What are digital texts beyond the ubiquitous e-book? This course examines the history of experimental literature in the 20th century by exploring hypertext fiction, algorithmic literature, electronic literature, and navigable narrative. We will take a project-based approach to the study of such digital texts, and students will “get their hands dirty” in the process of generating, remixing, and producing speculative readings of a hypertext reading list that spans different languages, the Americas and the Anglophone world, print and digital forms. We’ll explore the long history of hypertext, from Modernist literature, to the Oulipo in 1960s France, and to avant garde video games of the present.
- Teacher: Anne Cong-Huyen