ENG 3803 - FALL 2026 - Edwards

This course introduces the history of the different technologies humans have used to record and communicate information in various contexts. Students investigate how technologies have shaped the way we produce, transmit, receive, and understand texts.

In the course, we will examine 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 contexts. “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? Or when a 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, does that change in context impact 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, how media develops over time, what happens to old media when new media emerges, and how best to study media history (medium-specific analysis or crossmedia analysis). The course will help you develop your writing skills and your sense of rhetorical context as we examine media history by thinking about text technologies. Assignments include Canvas discussion posts, two shorter essays, a presentation, and the longer final essay.

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