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News: Hypertext and Teaching

Robert Kendall, poet and author of A Life Set For Two, is teaching Electronic Poetry and Fiction this spring through the New School's Online University. Classes begin on 18 March.

Take a six-week writing course at trAce Writing School for just 100 pounds sterling. That's 1/3 off the regular price! But act now: the offer is only good for the first 50 students to sign up for any course in Series 4, starting 8th October 2001. Book by September 30th. Places are available in courses on Web site design, publishing, children's fiction, travel writing, animated poetry, screenwriting, teaching and managing Web-based creative writing projects, short fiction, novel writing, and more.

Poet Robert Kendall, author of A Life Set for Two, is teaching a new online class, Electronic Poetry and Fiction, through the New School this fall. In addition to hypertext, the syllabus includes animated poetry and Flash. The course runs Oct. 22 - Dec. 21, 2001." Further information is available at Wordcircuits.

In June 2001, Carolyn Guertin will teach a seminar called Women Writing/Speaking Cyberfeminism at the University of Alberta.

Stanford University's Program of Continuing Studies will offer a workshop in electronic literature this spring. The class will be team-taught by Rob Kendall, author of A Life Set for Two, and Rich Holeton, author of Figurski at Findhorn on Acid (forthcoming very soon from Eastgate Systems - watch this space!). For details, check out Rob Kendall's course page. Prospective students should register through the Continuing Studies Program.

Domenico Fiormonte's course on electronic writing at the Universitá degli Studi di Roma (Tor Vergata) contains a considerable hypertext component. The syllabus is available on-line. In Italian.

Adrian Peever of Barry University is teaching an upper level undergraduate humanities course, Writing on the Internet, this semester. Peever writes,

"Students in this course distinguish traditional text documents from e-texts and hypertexts, examining the stylistic consequences of these formal distinctions. The class emphasizes the sense that traditional notions of authorship and authority are reconstituted by the contemporary writing environment, and students apply their findings via the creation of original hypertext documents both individually and in collaboration with their peers. Students also read and critique hypertext articles and fiction, in particular Michael Joyce's classic of hypertext fiction afternoon, a story.

Alan Liu's course on HyperLiterature at UCSB has a notable reading list.

Joe Lambert and Nina Mullen open a new laboratory for the Center for Digital Storytelling, long a mecca for personal digital filmakers, on July 1 at 1803 Martin Luther King, Jr Way, in Berkeley, California. They're also teaming with Prof. Maggie Sokolik in College Writing 108.

Wayne MacPhail sends interesting examples of a class exercise from his course on hypertext narrative at the Canadian Screen Training Center. The students created two hypertext adaptations of McPhail's short story, Signals; the results feel like hypertexts -- quite an accomplishment.

Jay Clayton (Vanderbilt) explores issues that arose in using Shelley Jackson's Patchwork Girl, Tom Stoppard's Arcadia, and Gibson and Sterling's The Difference Engine in the teaching modern rewritings of the Romantics.

"Clayton looks at the appearance of Romantic heroes and writing in contemporary texts... Paying explicit attention to the context of our activity as students and teachers of Romanticism makes visible, to quote Clayton again, the "odd, unsettling continuities--as well as gaping disjunctions"-- between the Romantic era and our postmodern scene of instruction.

Gerald Lucas offers an interesting discussion of teaching Joyce's afternoon, a story, to an upper-level undergraduate literature class.

"Through frustration, with persistence, we will learn, and maybe, because of this fact, the negatives are also positives." Indeed, Afternoon, if taken seriously and persistently, may help students develop the necessary skills for critical and thoughtful reading. I taught Afternoon at the end of the semester this year, but I think I'll begin next semester with it as an exercise in the active engagement of the text.

Writing in English Matters, Lesley G. Smith describes an end-of-semester encounter between a class of 28 literature students and Shelley Jackson's hypertext, Patchwork Girl. She describes the confrontation (students had previously studied Eliot, DeLillo, and Lowell) as A Small Odyssey, and her hypertext essay is extremely interesting.Many students hated the hypertext at first, but later found it extremely rewarding; intensive classroom collaboration seems to have been the key. "[Two students] mentioned how Jackson's rewriting of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein gifted voice to the voiceless and shifted the power of narration from the creator to the created. In many ways they might have been describing their own experiences as they gained critical voice..."

Jonathan Smith's essay, "Is There a Hypertext In This Class", has a new URL. In this thorough and insightful essay, Smith describes two courses at the University of Michigan/Dearborn that made extensive use of hypertexts, including The Dickens Web and The In Memoriam Web. Smith details the impact of hypertext assignments on teaching strategies, on the way students write about literature, and on the instructor's own strategies for curriculum.

