ENG 3803 - Spring 2026 - Hand

This course focuses on the history of textual creation and communication from beginnings to the present. Cave painting, tattoo, graffiti, scroll, handmade books, machine-made books, photography, film and TV, digital media, AI: each of these technologies emerged from specific cultural conditions. We will investigate how some of these technologies emerge and how they shape culture in turn. How does a particular technology influence what types of texts are created, read, and kept? How might a meaning of a text change if it is remediated through a different technology? How might we define categories like “book,” “technology,” and “reading”? In coming to understand how various cultural contexts shaped, and were shaped by, tools of communication, we will develop a greater understanding of our own culture’s relationship with text technologies. This course will give you a foundation on which to evaluate the tools you use to communicate and to recognize how given tools negotiate permanence, ephemerality, materiality, functionality, and intentionality.

This is a core course for EWM and meets the genre requirement for LMC.