ENG 381 - Advanced Topics: Living Language: The Work of New Media Writing and Hybrid Forms (1)

In this contemporary moment, in this digital world - with the increasing accessibility of language, the increasing hybridity of language - is language more vulnerable or is it more alive? Can a zine be used to advance discourse on rape culture? Can an Instagram essay be used to give voice to immigration narratives? Can a podcast become a poem, a hyperlink a piece of evidence, a caption an argument? The poet Aimé Césaire writes: “Beware, my body and my soul, beware above all of crossing your arms and assuming the sterile attitude of the spectator, for life is not a spectacle, a sea of griefs is not a proscenium, and a man who wails is not a dancing bear.” In this course, we will consider what it means to use new media writing and language as a form of resisting sterile spectatorship. How can it be a way of reclaiming life, of activating warning, of actively noticing? How does the act of noticing complicate both our writing, reading, and our humanness? And, more than anything, how can it help us negotiate identity in increasingly fraught sociopolitical contexts?<p/>Together we will develop annotated chapbooks, our own interactive zines, online scavenger hunts, installed audio visual essays, and more. We will embark on listening projects, nature walks, research expeditions. We will read and work with writers and multimedia artists alike - including but not limited to: John Cage, Claudia Rankine, Sarah Minor, Carmen Maria Machado, Jeff Sharlet, Hanif Abdurraquib, C.A. Conrad, Bernadette Mayer, Ann Hamilton, Marina Abramovic… Though we will cover acres of ground in both our own work and the work of others, we will stay anchored to the central question of what work each work is trying to do. In other words: where is the stake? How is the language alive, how is it making use of form to produce activity, change, conversation - and what is our role in this.
(Fine Arts)