The following courses fulfill the LCI (Literatures, Cultures, Identities) requirement: English 374
(380), English 383 (447), English 383 (458)
The following courses fulfill the pre-1800 requirement: English 234 (224), English 330 (342), English
432
Please note: old course numbers are in parenthesis
English 212 (267): The Craft of Literature
Denise Despres
English 212 fulfills the Fine Arts Core Rubric in developing an aesthetic and critical appreciation
of formal characteristics of literature. In addition, this iteration of the course will invite students
to experiment as artists by creating and critiquing works of fiction and nonfiction prose. We will
explore a number of texts, from ancient and Renaissance drama to Capote’s journalistic novel, In
Cold Blood.
English 212 (267): The Craft of Literature
Ann Putnam
This course will look at the historical and theoretical background of the development of the
modern short story to try to account for the intriguing fact that in America the short story came to
full fruition as it did not in England. To that end, we will try to answer some of the following
questions:
1. Why did Faulkner claim that the short story was harder to write than the novel?
2. Why did the famous literary critic Frank O’Connor say that it takes a better writer to write a
short story than a novel?
3. If all this is true, why is the short story so often considered an “apprentice” art form—what a
writer learns to write before s/he can learn to write a novel? Why are short stories so often
undervalued?
4. Why were many modern writers so dissatisfied with the traditional plot-driven narrative? And
why were so many short story writers criticized for this? “No plot, no story,” Katherine Anne
Porter lamented. Why did so many modern short story writers bury the plot rather than use it to
drive the story?
5. Why does the modern short story seem so plotless, so sketch-like? Why would modern writers
be attracted to this form?
6. If you don’t have traditional plot to hold a story together, what device takes its place?
7. Other than length, what makes a short story short?
8. What is meant by the “flash of fireflies” given off by a short story? That shimmer of
indefiniteness or mysterious expansion or dilation so often described? What does a writer do to
create this effect?
English 212 (267): To Build a Story: From the Voice to the Page to the Screen
Allen Jones
This course is a hands-on exploration of story building. We will treat texts like machines whose
moving parts we must learn to disassemble and reassemble in order to make our own machines.
In other words, we will read stories, poems, and plays with the express purpose of stealing the
masters’ tricks for our own work. This building-as-learning approach, where we involve ourselves
in the writerly process, will also serve as the keystone to our scholarly inquiry into literature. We
will examine how traditional myths, modern stories of heaven and hell, stream-of-consciousness
texts, surrealist games, transgendering biographies, magical realist tales, and digital texts, all offer
us different ways to understand this thing called writing. As a final project, students will get to
design an interactive 3D text. This is a fun, cutting-edge way to think about literature. Designed for
non-majors, and expecting no previous experience in creative writing or literary analysis, this
course will change the way you think about both literature and writing.
English 213 (205): Autobiography/Biography: Writings from the River: The Self as Hero
Beverly Conner
This course will examine the genre critically and creatively, thinking how the self both creates and
is created by the text. We will explore connections and differences among autobiography,
biography, literary memoir, and personal essay. We will consider how and experience why writing
about the self so often entails an act of courage. In this last regard, we will give thoughtful
attention to a diverse genre that spans cultures, genders, classes, and ages. And in exploring the
myth of objectivity, we will also reflect on how imagination may play a part in telling the greater
truths. Past readings included books such as On Writing by Stephen King, Full Moon at Noontide, A
Daughter’s Last Goodbye by Professor Ann Putnam, The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, and This
Boy’s Life by Tobias Wolff, among others.
English 220 (210): Introduction to English Studies
Mita Mahato
This course, which takes “crafty analysis” as its organizing theme, will ask students to explore and
practice skills and critical methods of English Studies through an engaged and reflexive
examination of important texts from Shakespeare forward. By approaching drama, poetry, short
story, novel, comics, and film as texts that have been crafted with particular formal and social
concerns in mind, students will consider the nuanced relationships between form, content, and
context, as well as consider how texts reflect upon their own status as having been “crafted”—that
is, designed for an audience, reader, or viewer. In the process, relevant theoretical approaches
(Marxism, Feminism, Post-Structuralism, to name a few), as well as their histories and
developments over time, will be introduced. Reading and viewing selections will all feature some
dimension of the idea of craft—whether related to the act of making, or the act of deception
(being “crafty”). Readings might include Romeo and Juliet, Spring Awakening, Heart of Darkness,
and Maus.
