Technique is just a means of arriving at a statement."
In ENGL 5663, we will study the production, dissemination, and reception of the printed word from historical, literary, and theoretical perspectives that highlight the material and social lifespans of books and literary reputations. This course is also designed to introduce students to the history and theory of reading, an important sub-field within the larger, interdisciplinary field of Print Culture Studies (also called Book History).
What is the nature and status of literature in digital culture? Through readings, discussion, writing, and digital scholarship, we will pursue this question and its implications. Doing so will not only expand our knowledge of digital literary studies, the digital humanities, popular online culture, avant-garde literary experimentation, and video-game criticism/theory, but shed new light on our sense of history, culture, literary form, reading, authorship, and narrative.
Fall 2017
This course introduces first-year graduate students to advanced literary study in two ways. First, we will read and discuss works of critical theory, highlighting the fundamental questions they ask and answer, and examining how they can be relevant to the study of literature and culture. Second, we will learn and actively apply the practices of literary scholarship: how to identify suitable objects of inquiry, to do research, and to develop and present arguments according to the norms of literary studies.
Fall 2016 |
Fall 2013
This class is intended to teach the aesthetic, cultural, and rhetorical uses of Web-design techniques—including writing. It is designed, however, assuming no prior knowledge of Web design, and provides introductions and resources to master the basic skills.
Spring 2011 | Fall 2009 |Spring 2009 | Fall 2008 |
In addition to teaching the mechanics of graphic production, "Visual Rhetoric and Culture" draws widely on the disciplines of digital design, statistics, narrative literature, engineering, and technical writing to offer you the interpretive and strategic skills to conceive, to create, to analyze, and to write about visual texts critically.
Fall 2013 | Fall 2011
This class will explore the relationship between New Media and writing. You will learn skills and methods of New Media production (that is, the hands-on creation of digital, screen-based, networked, verbally/visually hybrid media), and the opportunities they provide for writing beyond the mere delivery of information. In doing so, you will gain perspectives on the not-always-apparent continuities between New Media and the literary use of words and design, and between digital and literary cultures.
Spring 2018 |
Spring 2017 |
Spring 2014 | Spring 2012 | Spring 2011 | Spring 2010
This course considers the most fundamental questions of how writing, print, mass media, and digital technologies have influenced consciousness and society. Readings include Dracula, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1984, Hitchcock's film Psycho, as well as conceptual texts that provide broad historical perspectives.
Fall 2018 | Spring 2017 |
Spring 2014 | Fall 2012 | Spring 2012 |
Spring 2011
This course explores and expands the notion of a "document," and examines the cultural and technical processes by which documents have been created from the 18th through the 21st centuries.
Spring 2010 | Fall 2002 | Fall 2001 | Fall 2006
A seminar examining the economic, cultural, social, and aesthetic issues surrounding the development of literary authorship in the United States in the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries.
