Digital Literatures and Media Minor

Overview for Digital Literatures and Media Minor

Digital technologies are changing all aspects of how we read and analyze texts and how we access and conceptualize information. Through this minor, students read and analyze traditional texts produced in print, and non-traditional texts created specifically for online environments (e.g., electronic poetry, games, social media). This minor provides an entry point into investigating particular aspects of the digital and its relation to the literary. The minor examines the cultural and social impact of new technologies and offers students access to these technologies for application to new questions for study and new methods of creation.

Notes about this minor:

  • Posting of the minor on the student's academic transcript requires a minimum GPA of 2.0 in the minor.

The plan code for Digital Literatures and Media Minor is DIGLITMEDM-MN.

Curriculum for 2023-2024 for Digital Literatures and Media Minor

Current Students: See Curriculum Requirements

Course
Required Courses
Choose one of the following:
   ENGL-481
   Introduction to Natural Language Processing
   FNRT-356
   Interactive Design for Museums
This is a project based course which explores the intersection of interactive design and museum education. Interactive museum programs have the potential to engage museum visitors by encouraging creative exploration, independent interpretation, and deeper understanding. Students will learn how to make the study of material culture more interesting and approachable by creating interactive projects for both the museum and the internet. Students will learn to incorporate educational outcomes into engaging learning experiences for museums. Lecture 3 (Spring).
   IGME-110
   Introduction to Interactive Media
This course provides an overview of media in historical, current and future contexts. Incorporating lectures and discussion with hands on work involving written and interactive media assets, students examine the role of written and visual media from theoretical as well as practical perspectives. The course also provides an introduction to interactive media development techniques, including digital media components and delivery environments. Students will be required to write formal analysis and critique papers along with digital modes of writing including collaborative editing and effective presentation design. (This course is restricted to 1st - 3rd year students in NWMEDID-BS and GAMEDES-BS.) Lab 3, Lecture 3 (Fall, Spring).
   ISTE-105
   Web Foundations
A hands-on introduction to Internet and web foundations for non-computing majors. Includes HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) and CSS (Cascading Stylesheets), web page design fundamentals, basic digital image manipulation, and web site implementation and maintenance. Students will design and build their own web sites using the latest technologies and deploy them to the web for world-wide access. (This class is restricted to non-computing majors. Students in GCCIS are not eligible to take this course.) Lec/Lab 3 (Fall, Spring).
   ISTE-382
   Introduction To Geospatial Technologies
Electives
Choose four of the following:
    ENGL-215
   Text and Code
We encounter digital texts and codes every time we use a smart phone, turn on an app, read an e-book, or interact online. This course examines the innovative combinations of text and code that underpin emerging textual practices such as electronic literatures, digital games, mobile communication, geospatial mapping, interactive and locative media, augmented reality, and interactive museum design. Drawing on key concepts of text and code in related fields, students will analyze shifting expressive textual practices and develop the literacies necessary to read and understand them. Practicing and reflecting on such new media literacies, the course explores their social, cultural, creative, technological, and legal significance. To encourage multiple perspectives on these pivotal concepts of text and code and their import, the course includes guest lectures by scholars and practitioners in these fields. Lecture 3 (Fall).
    ENGL-375
   Storytelling Across Media
This course introduces the basic elements of narrative, reflecting on key concepts in narrative theory such as – story and plot, narration and focalization, characterization, storyspace, and worldmaking – to enhance your understanding of how stories work and your ability to understand how such storytelling strategies convey their meaning and themes. After an initial exploration of storytelling traditions emerging from oral myth and short stories in print, we expand our inquiries into what a narrative is and what it can do by considering what happens to storytelling in graphic novels, digital games, and in recent electronic literature. Reflecting on competing definitions and varieties of narrative, the course raises the overarching question of why how we access, read, write, and circulate stories as a culture matters. Expect to read stories in a variety of media, to review basic concepts and conversations drawn from narrative theory, and to creatively experiment with the storytelling strategies we are analyzing in class. No familiarity with specific print, digital, or visual media necessary, though a willingness to read and reflect on stories in various media and to analyze their cultural significance will be essential. Lecture 3 (Spring).
    ENGL-403
   The Novel
    ENGL-409
   Mythology and Literature
    ENGL-410
   Film Studies
This course familiarizes students with a number of different critical approaches to film as a narrative and representational art. The course introduces students to the language as well as analytical and critical methodologies of film theory and criticism from early formalist approaches to contemporary considerations of technologies and ideologies alike. Students will be introduced to a selection of these approaches and be asked to apply them to a variety of films selected by the instructor. Additional screening time is recommended. (Prerequisites: Completion of First Year Writing (FYW) requirement is required prior to enrolling in this class.) Lecture 3 (Spring).
    ENGL-418
   Great Authors*
This course provides an in-depth look at literary giants and the masterpieces of prose or poetry they have created; it's an opportunity to see the role they played both within the context of their own time and within the larger span of literary history. These great authors confront key questions of modernity that continue to occupy us to this day; they ask the question of what it means to be human and explore fundamental human themes. They give us a fresh perspective on the past and on ourselves. (Prerequisites: Completion of First Year Writing (FYW) requirement is required prior to enrolling in this class.) Lecture 3 (Spring).
    ENGL-419
   Literature and Technology
Surveying the rise of computing technologies, information theories, and information economies in the last century, this course considers their impact on literature, culture and knowledge-formation. In particular, we will reflect on topics such as the relations between social and technological transformation, literary print and digital cultures and electronic literature. (Prerequisites: Completion of First Year Writing (FYW) requirement is required prior to enrolling in this class.) Lecture 3 (Fall).
    ENGL-420
   Science Fiction
    ENGL-421
   The Graphic Novel
This course charts the development of the graphic novel, examines that history in relation to other media (including literary works, comics, film, and video games), and reflects on how images and writing function in relation to one another. Primary readings will be supplemented with secondary works that address socio-historical contexts, interpretive approaches and the cultural politics of the medium, such as representations of class, race, gender, and ethnicity. Lecture 3 (Spring).

* With adviser approval.