English 227 (202): Intro to Writing Fiction
Laura Krughoff
In this course, students will be introduced to the fundamental techniques of fiction writing. We
will read, discuss, and analyze the work of master short story writers in addition to reading a
helpful book on craft. These readings will be used to model various literary styles and techniques,
and the first half of the semester will be spent developing and honing these skills. In the second
half of the semester, students will write two short stories and revise one of those stories at the
end of the semester. Students will participate in observation-based workshops of their peers’
fiction, a workshop strategy we will discuss in detail in class. There will also be regular quizzes,
short writing assignments, and a mid-term exam.
English 227 (202): Intro to Writing Fiction
Ann Putnam
In this course, you will write two 5-6 page stories, one Short Short and one Deep Revision, in
addition to keeping a writer’s log and reading lots of short stories. You will have many
opportunities to participate in panels, small group workshops, large group workshops, as well as
many in-class writing sessions. Each day when you come to class, you will know exactly what to
expect, but you will also be surprised. So you'll need to be here every day--ready to do things
you've never done before, remember things you've never remembered before, ready to write
about things you didn't know you knew. All you need is a brave and willing heart.
English 228 (203): Introduction to Writing: Poetry
Beverly Conner
Through writing your own poetry and through reading a variety of poets, you will explore the
genre not only as an expressive art but also as a new way of seeing: a sharper condensation of
yourself and of your world.
“Let us remember . . . that in the end we go to poetry for one reason, so that we might more fully
inhabit our lives and the world in which we live them, and that if we more fully inhabit these
things, we might be less apt to destroy both.” --Christian Wiman, Editor of Poetry Magazine
In this class we are attempting literary art—hoping to find meaning for ourselves and to convey it
to others. You will learn about meter, rhyme, imagery, free verse, and other forms and elements
of poetry. Even if you do not intend to continue writing poems, you will come to a greater
enjoyment of reading poetry and other imaginative work (novels, short stories, plays, etc.). You
will also find that all of your writing (yes, even research papers) will be enhanced by your close
attention in this class to language.
English 233 (223): British Literature III
Darcy Irvin
This survey course covers British Literature from the beginning of Queen Victoria's reign in 1837
up through the present. Together, we will examine a wide range of literature from the last two
centuries, from novels and short stories to poetry, drama, and prose. For the nineteenth century,
we will pay close attention to how the Industrial Revolution radically shaped emerging political,
cultural, and social views. From paradigm shifting new theories about human evolution, to
increased mechanization and production, how did Victorians grapple with a rapidly changing,
modern world? And how did they represent that world, and themselves, in the literature they
produced? Turning our attention to the twentieth century, we will continue to press on issues of
modernity. Reacting to the perceived conventionality of the Victorians, how did writers before,
during, and after the two World Wars respond to the massive political and social upheavals they
faced? And how are contemporary writers today continuing to embrace modernity as it emerges
in new forms? Authors in this course may include Dickens, Eliot, Hardy, Wilde, Yeats, Joyce, Woolf,
and Smith.
English 234 (224): American Literature and Culture: Colonial to Early National
Alison Tracy Hale
This course introduces you to essential texts and contexts for American literature from its origins
in European travel writing and Native American oral traditions through colonization, revolution,
and the social, political, and industrial transformations of the early 19th century. Focused on the
intersecting and mutually constitutive categories of “contact, conflict, and community,” the course
takes a comparative look at the ways in which different cultures interacted across the space now
known as the United States, and emphasizes the ways in which those interactions produced new
forms of identity and community—often at the expense of previous models or the exclusion of
certain peoples. Expect to read both “classic” texts of early America (Franklin, Paine, Rowlandson,
Poe) and those that are less familiar and that come from communities and perspectives outside of
the Anglo-American canonical tradition. Course requirements include short writing assignments, a
5-6 page paper, midterm, and final exam. This course fulfills the department’s pre-1800
requirement. T Th 11-12:20
English 235 (225): American Literature and Culture: Long Nineteenth Century
Tiffany MacBain
This course introduces students to significant developments in American literary history from the
“long nineteenth century,” spanning the post-Revolutionary era to the start of World War I. The
course offers a thematically structured and comparative approach to literary works in relation to
their socio-historical contexts. Drawing upon a variety of genres, this course provides students
with a foundational understanding of important traditions and transformations in literary history
and aesthetics.
