ENG 4815.004 Fall 2023 Graban

Building on what you have learned in HoTT, WEPO, and Rhetoric (among other courses), ENG 4815 is an investigation into the nature of textuality and its relationship to various media and technologies. For the purposes of this class, we will assume that the experience of texts is not reducible to mere forms or phenomena -- i.e., books, words, media, screens, structures, symbols, or codes -- but is actually a "coming-into-being" of a combination of institutions, principles, and ideas that need to be actively explored. The course's guiding question, then, is, How do texts come to mean what they do?

In this particular section of the course, we will extend that question to the production and reception of cross-cultural spectacles and human rights events in a variety of modes and forms -- including essays, archives, memorials, community discourses, graphic novels, and bodies. Rather than approach these modes as "things" or "objects," we will treat them as opportunities for exploring questions about individuals, nations, and discourses from both local and global points of view.