This course explores the praxis of reading and writing through explorations of text technologies including manuscript, textile, print, and digital forms\u2013\u2013emphasizing nontraditional understandings of the textual object. Through investigation that is theoretical, applied, and creative in nature, we will examine the social and material conditions under which form has been imposed on matter to create graphic meaning. Informed by poststructuralism and feminist criticism, we will examine scrolls and book rolls, women\u2019s needlework, memorial engravings, midcentury typewriter poems, mechanical production and digital diffusion, culminating in literary production in twentieth- and twenty-first century media ecologies (podcasting, augmented reality, web novels etc). The course questions techno-determinist histories that plot a linear progression from manuscript, to print, to digital by exploring the ways in which at any given moment a variety of text technologies are available, though they may have differing hierarchical status. Each week will combine theoretical, critical or philosophical readings with textual artifacts that test the conceptual and practical boundaries of textual production or otherwise draw attention to language and textuality. Student led \u201cTextual Practice\u201d demonstrations will provide opportunities for collaborative nonhierarchical exchange of ideas and skills. This course fulfills either a Technology & Media Studies or Literary & Cultural Studies credit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This course explores the praxis of reading and writing through explorations of text technologies including manuscript, textile, print, and digital forms\u2013\u2013emphasizing nontraditional understandings of the textual object. Through investigation that is theoretical, applied, and creative in nature, we will examine the social and material conditions under which form has been imposed on matter to create … <\/p>\n