ENGL 4997

Joyce and the Graveyard of Digital Empires

Course Description

Course information provided by the Courses of Study 2017-2018.

A survey of digital media scholarship from 1970 to 2000 that takes as its focal point Joyce's 1922 novel, Ulysses—one of the most influential literary works of the 20th century—this seminar investigates major theories of media and literature in relation to the emergence of electronic media technologies. Drawing upon critical theory, media history, and specific artistic and scholarly projects in old and new media, the course asks how and why Joyce came to be used as a defining figure of the "golden age" of hypertext theory: both an exemplary artist and an ultimate editorial challenge. Of special interest to the course is the fate of scholarly projects that took Joyce as their subject, for the challenges of sustainability that the first wave of digital scholarly projects encountered—challenges that reflect on more general problems of preservation in the digital environment, like data corruption, memory failures, and link rot—give rise to important questions about loss, failure, and memory in the history of the digital humanities. Themes that the course explores include hypertext theory, poststructuralist theory, electronic scholarly projects, histories of computing, histories of the book, concepts of the "social text," and the history of predictions about the fate of traditional written forms in an electronic world. Authors and works include James Joyce, Marshall McLuhan, Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida, George Landow, Jay David Bolter, Hans Walter Gabler, Michael Groden, Jerome McGann, and interactive digital texts.

When Offered Spring.

Permission Note Enrollment limited to: 15 students. Intended for advanced undergraduates and graduate students.

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