Dr. Paul Harris
This course explores the shifting nature of writing in the context of electronic media, in both theoretical and experential/experimental ways. The contemporary context of 'writing' is shaped by the new tools that are changing our modes of communication: the PC, computer games, email, the internet. We will specifically examine how the computer as a compositional medium is changing the form and content of writing, and how our ideas of text, author and reader are also shifting. After situating the advent of electronic writing in a historical context, we will go on to read different theoretical and literary visions of the directions that writing can take as we enter the next millenium. There are three sections of the course that demand different modes of writing: a socio-historical strand examines the changes afoot in media culture; a literary critical strand which centers on fiction and literary theory that anticipates and/or reflects electronic writing; a theoretical-creative strand that defines salient features of what we might call 'electronic writing' and asks students to produce texts which enact these features in some way.