentially the same reading list as in past versions. In spring semester, 1987 the forty-five students in English 32, Survey of English Literature, 1700 to the Present, used Context 32, a corpus of 1350 documents and 2600 links created using Intermedia software designed at IRIS . Since that time the corpus has been expanded. Collections now include Context32:Emblem (Landow with Gary S. Weissman Undergraduate research independent study summer project) Context34: Post-Colonial English Literature (Landow Students) (Contemporary Nigerian poet) The resulting web developed over the course of three semesters (fall 1989,
spring and fall 1990) by three groups of students consisted of 70 documents and 130 links.
Purpose: Emphasize the point that any author or literary phenomena exists surrounded by a number of contributing phenomena, and that there are multiple valid ways of approaching the subject.
Participants: Nicole Yankelovich, Paul Kahn, George Landow
Evaluation Information: (Beeman, et.al., 1987)
Technology
Software: Intermedia Version 3.0 and more recently Story Space.
Hardware: Intermedia 3.0 Runs under A/UX 1.1, Apple's version of the UNIX operating system. A/UX 1.1 will run on the Macintosh IIx, IIcx and IIci. Intermedia requires a minimum of 5 megabytes of memory (Intermedia's performance is greatly improved by a full 8 megabytes of memory) and an 80 megabyte hard disk. A/UX 1.1 leaves only about 15-20 megabytes of free disk space on an 80 megabyte hard disk. A Network installation requires the two 80 megabyte hard disks and 8 megabytes of memory for the server machine and a single 80 megabyte hard disk and either 5 or 8 megabytes of memory for each client machine. Each machine on the network requires an ethernet card.