English 327 (402): Advanced Fiction Writing
Laura Krughoff
In this advanced fiction workshop, we will consider what it means for a writer to develop a body of
work. While we will continue to practice and hone the fundamental skills and techniques used in
narrative prose, the expectation in this course will be that you are ready to produce complete
works of short fiction and are beginning to explore your own voice, aesthetic, subjects, and
themes as a writer. To this end, our work will be two-fold: we will read selections from seven
collections of short fiction to examine how important contemporary American short story writers
pursue particular themes, return to and re-examine various topics, and develop a recognizable
style or aesthetic. You will simultaneously produce a total of six works of original fiction, and the
semester will culminate in a portfolio that curates your best work augmented by an artist’s
statement that illuminates why you have chosen the stories you have and what the portfolio
reveals about your own body of work. This course is, obviously, reading and writing intensive. A
great deal is going to be asked of you. It is my hope that by dint of the hard work you will put in
over this semester, each one of you will grow as a reader and a writer, as a thinker and a critic,
and, most importantly, as an artist with a vision.
English 328 (403): Advanced Poetry Writing
William Kupinse
“A line will take us hours, maybe,” writes W. B. Yeats on the craft of poetry. “Yet if it does not
seem a moment’s thought, / Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.” This creative writing
workshop will take seriously Yeats’ notion that the effect of spontaneity in poetry is achieved only
through fierce attention and substantial effort. By stitching and unstitching multiple drafts of their
poems, participants will hone the critical skills that will allow them to become more effective
writers of poetry. Assignments in this course will emphasize writing as a process and will include
selected reading of canonical and contemporary poems, weekly exercises, in-class discussions, and
peer reviews. Students will produce a polished portfolio of approximately ten poems by the
semester’s end, and a public reading of student work will provide a capstone experience to the
workshop.
English 330 (342): Genre: Novel: The Rise of the Novel in America
Alison Tracy Hale
This course investigates the relationship between the emergence and increasing significance of the
novel and the development of the United States from the 18 th century through the mid-19th
century. Many critics have remarked upon the simultaneous historical emergence of the novel
genre and the American nation, and suggest that both responded to an increasing emphasis—
political and aesthetic—on the activities, beliefs, and experiences of the “common” individual. Our
course will thus investigate the ways that the form and content of the novel negotiated the social
and political transformations of early America. We will begin by exploring the origins of (and
precursors to) the novel in Britain and British America, study the genre’s defining characteristics
and its role in the construction and contestation of U.S. “national identity” during the final decades
of the 18th century, and investigate several of its divergent 19th century iterations: the romance or
sentimental novel, the political or philosophical novel, the gothic or sensationalist novel, and the
realist novel. Course readings will likely be selected from among the following possibilities:
Hawthorne, The Blithedale Romance or The House of Seven Gables; Charles Brockden Brown,
Wieland or Edgar Huntly; Foster, The Coquette; Rebecca Rush, Kelroy; William Wells Brown, Clotel;
or the President’s Daughter; Lydia Maria Child, A Romance of the Republic; Maria Cummins, The
Lamplighter; Ruth Hall, Fanny Fern. Expect a heavy reading load (these novels are long and dense,
but great fun!), a shorter essay (6 pages), close reading (2 pages), a class presentation on a
critical/secondary work, and a longer seminar essay (12 pages, including historical or critical
research). Prerequisite: ENGL 220 and one other 200-level course in the major. This course fulfills
the department’s pre-1800 requirement. T-Th 2-3:20
English 374 (380): Literature and Environment
William Kupinse
English 374 will explore the development of environmental writing in English-language texts with
an emphasis on twentieth-century fiction, poetry, and memoir. Covering a wide range of
geographical settings and literary genres, we will examine each text as an argument for a
particular “reading” of the environment, and we will further inquire about real-world
consequences of that reading. Our investigation will address questions of both historical and
topical importance: Is the Romantic legacy of engaging with the natural world harmful to current
efforts to address environmental challenges? How can imaginative literature play an activist role
in engaging with pressing ecological threats such as global climate change and ocean
acidification? How do we understand the relationship among the environment, technology, and
the human body? How does thinking about our ethical obligation to animals shape our
understanding of environmental issues? What does environmental literature have to add to
current scholarship on race, class, and gender? Writers studied will include Terry Tempest
Williams, Margaret Atwood, Richard Hugo, Karen Tei Yamashita, and Octavia Butler. Our study of
primary texts will be supplemented with scholarship on ecocritical theory, including selections
from Stacey Alaimo's Bodily Natures, Timothy Morton's Ecology without Nature, and Rob Nixon's
Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. This course fulfills the department’s LCI
requirement.
