Module: ENG6102-20 Literature and Digital Culture

Credit Value: 20

Module Tutor: Dr Stephen Gregg

Module Tutor Contact Details: S.Gregg@bathspa.ac.uk

1. Brief description and aims of module:

Digital technology has had a dramatic impact on English studies. This module will introduce you to the theory and the practice of how the study of literature is being transformed by digital technology and address a range of important questions, such as: what is a ‘digital’ text? What processes and decisions are involved in transforming a material book into its online version? What is the effect of online social knowledge on literature? How can we create and publish our own knowledge about literature? What kinds of questions are raised when we can analyse literature using digital tools? How might we examine the practice and experience of reading digital texts? Importantly, it aims to answer these questions by a hands-on approach; alongside an engagement with printed texts and a variety of digital resources, you will be guided throughout the module to create a variety of digital mini-projects. In this way you will be able to reflect, in a vital way, on these questions and the issues that are shaping the future of English studies.

(No technical knowledge is required to take this module).

This is a Vertically-Integrated Module. It aims to facilitate students across levels to collaborate in their learning activities. The community of students on this module aims to enable you to draw upon a wider-than-usual pool of literary-critical knowledge of your peers – a valuable source of support given a key aim of the module is to create a digital project whose literary topic is your own choice.

2. Outline syllabus:

1. Media shifts. The module will begin by introducing the concept of literature as a media technology, enabling you to discuss how we conceive and read printed and digital literature, and how we can interrogate the relationship between print and digital texts.

2. Remediation and preservation. Via theory, the analysis of a digital edition or archive (e.g. The Blake Archive), and hands-on digitization, this section will discuss what happens when printed texts are translated into a digital medium. In addition, by examining and editing Wikipedia entries on literary works and authors, it will address how issues such as gender, race, and canonicity affect how literary history is preserved and represented online.

3. Visualizing literature. This section will enable you to study the techniques of data mining and ‘distance reading’ as applied to literature. You will use and reflect on various digital tool for the analysis and visualisation of literature (e.g. word frequency analysis, or visualizing social networks). Example primary text might be 400+ novels from the 1880s, or all of Shakespeare’s plays, or all of Austen’s novels, or you might want to create your own body of works (NB. no ‘traditional’ or close reading is required).

4. Contemporary adaptation. This section of the module we will examine how contemporary literature breaks down the boundaries between print and digital media in both its form and content. Via the study of texts and creative adaptation, we will address the translation of narrative from print to digital, but also from digital to print.

3. Teaching and learning activities:

A variety of teaching and learning activities will be used, including self-directed tasks, seminar discussion, lectures, in-class and independent engagement with online resources, and assessment tutorials, peer-to-peer learning.

Assessment Item 1:

• Assessment Type: CW

• Description: Essay (1500 words)

• % Weighting: 30

Assessment Item 2:

• Assessment Type: CW

• Description: Project (3500 words)

• % Weighting: 70