Materialities of Literature II

Recommended Prerequisites

English language proficiency level C1.

Teaching Methods

Oral presentations, lectures, analysis of experimental works (in both codex and digital media), discussions, group work, and blog and wiki writing. Use of digital platforms and tools, and other online resources devoted to experimental literary practices, including the directories, repositories and archives ELMCIP, ELD, NT2, UbuWeb, PennSound, Po-Ex, CELL project.

 

NOTE: This methodology may be subject to minor changes depending on the instructor and number of students registered.

Learning Outcomes

Students should be able to

a) Describe the graphic and embodied dynamics of textuality by looking at graphic surfaces and book structures;

b) Describe the signifying strategies of intermedia and kinetic texts in various genres of experimental poetry and fiction;

c) Understand permutational and generative texts as forms of algorithmic literature;

d) Understand processes of intermediation in both print-digital and human-computer interactions;

e) Describe the multilayered materiality of writing in digital media, and understand the rhetoric of computational literary forms;

f) Conceive a literary work for print and/or digital media and/or performance.

Work Placement(s)

No

Syllabus

1. Materialities of Literature: an introduction

1.1. Where are we now? Who are we now?

1.2. Thinking with and through objects

 

2. Reading and writing in digital media

2.1. What is literature in the 21st century?

2.2. Aurature as literature

2.3. Grammalepsy

2.4. How do we read?

2.5. Reading machines

2.6. How do we write?

2.7. Writing machines

 

3. The book and the interface

3.1. Textual fields

3.2. Bookness, graphicality, self-similarity

3.3. Page as plane (x, y) and codex as space (x, y, z)

3.4. Bibliographic, linguistic, and narrative codes

3.5. The codex as material and virtual space

3.6. Graphical user interface

3.7. Hypertext and interface poetics

 

4. Circuits, files, screens: what is digital materiality?

4.1. Derrida: iterability of writing

4.2. Hayles: language, writing, code

4.3. Kirschenbaum: forensic vs. formal

4.4. Kittler: there is no software

4.5. Manovich: there is only software

4.6. Cayley and Jhave: data poetics

4.7. Language as infrastructure of the network

Assessment Methods

Assessment
Oral presentation about a theoretical text: 30.0%
Project: 35.0%
Research work: 35.0%

Bibliography

Boluk, S.; Flores, L.; Garbe J.; Salter, A. eds. 2016. Electronic Literature Collection (volume 3). Cambridge, MA: MIT. http://collection.eliterature.org/3/

Cayley, J. 2018. Grammalepsy: Essays on Digital Language Art. London: Bloomsbury.

Dobson, J. E.. 2019. Critical Digital Humanities. Chicago: University of Illinois Press.

Drucker, J. 2020. Visualization and Interpretation. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Marino, M. C. 2020. Critical Code Studies. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Pressman, J. 2020. Bookishness: Loving Books in a Digital Age. New York: Columbia University Press.

Ramsay, S. 2011. Reading Machines: Toward an Algorithmic Criticism. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.

Rettberg, S. 2019. Electronic Literature. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Simanoswki, R. 2016. Digital Humanities and Digital Media. London: Open Humanities Press.

Tabbi, J, ed. 2017. The Bloomsbury Handbook of Electronic Literature. London: Bloomsbury.

Tabbi, J. ed. 2020.  Post-Digital. London: Bloomsbury.