From manuscripts to print, play performances to electronic 
texts, literary works have shaped and been shaped by their 
media environments. Most college literature classes focus on 
the form and content of literary works, but this class will 
also view them as concrete practices that take place within a 
media ecology. Understanding literature in relation to media 
past or present may also offer insight into its future in a 
world of electronic media.

1) Students will be able to analyze media and literary works 
via approaches such as media-specific analysis and comparative 
media studies.
2) Students will be able to discuss literary works as practices 
that take place in particular media environments.
3) Students will develop a diverse conceptual vocabulary for 
understanding literary works in relation to media environments 
or media history.
4) Students will develop their abilities to think critically, 
argue persuasively, and write incisively.
5) Students will enhance their practical sense of how media 
make a difference by presenting their own work in a variety of 
ways: via oral presentations, blogs, and traditional essays, 
for instance.
6) Students will have the opportunity to develop a 
collaborative digital project based on their work for the class.

The class will focus on reading literature and literary theory 
in light of media theories, histories, and practices. The tools 
and approaches may include orality and literacy theory, North 
American media theory, media-specific analyses, hypertext and 
cybertext theory, comparative media studies, cultural studies 
of media, book history, performance studies, intermediality 
theory, and media archaeology. The choice and sequence of 
topics will vary from instructor to instructor and semester to 
semester. A historical approach might begin by reading literary 
works in relation to oral and literate cultures, then proceed 
to treat the printing revolution, the invention of new media 
technologies in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and the 
contemporary world of electronic media. An approach more 
focused on literature in today’s media ecology might read the 
production, distribution, and consumption of contemporary 
literary works as part of the variety of media systems and 
practices that characterize the twenty-first century.