ENGL 253

Spring 2017 All Classes

All Classes

Topics in Lit and New Media

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Credit: 3 hours.

Introduction to the role technological invention has played in history of print media and how literary aesthetics are changing with the advent of new media, such as software, video games, and graphic novels. We will consider material formats, genres, and modes of production along with the cultural, political, and societal implications of different forms and formats.

May be repeated in separate terms up to 6 hours.

This course satisfies the General Education Criteria in Fall 2022 for:

Humanities – Lit & Arts

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ENGL 253 class schedule data for spring 2017
	CRN	Type	Section	Time	Day	Location	Instructor	Section Details
	63970	Lecture-Discussion	P	11:00AM -12:15PM	TR	English Building	Byrd, J	Part of Term: 1 Date Range: 01/17/17-05/03/17 Degree Notes: Literature and the Arts course. Section Info: Despite the fact that video games have been coded, shared, and played for at least 40 years, such forms of narrative and story continue to be dismissed as mindless entertainment at best and violent time-wasters at worst. In fact, Roger Ebert went so far as to assert that video games can never be art. And yet, in 2011, the Supreme Court determined that, “like the protected books, plays and movies that preceded them, video games communicate ideas—and even social messages—through many familiar literary devices (such as characters, dialogue, plot, and music) and through features distinctive to the medium (such as the player’s interaction with the virtual world).” This class will consider the relationship between literature in its emerging new media, digital, and technology formats by looking specifically at the shared and divergent narrative strategies that old and new mediums use to construct worlds and tell stories. Over the course of the semester, we will consider the history of material formats, look at how videogame play has transforms novels, and consider some of the larger questions emerging from videogame studies. What are games and where do they fit within cultural, literary, racial, social, and gender studies? How do technologies and mediums affect access to and experience of story, aesthetics, and design? What are the cultural and social ideas communicated through games and how do the means of their production function within global economies? Finally, we will have hands on time with virtual reality headsets as well as an archive of new and old games to explore as part of the class content.