ENGLISH 367

Special Topic: Space/Image/Text


Please note: this is archived course information from 2017 for ENGLISH 367.

Description

Writing is morphing into practices of ‘design’, and textuality is becoming increasingly digital. What do these changes mean for conceptions of literacy now and in the future? This course considers the interests, discourses and forces that are shaping expressions and conceptions of textuality and literacy. Frameworks for multimodal analysis will be drawn from literary theory, new media and cultural studies, as well as from educational studies of ‘new literacies’ and ‘multiliteracies’. The course will analyse a variety of textual forms, including advertisements, hypertexts, digital poetry, digital games, policy texts and ‘ecocritical’ texts. These will be set within broader social, political, cultural and environmental contexts such as the rise of digital technology, neoliberalism and the growing awareness of environmental crisis.  

The course will offer you an opportunity to make significant connections between English, education and societal forces by exploring links between space, image, text and literacy. It will be relevant to students considering careers that require broad-based creative and analytical skills in communication and representation, as well as those interested in careers with an educational dimension. Specifically, the course offers:

  • development of a broad-based analytical repertoire and grasp of how meaning is made through a variety of multimodal designs;
  • increased awareness of the implications of shifts in discourses and the proliferation of new textual forms for communicative and creative practices and conceptions of literacy;
  • introduction to timely debates about the relationship between the study of English and the study of literacy.

Availability 2017

Not taught in 2017

Lecturer(s)

Lecturer(s)  Sasha Matthewman

Reading/Texts

Course texts will be available through Talis and will include articles by Gunther Kress, Lawrence Buell, George Landow, Roland Barthes, Stuart Hall, James Gee, Bill Cope and Mary Kalantzis.

Assessment

20% - reading of a digital multimedia text

40% - creative digital text design with critical commentary

40% - critical essay on the implications of shifting definitions and expressions of textuality

Points

ENGLISH 367: 15 points