Participatory Literature

Catalog description

This course explores literature of the digital age. We will begin with a consideration of electronic literature from the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries and of notions of “participatory culture” from the same period. From there, we will investigate a wide range of recent efforts to redefine literature in terms of participation, including online fan fiction communities, literary video games, instapoetry, Twitterature, book clubs that promote novel reading, and various recent experiments with digital storytelling. As we consider these and other examples, we will locate and define the role of literature in today’s media system—especially as a means of circulating underrepresented stories from history and the present to pursue social justice. We will contemplate how literature of the digital age can help us to gain insight into the role of media past and present in enabling and inspiring notions of community, identity, and the possibilities for social and political change. We will also ask how recent literary innovations both converge with and offer alternatives to popular forms of storytelling in social media.