ENG 3803 Fall 2023 Edwards

This course explores the history of the changing media technologies that people have used to communicate. It examines a range of forms, including tattoo, scroll, manuscript, print, photograph, film, television, radio, and digital multimedia. We will assess how such technologies impact the meaning of texts as well as their socio-cultural conditions. “Text” can refer to any meaningful combination of “signs” (or symbols) that can be analyzed and interpreted, and textuality refers to how texts make meaning in context. This course combines the fields of media history, history of the book, and digital humanities as well as text technologies.

We will consider larger questions such as: How does the medium or the delivery technology impact a text’s meaning? For example, when your favorite novel is turned into a film, how does that alter its meaning? When the delivery technology changes, as when you go from listening to your favorite song on a vinyl record to listening to it on a digital streaming platform, how does that affect the song’s meaning?

Our case studies range from cave paintings to YouTube, Gutenberg to Google. We will tackle larger debates, such as the relationship between mediums, how different delivery technologies have their own affordances and constraints, what happens to old media when new media emerges, and important debates in media history. Assignments include frequent Canvas discussion posts, two shorter essays, a case study project, and the longer final essay.

This course meets the LMC genre requirement.