EN36520 - HYPERTEXT AND TWENTIETH CENTURY LITERARY STUDIES

Module Identifier

EN36520

Module Title

HYPERTEXT AND TWENTIETH CENTURY LITERARY STUDIES

Academic Year

2004/2005

Co-ordinator

Professor Timothy S Woods

Semester

Intended for use in future years

Next year offered

N/A

Next semester offered

N/A

Pre-Requisite

Students will be expected to present evidence of interest in computer skills, e.g. development of their own webpage, prior to signing up.

Course delivery

Seminars / Tutorials

20 Hours Seminar. 10 x 2 hour workshop seminars in a computer based room

Assessment

Assessment Type	Assessment Length/Details	Proportion
Semester Assessment	Project Work: 1 webpage project of 4000-6000 word length (and images) made accessible over the WWW, not necessarily one page.	70%
Semester Assessment	Essay: 1 x 1500-2000 word essay	30%
Supplementary Assessment	1 x 1500-2000 word essay - this will form 30% of the final module mark. 1 webpage project of 4000-6000 word length (and images) made accessible over the WWW, not necessarily one page - his will form 70% of the module mark.
Supplementary Assessment	Resubmit any failed elements and/or make good any missing elements.

Learning outcomes

On completion of this module students should be able to:

1. demonstrate they have acquired a knowledge and understanding of the texts on the module and a critical awareness of the broader issues raised by the module;

2. discuss the texts coherently and write about them in a well-argued and well-structured way;

3. construct and design a website which would be accessible to users of the world wide web;

4. assess the website constructed and designed by other students on the module.

Aims

This module will offer ways in which various forms of information technology can be integrated with the teaching of literary studies. It will result in a body of databases which, when loaded up onto the web, may be useful twentieth-century literary resources for future students: a slowly gathering corpus of useful web items composed and designed by undergraduates which may, in themselves, become models for future students to build upon.

The module will involve some theoretical work on the implications of the new technology for the ways in which we read and write, as well as the ways in which we conceptualise data. It will encourage students:

to think more closely about the functional units of text - what is a text; what are the relevant links between texts?
to encourage students to think more carefully and emphatically about the nature of structure and the presentation of connecting data;
to make visible and explicit mental processes that have always been part of the total reading experience;
to make for a more reader-centred encounter with and experience of texts as part of a network of navigable paths and relations;
to learn nonsequential reading practices, characteristic of more advanced study, and the integration of scattered evidence into a more complex intellectual structure.

In general, the module aims gradually to increase the competence and confidence of students in the exploration of innovative uses of computers and IT in the learning and teaching process.

Brief description

This option will seek to link twentieth-century literary studies with information skills, offering students an opportunity to pursue an academic project within the context of learning, developing and ultimately constructing, web pages.

The sorts of projects that might be envisaged here are:

a database on a particular literary project (e.g., the thirties generation);
a database on a particular movement (e.g., Imagism, Constructivism);
a database on a particular author (e.g., T.S. Eliot or Thomas Pynchon);
a cultural study of a particular period / decade / genre / city (e.g., New York, London);
an edited version of a particular text(s) (e.g., 'The Waste Land', several poems by a First World War poet).

Another approach might be to compile a database of the web resource on a particular subject, author, etc., which might be compared with written resources, which in turn might serve a useful source of information for future students.

Innovative approaches to particular problems, interesting links, attractive designs for web pages and helpful guides to readers, will be considered as significant to the final assessment as the substantiveness of the academic content and the nature of the information that is imparted on the project's site.

Reading Lists

Books
** Recommended Text
George Landow in Delany and Landwo, eds. (1999) The Rhetoric of Hypermedia: Some Rules for Authors MIT
Paul Delany and George Landow (eds.) (1991) Hypertext, Hypermedia and Literary Studies: The State of The Art, In: Hypermedia and Literary Studies MIT Press

Notes

This module is at CQFW Level 6