Hyper-Literature

ENG 226 (Spring 2006-SUNY Albany)

Course Description:

With the rise of digital literacy, what was once marginal geek culture has come to dominate the social landscape. Criticism has ranged from outright dismissal (nothing has changed) to hyperbolic (nothing will ever be the same). Regardless of where one takes up position along this spectrum, the now ubiquitous potential of the digital text raises two crucial questions: What/How much changes in the digital text? And perhaps more importantly, how does this move to the digital text affect us as readers? In class we will ask these questions (along with a host of others) of a variety of literary texts:

Required Texts:

• The following are available at Mary Jane's:
• House of Leaves-Mark Danielewski
• Paper Machines-Jacques Derrida
• Patchwork Girl-Shelley Jackson
• First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game-Noah Wardrip-Fruin


• Need to Order-available at any digital games store or amazon
• Deus Ex: Invisible War-Eidos Interactive


• Course Reader-Available at Shipmates

Course Info:

As one of the main concepts we will be addressing in this course is the extent to which technology changes how we read, that is questions of media itself, we will necessarily have to engage with an array of technologies. This page will hopefully serve as one of those points of access. The menu at the right contains links to the reading schedule (where you will find links to the online texts), access to the discussion forums for class, and a page of (perhaps) useful links. Expect this page to be updated throughout the course to help you with the class.