English 381 (360): Major Authors: Thomas Hardy
Darcy Irvin
As an author, Thomas Hardy is perhaps best known for his late Victorian novels that focus on
people living in small, isolated towns and villages in the English countryside. In this course, we'll
consider Hardy as a transitional figure into Modernism, looking carefully at his radical and
challenging depictions of gender and sexual desire, focusing especially on how his characters
grapple with restraints such as conventional Victorian marriage structures, class boundaries that
inhibited upwards social mobility, and of course the isolation individuals can experience within
small, tightly-bound communities. Many of his novels and poems take place in the fictional
"Wessex" countryside, which Hardy mapped (both literally and metaphorically) onto the real
county of Essex in England. As one of the nineteenth century's greatest environmental writers,
how did he construct a disappearing vision of rural life and the natural world? And how did he
represent these "Wessex" landscapes and the figures who populate them as increasingly
swallowed up by an industrialized modern age? Although most of our conversation will be on
Hardy's major novels, we'll also read across genres into his popular short fiction, his well known
Wessex poems, his failed attempt at sensation fiction, and even his novels translated into film
(Hardy set in Gold Rush California!). In addition, we'll situate Hardy's rural narratives and especially
his depictions of the New Woman in a Victorian literary context by occasionally reading
supplementary texts (short fiction and non-fiction) that focus on gender roles, industrialization,
and sexuality. Major texts may include Far from the Madding Crowd, The Mayor of Casterbridge,
The Return of the Native, and Jude the Obscure. Supplementary texts may include short works and
excerpts by Charles Dickens, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Oscar Wilde, Sarah Grand, and Mona Caird.
English 383 (447): Frontier Mythologies
Tiffany MacBain
At the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893, historian Frederick Jackson Turner delivered the speech, “The
Significance of the Frontier in American History.” In it, Turner relies upon well-trodden (and stillfamiliar) images to describe the American frontier: it is a tabula rasa, the “outer edge of the wave”
of westward expansion, “the meeting point between savagery and civilization.” While Turner
ultimately declares that “the frontier has gone”—closed, retreated—he argues that it leaves
behind “the striking characteristics” of the “American intellect” that it forged. Today the idea of
the North American frontier, a component of the American West, continues to loom large in the
United States cultural imaginary. While contemporary scholars reject elements of Turner’s thesis,
they remain convinced that frontier experiences were, and continue to be, formative.
This course examines literature from the 19th century and earlier to trace the development of
national ideologies and mythologies indebted to experiences and imaginings of the North
American frontier. Rather than limit ourselves to popular representations of a mid-19th-c space
west of the Mississippi, we cross temporal, spatial, and cultural borders to achieve a fuller
understanding of the literary frontier. We consider the ways in which texts that articulate a
variety of experiences connect with and complicate each other. Primary texts include pre-contact
oral narratives, western exploration narratives, captivity narratives, pioneer narratives, and
frontier fiction. While the majority of course materials concern iterations of the frontier prior to
1900, we end the semester by identifying and interrogating contemporary efforts to resuscitate or
reimagine frontier experiences. The course includes a living-history component, which involves
either a field trip or a class visitor. This course fulfills the department’s LCI requirement.
English 383 (458): Logics of History: Historical Narrative and Late-20th C. American Literature
Mike Benveniste
Engaging with Postmodernism and poststructuralist thought, late-20th C. American literature
evinced skepticism about ‘facts,’ ‘truth,’ ‘referentiality’ – representation, really – through parody,
hyperbole, and auto- or meta-referentiality. Somewhat paradoxically, historical fiction reemerged
as a major genre during this period; so much so that many scholars take this genre to be a
quintessential Postmodern form. Using this intellectual context as its point-of-departure, this class
will explore the questions of how and why diverse writers of this period none-the-less chose to
narrate history, and what value such ‘fake’ histories might nonetheless have.
