ENGLISH 5023 X2: SPECIAL TOPICS IN LITERATURE AND CULTURE
“Cross-Platform Narrativity: New media transformations of literary traditions”
Slot 25: Friday 8:30 – 11:30 a.m.
Location: BAC 353
Instructor: Dr. Jon Saklofske
Email: jon.saklofske@acadiau.ca
Office: 423 BAC
Office Phone: 585-1442
Office Hours: MW 9:30 -11:30
Or by appointment…
Course Description and Objectives:
It is difficult to dismiss Robert Fulford’s claim that “stories touch all of us, reaching across
cultures and generations.” Though the human desire for narrative appears to be universal, the
ways in which we share and participate in such storytelling processes have not remained
constant. Currently, the in-progress technological revolutions of the computer and large-scale
networked communications provide unprecedented opportunities for narrative transformation
and awareness. In this historical moment of media in transition, new media literature
experiments have emerged which enable us to revisit the naturalized technology of the book and
to explore how its forms have standardised particular narrative conventions but have also left
room for current expansions and experiments. In this class, we will consider the changing roles
of authors and readers in this new media landscape and explore how boundaries of literature and
the “literary” are being affected by media convergence, the introduction of players, the
transformation of narratives into interactive multi-user gamespaces, and the large-scale
emergence of transmedia storytelling and vast narrative practices. To anchor these ideas and to
exemplify the nature and impact of multimedia and digital shifts in narrative perception,
participation and process, we will draw from experimental novels in print, electronic literature
(E-lit), Interactive Fiction, Alternate reality games (ARGs) and a number of digital game
narratives.
Required Textbooks:
1. Aarseth, Espen. Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature. Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins UP, 1997. ISBN-10: 0801855799; ISBN-13: 978-0801855795
2. Auster, Paul. City of Glass. Penguin Books, 1987. ISBN-10: 0140097317; ISBN-13:
978-0140097313
3. Bolter, Jay and Richard Grusin. Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge:
MIT Press, 2000. ISBN-10: 0262522799; ISBN-13: 978-0262522793
4. Danielewski, Mark. House of Leaves: The Remastered Full-Color Edition. New York:
Pantheon, 2000. ISBN-10: 0375703764; ISBN-13: 978-0375703768
5. Hayles, Katherine. Electronic Literature: New Horizons for the Literary. Notre Dame:
University of Notre Dame Press, 2008. ISBN-10:0268030855; ISBN-13: 9780268030858
6. McGann, Jerome. Radiant Textuality: Literature after the World Wide Web. New York:
Palgrave MacMillan, 2004. ISBN-10: 140396436X; ISBN-13: 978-1403964366
(Paperback)
7. Murray, Janet. Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace.
Cambridge: MIT Press, 1998. ISBN-10: 0262631873; ISBN-13: 978-0262631877
Evaluation:
(2x25%) Each of you will have 2 seminar opportunities. These seminars will begin with a 20minute, conference-type paper presentation (9-12 pages) that critically and
argumentatively engages with theoretical issues relating to that day’s assigned topic and
specific reading(s) that you have signed up for. Please do not read from your paper
directly, but construct a presentation that engages your audience while covering the
primary arguments of your paper. Questions about, critical responses to and discussion
of your conference presentation will follow, then you will lead an in-depth workshop
that directs discussion surrounding a “case study” (chosen from the suggestions in the
tentative schedule below) in light of your paper’s argument. This workshop should
springboard from your paper, and you should prepare discussion questions to engage
your peers in discussion and debate while using the example to further your thesis.
Please circulate any additional material that the class needs to become familiar with at
least a week prior to your presentation. A written version of each seminar paper is due
on the day that you present to the class, and it is expected that you will make use of
secondary sources in addition to class readings.
35% EITHER:
1.
Academic Term Paper (20-25 pages)
Produce an article length (6000 word minimum, 20 page) essay to be handed
in on April 5, 2013. This topic of your choosing should be distinguished from
both of your seminar papers (although it can draw from those papers as
preliminary foundations ). Making good use of a broad selection of secondary
sources (beyond class readings and examples) is mandatory.
