Syllabus

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Week 1 (January 6) Introduction

Reading:

Coover, "The Babysitter" Barthes, "The Death of the Author"; "From Work to Text"


Joyce, afternoon: a story
Hayles, "Preface," Writing Machines

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Week 2 (January 13) "Mapping" the Terrain"

Reading:

Hal Foster, "Postmoderism: A Preface" (In The Anti-Aesthetic) Douglas Crimp, "On the Museum's Ruin" (In The Anti-Aesthetic) Fredric Jameson, "Postmodernism and Consumer Society" (in The Anti-Aesthetic) Alain Robbe-Grillet, "A Future for the Novel" (reader) Roland Barthes, "From Work to Text"; "The Death of the Author" (reader) Jean Baudrillard, "Simulacra and Simulations" (reader)


Thursday, January 16, 4 pm: Lecture by Marie-Laure Ryan, " Narrative and Digitality: Learning to Think with the Medium" (Required)

Reading: Ryan, "Introduction," Narrative as Virtual Reality (handout)

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Week 3 (January 20) Labyrinths

Film: Last Year in Marienbad (Showing: tba)



Reading:

Borges, "The Garden of Forking Paths"; "An Examination of the Work of Herbert Quinn"; "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius"; "The Library of Babel"; "The Book of Sand" (handout) Espen Aarseth, "Introduction: Ergodic Literature" (reader) Jean Baudrillard, "Simulacra and Simulations" (Reader)

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Week 4 (January 27) Metafiction

Reading: Coetzee, In the Heart of the Country

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Week 5 (February 3) Hyperfiction: Exploding the (Print) Text

Reading:

Coover, "The Babysitter" Joyce, afternoon: a story (Jones) J. Yellowlees Douglas, "Where the Senses Become a Stage and Reading is Direction" (Reader) Terry Harpold, "Conclusions" (Reader) N. Katherine Hayles, "Artificial Life and Literary Culture" (handout)

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Week 6 (February 10) Webs, Labyrinths, and Excluded Middles

Reading:

Pynchon, "Entropy" (Reader); The Crying of Lot 49 Porush, "Technology and Postmodernism: Cybernetic Fiction" (Reader) Moulthrop, Victory Garden (Jones) Moulthrop, "Polymers, Paranoia, and the Rhetoric of Hypertext" (handout)

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Week 7 (February 17) Webs: Beginning Again and Again

Reading:

Malloy, its name was Penelope (Jones) Gertrude Stein, "Matisse," "Picasso," selections from Tender Buttons (handout) Gertrude Stein, "Composition as Explanation" (handout) Barbara Page, "Women Writers and the Restive Text" (Reader) Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari, extracts from A Thousand Plateaus (handout) Guest Lecturer, Barbara Will, Dartmouth College

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Week 8 (February 24) Webs and Bodies

Reading:	Jackson, Patchwork Girl by Mary/Shelley & Herself (Jones) Shelley Jackson, "Stitch Bitch: the patchwork girl" (link) Mark Amerika, "Stitch Bitch: The Hypertext Author as Cyborg-Femme" (link) N. Katherine Hayles, "Flickering Connectivities in Shelley Jackson's Patchwork Girl: The Importance of Media Specific Analysis" (link)
Reading:	Mark Amerika, Grammatron (link)

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Week 9 (March 3) The Second Generation: Hyperfiction, Media Art, or What?

Reading:

Talan Memmott, Lexia to Perplexia (link) M.C. Coverley, Califia (Jones) Morrissey and Talley, My Name Is Captain, Captain (Jones) Hayles, Chapters 3 and 4 in Writing Machines Debate about Cybertext in electronic book review: Montfort, Hayles, Luesebrink, Eskelinen, Hayles (link) "New Media Literature: Roundtable Discussion on Aesthetics, Audiences, and Histories" (handout)

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Final paper due Friday March 7