digital digs

Evolution of Writing

My colleague, David Franke, has asked me to visit his class on the "Evolution of Writing" to discuss the question of whether new media can be a site of "serious" discourse. The class has recently finished reading Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death, which argues the opposing position--that new media can entertain but cannot replace "serious" discourse. I suppose the first impulse is to take the bait and argue to the contrary: "of course new media can be 'serious.'" But this is really the wrong answer to the wrong question. The first question is "what is meant by 'serious?'" The following question is "what is the value of 'seriousness?' What does it acheive?"

Cyberpunk Literature Course

As noted on the summer schedule, I will be teaching this course during the second summer session, MW 5:30-9:30, from June 28th-July 30th. The course will focus on cyberpunk literature. The genre of cyberpunk develops from the literary traditions of gothic, detective, and science fiction and h as been popularized in contemporary movies such as Blade Runner, eXistenZ, and The Matrix. Though in the past, literary studies has overlooked what it has termed "genre fiction," contemporary English Studies has integrated science fiction into its intellectual practice, including genre-specific academic journals like Science Fiction Studies and Extrapolation. Furthermore, as this course will investigate, cyberpunk in particular has developed strong resonance with literary theory, contemporary philosophy, and cultural studies. In short, cyberpunk has emerged as an important area of literary study in contemporary literature.

Kurt Cobain

As you might know, today is the 10th anniversity of Kurt Cobain's suicide. I mention it, as his life and death have significant resonance for me, as they likely do for many people of that generation. Today, coincidentally or not, I am finishing discussion of Internet Invention, my second semester teaching this book. I am using it this time in a grad class, and it seems to be going better, perhaps because the students are stronger or perhaps because I have a better sense of what to expect. It is the Nirvana song "Heart-Shaped Box" that provides the epigram for my emblem, forever in debt to your priceless advice. This line, delivered with Cobain's signature irony, links my motto (Deleuze's proclamation, "I have nothing to admit") with the twisted highway desert scene of my emblem.