Literature, Media, & Modernity

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This course surveys the intersections between literature and new media in the nineteenth century.  We will move from romanticism to modernism while investigating the boundaries of literature in a century marked by unprecedented technological change.  How does the introduction of new media, from early print to the development of the telegraph, phonograph, typewriter, phonograph, and cinema, shape how writers experiment with literary form?  What does it mean to read literature in the context of technology and media history, reflecting on literature as a medium among other media?  Related to these questions, we will also investigate how literary style has adapted to the emergence of new media in history.  We’ll approach these questions through a combination of literary, historical, and theoretical texts: readings in media theory and media history; case studies of literature situated on the threshold of media change; and contemporary debates about the role of new media and digital humanities in literary study.  The course will provide students with a set of theoretical and practical tools that they can use in their future studies and careers.  Seminar requirements include two presentations, short writing exercises, a research blog, and a final research paper on a topic related to their interests in literature and media.

•    All assigned texts, PDFs, videos, and other materials listed on the schedule
•    Edgar Allan Poe, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket
•    Nathaniel Hawthorne, The House of Seven Gables 
•    Henry James, The Turn of the Screw & In the Cage
•    Pauline Hopkins, Of One Blood; or, the Hidden Self 
•    Burdick, et al., Digital_Humanities (The MIT Press)

Course Description