English 325: Contemporary Literature and Digital Media

How have literary expression and our understandings of the self changed alongside the media technologies of the twenty-first century? This course examines the place of fiction among social media, big data, fan fiction, video games, and the many other forms of entertainment that compete with it today. To do so, we’ll learn about the history of media forms, and some of the methods of media studies, which consider how media forms shape the stories they convey. We will read novels, a play, poetry, and experimental forms that ask what technology might be changing about the human condition, including concerns about privacy, identity, politics, memory, and more. Along the way, we’ll encounter some of the history of experimental literature and consider what forms the future of literary expression will take.