About

Think of the urgency we feel when we hear the ping of a text message; the desire we have for the next iPhone; the delight we take – or the boredom we find – in our friends’ Facebook posts. This course will examine how we feel about digital technologies, and how contemporary literature responds to, mediates, and critiques these feelings. We’ll consider literature that takes digital technology as a central thematic, as well as literature that engages formally with how digital technology has transformed print practices. Along the way, we will discuss things like mediation, attention and distraction, digital labor practices, big data and surveillance, and contemporary corporate culture’s rhetoric of “creative disruption” and “innovation.”