OR
2. “We no longer have to use books to study other books or texts” (Jerome
McGann, Radiant Textuality, 168). Recognizing and affirming that traditional
forms of critical narrativity are not necessarily the only tools for scholarship,
create a rhetorical, performative, in-depth argument that lucidly, selfconsciously and conclusively interrogates the forms and functions that
narrative can follow or be disrupted by in new media environments. This
interactive space can be constructed as (a) a digital environment, (via
programming or via tools such as INFORM 7 or the Acadia MOOspace)
(This project must be supplemented by 5-7 pages of design notes describing
and justifying your project in relation to class readings), (b) as a detailed 2025 page design document that prototypes and justifies a unique critical
approach to new media work, or as (c) a creative, but consequential critical
apparatus that self-consciously and self-reflexively employs both form and
content to argumentatively and conclusively digest course-related theory and
praxis. (This can be but does not have to be digital…)
10% Contributions to class blog. (One posting per week, plus one comment every 2 weeks)
5% Participation in Seminar Discussions
(100% Total)
Tentative Schedule:
Month Date
Topic(s)
Readings
Case Studies:
January
Narrative
traditions,
authorship:
Telling (diegesis)
and showing
(mimesis)
Foucault: What is an
Author
Introduction to Perec’s
Life: A User’s Manual
(ACORN)
11
Barthes: Death of the
Author
Forster and Benjamin on
Narrative
Seminar
Lewis Carroll: Through
the Looking Glass
(ACORN)
Bal – Narratology
Chronology of 20th c.
narrative theory
Gibson – Towards a
postmodern theory of
narrative
18
25
Narrative
Authenticity,
hypermediacy and
metaphor
Bolter and Grusin:
Remediation
Diegetic Erosion:
Layers,
Disruptions,
Unreliability and
Inconclusiveness
Manguel – Turning the
Page
Paul Auster: City of
Glass
1.
Mark Danielewski:
House of Leaves
1.
Mark Danielewski:
House of Leaves
1.
Borges: Garden of
Forking Paths.
1.
Miller: Line
Tabbi – The Processual
Page
Baudrillard – The
Precession of Simulacra
Februar
y
1
Challenging
formal constraint
and tradition
McLuhan – The medium is
the message
Hayles – excerpts from
Writing Machines
8
Networked
narrative; digital
diegesis
McGann: Radiant
Textuality (1)
2.
Murray, Janet: Hamlet on
the Holodeck (2)
Muri – Virtually Human
Costikyan – Breaking the
String
Hindmarch – Storytelling
games as a creative
medium
15
Let’s tell a story together:
The history of Interactive
Fiction
Aarseth: Cybertext—
perspectives on Ergodic
Literature (1)
Elit
Andrew Plotkin’s
“Shade”
You find yourself
in a room
MOOs, MUDs,
IRC, 4chan and
Reddit
SCP foundation
Tabletop RPGs
Inanimate Alice;
We Tell Stories;
J.R. Carpenter
Ergon Logos
1.
2.
Hayles: Electronic
Literature—New Horizons
for the Literary (2)
Reading Week: No Classes
22
March
1
Digital games I
Ryan, Marie-Laure:
selections from Narrative
as Virtual Reality
Bogost: Persuasive Games
Jenkins: Game design as
narrative architecture
Pearce: Towards a game
theory of game
Zimmerman – Narrative,
interactivity, play and
games
BeatUpAnitaSarkeesian
.swf
Facade
Sleep is death
The Snowfield
The Stanley Parable
Journey
Storyteller game
The Company of
myself
Bars of Black and
white
The infinite ocean
Dear Esther (Script on
ACORN)
1.
2.
Mateas and Stern –
Writing Façade
8
Digital games II
Depict1
Nerurkar: Game
Architecture: Archetypes Loved
Don’t shit your pants
- The Maze
Video: PC Gamer PAX
Dys4ia
One chance
1.
2012 Megapanel - _The
Incredible, Uncertain
Future of storytelling
Unmanned
Every day the same
dream
Rohrer’s “passage”
Keverne: Framework for
Systemic Storytelling (Part
1)
Keverne: Framework for
Systemic Storytelling (Part
2)
Backe – Story logic and
the structure of games
Walker – Network of
Quests
15
Vast narratives (1)
Emergent
narratives(2)
Jenkins: Quentin
Tarantino’s Star Wars?
Paglia: George Lucas’s
Force
Day Z
Star Wars/Star Trek
Lost; the Buffyverse;
Dr. Who; The Walking
Dead
1.
2.
Poster – Postmodern
Virtualities
Williams – In what
Universe?
Bartle – Alice and
Dorothy play together
Rolston – My story never
ends
Wallis: Making games
that make stories
22
ARGs,
environmental
storytelling and
augmented reality.
Greenspan_The New Place
of Reading_ Locative
Media and the Future of
Narrative
On storyworlds, immersive
media, narrative and
museums – an interview
with Mike Jones
http://www.argn.com/
1.
Online Caroline
I love bees
The Lost Ring
World without oil
Another version of
the truth
Disneyland
http://livingworlds.disn
ey.com/
29
April
5
No Class: Good Friday
Show and tell: The
end of narrative or
a reaffirmation of
narrativity?
www.storyworldconfer
ence.com
Future of Storytelling