In his 1973 book Metahistory, theorist Hayden White argued that written history is fabricated
according to the principles and tropes of fiction; that, in a sense, history is fictional. In this class,
we will read historical narratives from the period of the (so-called) Postmodern to the present as
we try to answer the question of what point there is to narrating history without the belief that its
true? What are the uses and motives of fictional histories? What ends might they serve? Might
these novels do anything other than declare that history is a fiction?
To answer such questions, we will read from a multi-ethnic canon of authors, and consider the
ways in which racial and ethnic identity inform their fictional projects. Authors may include Toni
Morrison, Don DeLillo, Karen Tei Yamashita, Julie Otsuka, Richard Powers, Alejandro Morales
among others. Our fiction readings will be paired with a steady diet of theory, covering theories of
historiography and historical fiction, Postmodernsim, and theories of fictionality. Selected authors
may include Hayden White, FR Ankersmit, Jean Francois Lyotard, Slavoj Zizek, Richard Walsh and
Thomas Pavel.
[Note: in addition to a very substantial reading load (300-400 pp per week), this class will have a
pronounced theoretical component, involving primary readings in philosophy and critical theory.]
This course fulfills the department’s LCI requirement.
English 432: Desire and the Invention of Western Romantic Love
Denise Despres
Patristic thinkers constructed a moral psychology that subordinated human desire to the faculty of
the Will. Earthly desire was a legacy of the Fall, the central paradigm of the corruption of the
Will. Even Augustine, whose writing on married love is sympathetic and supportive, viewed sexual
desire as an erosion of the Will. For other influential patristic writers, such as Jerome and
Ambrose, a rejection of voluptas, the capacity for sensual pleasure, was the sole means of
conquering the fallen flesh and thus regaining, in some measure, the innocence of Paradise. A
celibate medieval clergy disseminated such views to the laity, attempting to enforce sexual
abstinence through penitentials and sermons. Nonetheless, a classical tradition of wholly amoral
and asocial desire (fin amors or courtly love) dominated the cultural scenes of courts from the
twelfth through the fifteenth centuries, influencing not only literary production, but also providing
the basic construct for desire that still influences Western notions of sexual love today. In turn,
this construct of courtly love generated playful resistance in literary genres like the fabliaux. This
course fulfills the department’s pre-1800 requirement.
The historical development of a distinctly Western form of “desire” is the focus of this
seminar. We’ll consider the particular historical moment of its conception, its problematic
morality and reception in medieval Catholic culture, its circulation between courtly and mystical
literary texts, its growth from and influence on medieval views of gender, sexuality and its use as a
vehicle for poetic explorations of “selfhood” (defined in a medieval context). All of the primary
works I’ve selected for discussion are distinctly contradictory in their presentations of desire, both
celebrating human desire as an individualizing experience and rejecting sexual obsession as
abandonment of free will and thus spiritual rectitude. Scholars and critics have been delighted
and frustrated by these classics, as we will no doubt be. Our particular purpose, however, is to
explore medieval culture through a cultural construct that modern students might mistake for
simple, natural emotion, to show how even the way we fall in love and experience sexual desire
is, in part, a legacy of Medieval culture.
English 497: The Writing Internship
Julie Christoph
This course provides an academic setting in which students analyze cultures of professional
writing, through both fieldwork and classwork. In their fieldwork, students will explore career
goals by interning 120 hours during the semester either in a writing-related field (such as
advertising, publishing, public relations, or journalism), or in a position involving writing in the forprofit or not-for-profit sector. The classroom component is conducted as a once-a-week senior
seminar, in which students will workshop writing from their internships and discuss internship
experiences through the lens of course readings.
Readings include theoretical articles on such topics as copyright law, ethics, authorship, and
technological change, as well as selections from workplace ethnographies. Course assignments will
include journal entries connecting internship experiences with academic coursework from the past
four years at Puget Sound, a workplace ethnography, and presentations on writing- and workrelated issues that arise out of internship experiences. Students will leave the course with a better
understanding of how knowledge transfers (and doesn’t) from college to the workplace and will
develop personal and vicarious knowledge of the writing and culture of the internship sites
represented in the class as a whole.
