ENG 4815 Thomsen Spring 2021

The catalog describes ENG 4815 as an investigation into “the nature of textuality and its relationship to various media and technologies, which explores theoretical and practical questions related to the production and reception of texts in a variety of different forms and media. Students read works in which textuality is broached as topic, including multimedia texts, and also produce a final project in at least two different media.”

As such, the focus of “What Is a Text?” is a sustained inquiry into the constitution of a “text” and its meaning(s). To underscore the intricacies of the text, this course considers two frameworks for unflattening textuality: new materialisms and decoloniality. It draws on new materialisms to explore things—objects such as pencils, screw drivers, smart phones, and archives—as material-visual “texts” with meaning and agency. And, it considers decoloniality as a means to rearticulate the power structures, identities, and localizations of texts. We will pursue our inquiry through these theoretical frameworks, via analyses of specific texts, and with the production of our own textual projects. Texts for analysis may include speeches, music, archives and archival texts, films, photographs, and comics. Textual projects will be innovative creations that seek to answer questions about textuality and will culminate in a Theory of Textuality. Through our interactions, we shape our realities and interpret them. In the process of so doing, we shape and interpret ourselves and each other. This course thus illuminates these intersections as sites for better understanding textuality.