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ENG 116B: Introduction to Electronic Literature

What is not electronic literature today? Rather than introduce electronic literature or “e-lit” as a distinct literary category, this course wonders if it’s still possible to consider literature beyond the electronic circuits that characterize the networked present. The creation and study of literature today is facilitated by a range of digital formats and networked consoles, each of which introduce new practices of production, circulation, reception, and reading. Alongside these transformations, we’ll explore a range of new literary genres inhabiting, for example, computer scripts, image macros, flash movies, social media, bandcamp releases, interactive applications, and print on demand books. Thinking through the present, this introduction examines the history and future of literature through the everyday experience of computers and electronic devices. From the history of digital poetics to recent internet publications, we’ll track the development of literature under the influence of computation up to works published in the present, as they emerge throughout the quarter. In lockstep, the course considers the category of “electronic literature” as a way to think about historical works remediated to the internet, in a wide range of (post-)digital formats. The course requires short weekly responses in an open format, as well as a mid-term and final assignment, which may be critical or creative in form, developed in conversation with the instructor. No previous experience in programming, poetry, or literature is required.