Humanities 303A: The Monstrous Middle Ages
Denise Despres
Today, we naturally “connect” the medieval period with monstrosity, and rightly so. While popular
culture has relegated the monstrous to subgenres of film and literature, medieval culture
embraced monstrosity and all its ambiguity as the border between human ingenuity and Platonic
form, culture and the darker forces of fallen nature, self and the ever-present other (Saracen, Jew,
Mongol, Hermaphrodite, to name a few). Humanities 303 explores medieval ontology, the nature
of creation and our human ability to know it fully, through the monstrous. Recent research in art
history, geography, anthropology, literary history, and cultural studies enables us to offer
undergraduates current scholarship in an interdisciplinary format; as cultural historians whose
published scholarship ranges from the disciplines of art history to literary and religious studies, we
welcome the opportunity to collaborate in search of an answer to Bernard’s haunting question.
Why does monstrosity assume such a visible place in medieval culture? In turn, we expect that
our students will emerge with a critical methodology for cultural studies in other periods. They will
not be surprised when they discover that Renaissance historiographers, sharing the classical
heritage with medieval intellectuals, were equally fascinated with monstrosity and compiled their
own “scientific” works on the marvelous.
SSI2 134: Dreams and Desire: Explorations of the Threshold World
Ann Putnam
The theme of this course is the exploration of the liminal world—the terrain for which there is
evidence but no proof. For example, what do religion, anthropology, philosophy, medicine,
psychology, and literature have to say about the seen and the unseen, the threshold between life
and death—issues that shoot to the core of human existence and exert the strongest hold on the
human spirit? Students explore the validity of claims about belief and unbelief, the world beyond
the senses, made by prophets, priests, poets, shamans, scientists, philosophers. As both writers
and speakers, students construct persuasive arguments based on an evaluation of sources that
either contradict or defend given assumptions about the role of liminality in culture, history,
identity, and the natural world. Students begin with texts that insist upon controversial readings,
such as Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Louis Owens’ Wolfsong, Isabel Allende’s The House of the Spirits.
SSI2 134: Dreams and Desire: Explorations of the Liminal World
Bev Conner
The thematic content of the course is the exploration of the concept of liminality. The implicit if
not explicit framework of the course will be the construction of persuasive arguments that
examine moral, ethical, intellectual, and artistic responses to the concept of liminality—issues that
shoot to the core of human existence. As both writers and speakers, we will construct persuasive
arguments that either contradict or defend given assumptions about the role of liminality in
culture, history, identity, and the natural world. Our readings and research will represent
divergent points of view that may oppose traditional texts in creative, compelling ways, becoming
countertexts, as it were, that question long-held assumptions about our deepest epistemological
and existential concerns.
SSI2 138: Theatre and Comedy
Kane Anderson
This writing course studies the theories and uses of comedy in relationship to dramatic literature.
We will apply a scholarly eye to plays and other media to break down how certain forms of
comedy work and discuss their applications in plays and culture. Through a variety of plays, we will
address comedy in conjunction with issues of gender, race, and class to locate the motivations and
processes of humor.
SSI2 160: Modernism: Early 20th Century Art, Literature, and Music
Allen Jones
The early 20th century saw a flowering in the arts unmatched since the Renaissance. Picasso,
Matisse, Dali, Woolf, Stein, Loy, Stravinsky, the names alone ring out as invocations of genius.
Working with figures in all genres and mediums, students trace the development of a style that
pushed the boundaries of every art form as it attempted to understand a radically changing world.
Students become fluent in the characteristics and techniques (yes, we will try them) of the
multiple movements within Modernism (Imagism, Cubism, Surrealism, the Harlem Renaissance,
Bauhaus, etc.). Students ponder their dreams with Freud, sing off-key with Stravinsky, turn the
world into geometry with Picasso, and figure out why Frank Lloyd Wright would stick a house right
on top of a waterfall. As a final project, students will build an online annotated timeline of the
period. This is an exciting chance to sharpen critical skills while taking part in an ongoing Digital
Humanities research project.
SSI2 177: The Digital Present and Our Possible Techno Futures
Laura Krughoff
This course is designed to explore the wildly ramified effects digital technology is having on
people's intellectual, educational, social, professional, and economic lives. Students will be
introduced to a number of arguments about the nature and consequences of some of the changes
digital technology is fostering; however, each student is asked to pose his or her own scholarly
question within this broad field of inquiry. These questions, and the research they inspire and
require, will shape the true content of the course. Students leave this course with new and
important information about the potential futures made possible by digital technology. More
importantly, however, they leave this course with information literacy, research practices and
habits, analytical and argumentative strategies, and rhetorical skills they use across the Puget
Sound curriculum and throughout their intellectual lives.