Reading & Composition

This course will examine literature and the visual arts alongside and through the rapidly growing field of virtual technologies, emphasizing their medial relationships to literary artwork. It will draw widely from theory ranging from art history, to linguistics, computer science, anthropology, cognitive studies, and literary criticism in order to evaluate the virtual nature of literary space. In taking this interdisciplinary approach, we will together chart a course towards virtual analysis and both theorize how virtual technologies might generate new critical modes and analytical methods for literary studies, as well as investigate how literature semiotically produces simulated experience. Among others, the course will pose the following questions: How does expansion of the visual and the virtual generate new forms of representation? And with it, how can these forms be understood according to traditional ? Is AR an extension or enhancement of the “real” or a hybridity of forms?

In addition to these literary themes, this course will also focus on composition. Course assignments will emphasize developing arguments, drafts, and revision of written essays. As an R1B course, final essays will include a research component.