English R1A

Description

In this course, we will survey the production, consumption, and study of literary texts in the digital age. Starting with a unit on writers' relationships to their writing technologies across time, we will engage experiments in making tdigital literature from the 1980s to the present. We will explore digital culture in social and networked practices of writing and reading, new theories of reading in the digital moment (distance reading, surface reading), popular moral and media panics, and debates within the digital humanities, media and literary studies. Moving from Internet 1.0 to Internet 2.0, we will engage many "born-digital" and online texts, such as Michael Joyce's afternoon, William Gibson's Agrippa, and Claudio Pinhanez's "Open Diary," as well as digital literary platforms and websites. We will conclude the semester by looking at digital writing and its reception now, including viral literature, the Instagram poetry of Rupi Kau, and Warsan Shire's poetics in Beyonce's Lemonade.

The semester will feature a reoccurring peer-to-peer writing workshop as well as individual meetings with the instructor to work on writing and reserach skills, including digital research. In keeping with the aims of R1A, students will write and revise short essays in three dominant internet genres: the personal essay, "the hot take," and the think piece.