Media Theory for the 21st Century

Course blog for English 260: Media Theory for the 21st Century
N. Katherine Hayles & Rita Raley
UCLA (Winter08): Tuesdays, 3-6 p.m.

Course description: Media theory is transforming the ways in which literature and art conceive textuality, do research, focus on projects, and present their results. This seminar will focus specially on New Media theory, electronic textuality, and New Media art, exploring the ways in which text, image, graphics, and design interact in digital media. It will explore the implications of media-specific analysis, asking in what ways and with what implications a media-focused approach changes traditional disciplinary practices. Among the provocative questions the seminar will entertain is whether a work has to have words to qualify as “literary,” and how text and image change when they interact together. Other issues will focus on the position of the embodied creator and user in New Media, and the ways in which digital works, as time-based media, change reading, writing, and interpretive practices. Readings will include both key theoretical texts and explorations of recent electronic literature and New Media art.