Understanding A Vision: What is Hypertext? is an interesting student project from Sadie Cornell at Tidewater Community College. Cornell and her advisor, Donna Reiss, review the history of hypertext and the place of literary hypertexts in English composition and literary classes.

Hypertext poet Robert Kendall (A Life Set for Two) will be teaching an advanced class in hypertext poetry and fiction for the New School's remote learning program this fall.

Susan Schreibman describes the pleasures and pitfalls of incorporating hypertext writing into a hypertext theory course in Critics and Receptionists: Students as Knowledge Providers.

Hypertext Courses

This page collects information about a vast range of hypertext courses taught throughout the world. Instructors and students alike may find useful information here, ranging from unusual course topics to catalogs of student projects.

"We examine critically the arguments for the postmodern status of hypertext, and consider to what extent such accounts of electronic textuality agree with what is known about writing and reading, both theoretically and empirically. We will also study some of the pedagogical evaluations of hypertexts in order to assess their role in teaching and learning. | home page

The instructor writes that " the final assignment in this class... could be either a standard academic paper or a hypertext. Students who liked working in Storyspace really liked it. I have had some students go on to other lit. classes and ask the professor why he/she wasn't using Storyspace."

From modern art and Tender Buttons to Patchwork Girl  | Syllabus

Past, presents, futures; the politics of hypertext; hypertext and literary research.  Syllabus

Syllabus | Students in this course distinguish traditional text documents from e-texts and hypertexts, examining the stylistic consequences of these formal distinctions. The class emphasizes the sense that traditional notions of authorship and authority are reconstituted by the contemporary writing environment, and students apply their findings via the creation of original hypertext documents both individually and in collaboration with their peers. Students also read and critique hypertext articles and fiction, in particular Michael Joyce's classic of hypertext fiction afternoon, a story.

archive of projects, individual and collaborative

This workshop has fostered many hypertext writers, including Mary-kim Arnold, author of Lust, and Shelley Jackson, author of Patchwork Girl. Home of the Hypertext Hotel a collaborative hypertext.

Description | syllabus | Theory Web

description | syllabus | cyberspace web

Reading, writing, and discussion about storytelling in a digital era as well as the impact of technology on individuals and cultures. Students will learn how to craft engaging stories, analyze and critique each others' stories, work with the tools necessary to present material in digital format, and other skills.

College composition course, integrating Storyspace and the Web. syllabus | report on by David Elderbrock.

A theoretical, aesthetic, and technical introduction to the challenges of art and culture that the computer represents. Syllabus

Readings include Califia, afternoon, Patchwork Girl, Grammatron, and Reagan Library. syllabus

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Faculty of psychology. A 150 hour workshop. home page

syllabus | the final assignment includes interesting discussion of hypertext genre and the Web.

" We will "read a number of contemporary hypertexts (see George Landow's Storyspace Cluster) and explore the literary and pedagogical issues evoked by the new media. And, we will create hypertexts of our own. Writers will include such figures as Borges, Beckett, Pynchon, Duras, Barthes; Michael Joyce, Judy Malloy, Nancy Kaplan, Guyer, Moulthrop, Jay Bolter, and George Landow. No prior experience with hypertext or electronic texts is required. The course is designed as an introduction to the technology, the texts, and the questions they raise." | home page

The course was the subject of a fascinating article, As We May Write, by Michael Shumate | home page

One (very interesting) student project, in a truly postmodern move, is a new hypertextual syllabus | syllabus

home page

Students use hypertext tools to explore cultural, poltical ramifications of pottery tradition. Morrison's reporton the course is one of the best papers yet published on hypertext pedagogy.

Department of Visual and Environmental Studies. The instructor writes that, "It is a studio course--students both look at work and produce pieces. We start with film and video, then move to printed texts. Hypertext works are next. Then we are move on to videogames, CDs, MOO-work, and artist installations." syllabus.

information

Readings include City of Glass by Paul Auster, Grendel by John Gardner , Beloved by Toni Morrison , Victory Garden by Stuart Moulthrop , Afternoon, a story by Michael Joyce. | syllabus

First offered in 1993. The instructor recalls that a "requirement in both courses was for each student to write a substantial hypertext of his or her own. I gave students the option of writing either a fiction (or poem) or a work of criticism... Interestingly, most students elected to write fictions--even students who had never written creatively before and had no particular interest in ever writing fiction again. Perhaps this simply says something about the need to bring storytelling into pedagogy in general, but I also feel that students were more attracted to writing hypertext fiction than they would have been to writing print fiction. I don't know how to explain this. Perhaps it has something to do with the sudden liberation from expected norms."

