| Instructor: George P. Landow, Professor of English and Art History, Brown University |
Introduction and Description
George P. Landow , Professor of English and Art History, Brown University
Although Telling Stories in Cyberspace demands no previous knowledge of computing, this is not a course for the tame or the timid, and members of the course can expect to call into question their basic assumptions about reading, writing, creativity, technology, theory, and literature.
Hypertext -- text composed of electronically linked words and images intended to be read on a computer screen -- radically changes the way we experience reading and writing in ways that have much to do with recent critical theory. Contemporary theory, particularly poststructuralism, and contemporary computing technology illuminate each other. Both involve reactions against the strengths and limits of earlier infortmation technologies. Both thereby exemplify what Derrida terms "the death of the book." The course will examine the convergence of contemporary critical theory and technology with particular reference to the implications of hypertext for conceptions of authorship, text, relations of word and image, literary structure, power, and the literary canon.
The class will read contemporary theory, discussions of hypertext, and works of literature that illuminate and are illuminated by both. Readings, some of which we shall encounter in both print and electronic form, will include all or part of the following: Roland Barthes, S/Z, Vannevar Bush, "The Way We May Think," Italo Calvino, If on a Winter's Night a Traveler, Jacques Derrida, Dissemination (brief selections), Michel Foucault, "What is an Author?," Shelley Jackson, Patchwork Girl, George P. Landow, Hypertext 2.0: The Convergence of Contemporary Critical Theory and Technology,.
The class will work with various hypertext systems or environments, including Storyspace and the World Wide Web. Exercises for the course, which individual students will tailor to their own interests, emphasize exploration and creativity. Final projects can include exploring the relations of electronic words and image, translations of print into electronic text, explorations of argument and fiction in this new medium, and hypertextual implementation, analyses, and (even) satires of works by authors we read.
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