Course Description
Technology changes how and what we read. In this course we will study how digital technology has changed literature: the ways in which it is written, to how it is distributed, and what we can do with it. Our readings will include literature produced collaboratively within fan fiction communities, literature written and distributed in social media posts, interactive fiction that borrows from innovations in games, and fiction 'written' by AI language models.
Meet the Instructor
Mark Algee-Hewitt
"My own research work is in the emerging field of Digital Humanities, where I combine the methodologies of the sciences with literary study, to explore patterns in language and in culture across multiple centuries at a scale that was not possible before the advent of digitized text. I am an assistant professor of Digital Humanities in the Department of English and, as the co-director of the Stanford Literary Lab, I lead a number of collaborative projects on many different areas of digital literary study, including suspense literature, poetry, gendered writing, the evolution of concepts, the language of environmental law in the Supreme Court and viral fiction. Since the subject of this course will be so close to the work that we do in the literary lab, it will not only offer students a working knowledge of this emerging field, but will also give them the opportunity to become involved in the research that we do in the lab at the ground level."