Extensive readings, including afternoon, Victory Garden, Patchwork Girl, and Twilight, and an interesting slate of guest lecturers. syllabus.

A theoretical inquiry into the social, ethical, and political issues surrounding electronic texts, as well as a hands-on workshop devoted to the analysis and production if hypertexts and virtual worlds. Readings include Hypertext 2.0 and Patchwork Girl. syllabus.

syllabus

"Cyber_lit is designed to facilitate interaction with electronic forms of literary creativity, and to disseminate the technical skills needed to produce your own material. The course doesn't stop at the reading list." | home page

A survey of a growing body of work, paper and electronic, that explores the influence of computer and information technologies on human beings and literary arts. Readings include DeLillo's White Noise, Gibson's Neuromancer, Murray's Hamlet on the Holodeck, as well as afternoon by Michael Joyce and Patchwork Girl by Shelley Jackson. | syllabus

" In this course we'll read a number of literary works, in conventional print form as well as electronic form--as both plain texts and hypertexts.... We'll write a great deal in this class, usually in the hypertextual environment known as Storyspace. In this class, the idea is for all of us to experience the possibilites and problems of electronic textuality first hand, working togther to explore this new medium. | syllabus | class project

web site

"We have used Mr Landow's books and some Scandinavian articles on hypertexts. The Web sites I have used - in addition to the Eastgate sites - have been different Scandinavian sites, mostly concerning the academic use of hypertext (e. g. in critical editions of classical authors).

From Cyborg Manifesto to Patchwork Girl. syllabus and reading list

This web-based course focuses upon a variety of writing modes as they appear on the World Wide Web. We will be looking at and producing criticism, opinion, journalism, essays and discussions, as well as fiction and other creative genres. | syllabus

syllabus | student projects

In a fascinating paper in Teaching Literature with Computers, Smith describes in detail two advanced-level courses that made extensive use of Storyspace, The Dickens Web, and The In Memoriam Web. Is There a Hypertext In This Class? Teaching Victorian Literature in the Electronic Age. Much fascinating detail, including accounts of the way student writing was changed by hypertext reading assignments, difficulties that students encountered, and student responses.

We will discuss the relations between text and image; post-humanism; cyborgs and the technology of reproduction; simulation and the simulacrum; the idea of a digital condition; techno-paranoia; "making do" and the figure of the hacker; the theoretical and cultural antecedents of hypertext; the anamorphic text; the stylistics of hypertextual narrative; and the general problem of literary value in relation to codes and information. syllabus.

We will discuss the theoretical and cultural antecedents of hypertext; the nostalgia and yearning for the presence promised by The Book; the tropes and figures of electronic culture; the epistemological and stylistic shifts of hypertextual narrative; and the problem of literary value in the Information Age. Readings (online, print, and electronic) include Michael Joyce, Stuart Moulthrop, J. Yellowlees Douglas, Shelley Jackson, Matthew Miller, Vannevar Bush, Nicholas Negroponte, Jay Bolter, George Landow, Greg Ulmer, Sven Birkerts, Neil Gaiman, Gibson, Haraway, Foucault, Barthes, Lyotard, Baudrillard, Hillis Miller, John Beverley, Alan Liu, Manuel Castells, Friedrich Kittler, and N. Katherine Hayles. syllabus.

"This seminar will study a number of works that anticipate and parallel the development of hypertext: T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land, Pound's Cantos, selected poems of Marianne Moore, and Susan Howe's The Nonconformist s Memorial. In addition to essays by these poets, we will read hypertext theorists such as Moulthrop, Jay David Bolter, and Nancy Kaplan and investigate the many poetry sites on the WWW. Seminar papers must be hypertexts." syllabus

A remote-learning class, offered through the Internet and taught by Eastgate writer Robert Kendall, author of A Life Set For Two. The class is taught entirely on-line and is open to anyone with access to the Web. Students learn about hypertext literature and create their own work in either Storyspace or HTML. Each class includes on-line guest "appearances" by two notable figures in hypertext literature, and each term the class studies a hypertext by one of these guests. The class has been running since 1995 and is offered every spring and fall, and often in the summer. New York Magazine selected it as one of "The City's Best Classes for Adults."

Alumni include Deena Larsen, author of Marble Springs, Bill Bly, author of We Descend, Rosemary Passantino, and many other notable hypertext writers.

Course home page | Links to alumni projects

The dawn of the computer age has seen the emergence of a new genre of literature, hypertext - non-linear fiction and poetry created specifically to be read on a computer. Hypertext literature comes in all shapes and sizes, from Judy Malloy's Its Name Was Penelope, a small (196 Kbytes) stand-alone poetry collection, to John McDaid's Uncle Buddy's Phantom Funhouse, which comes in a box containing five floppy disks, two cassette tapes, a sheaf of publisher's page proofs, and a "Getting Started" manual.

In this class, students will explore several examples of hypertext literature, make a semi-formal presentation of a published hypertext they have read, write and present a formal paper on an important issue in the field, and contribute to the development of a World Wide Web site for the class. In addition, on-line conferences will be held with two hypertext authors, to discuss their experiences in the "real world" of hypertext, and to answer student questions.

"This course is a more introductory course to some of the social and institutional issues surrounding electronic writing (inc. hypertext). We used Eastgate Quarterly Review 2.4 and read some of your Mark Bernstein's work (Patterns and Hypertext Gardens) in addition to some of the traditional stuff (Lanham, Birkerts, Steven Johnson, Ilana Snyder)." syllabus and projects

"An a advanced graduate course. We read some print precursors (Borges, Cortazar, etc.), Afternoon, Patchwork Girl, and Aarseth's Cybertext, along with a number of essays." syllabus

The Open University of Catalonia announces an on-line postgraduate course, "Digital Journalism." The course will be held in Spanish; registration is open to anyone, anywhere. For more information, contact Quim Gil (qgil@putput.es).

A degree program and curriculum for hypermedia. An exceptional student site.

A guide to Storyspace in French.

A fascinating paper on the experience of pre-service teachers encountering hypertext reading and writing: Re-Placing Authority By Desire: Novices Reading And Writing Literary Hypertext.

" an advanced undergraduate course that will explore the use of the computer as a technology in the production and teaching of literature." syllabus.

Students will have the choice of writing several short projects, including narrative essays, critical essays, and short fiction--all using electronic media to create and share work. The course will conclude with a final project and a "cyber salon" for presenting the projects. Syllabus and reading list.

Online Courses Notes (made with Storyspace) | Hypertext Project Home Page | Subject Guide

syllabus

Hypertext writing with Storyspace is offered as an option to advanced students.

home page

Used Storyspace for economic concepts mapping.

This subject aims to critically examine current theory relating to electronic writing and, in particular, hypertext. Does the embodiment of electronic writing in the form of stand alone hypertext applications or in the form of the World Wide Webchange our relationship as readers to the written word? Does electronic writing, as Mark Poster argues, represent a third stage in the mode of information?" | home page

An online course, offered as by the School of Continuing Education. The primary focus is on the student's development of coherent hypertext multi-media stories or poems-- working to define an art form at the cutting edge. Concepts include ideas about video games as narrative texts, acheiving written structures relevant to hypertext, introducing images, audio and video into writing.

"This course concerns itself with hypertext literature in the two forms it currently exists: 1) The fusion of film, literature, visual art, music, and performance. 2) Polyphonic or multiphonic, achronological form experimentation." | home page

Readings include Patchwork Girl, A Dream with Demons, and Scrutiny in the Great Round. Syllabus.

Graduate-level course. Syllabus. Student projects.

Explores the world of hypertext/hyperfiction in several "genres" -- Storyspace, and the Internet to mention just two. Readings include Moulthrop's Victory Garden, a course packet. and Online sources. Each student will create four final products, one of which will be in collaboration with their project group: 1.) A creative fiction or non-fiction hypertext in Storyspace that plays with the very different conceptual mapping of ideas possible in the medium; 2.) A rhetorical analysis of a particular 'web' (either Storyspace or the Internet); 3.) An in-depth evaluative argument focusing on one of the hypertext 'genres' we have explored; 4.) A WWW project providing research on hypertext and its relationship to readers, writers, and rhetoric."

hypermedia rhetoric and visualization. syllabus for this and related courses. Information on the Online Learning Record.

syllabus

syllabus

report on experience teaching composition and language with hypertext tools contrasted to work with conventional word processors.

NEH Summer Seminar for College Teachers. Syllabus

Taught by Michael Joyce, author of afternoon and Twilight.

"We will come to see (we have come to see) that electronic texts expose the patchwork ("expose" perhaps in the way of a photograph) and recall the body."

syllabus

A transatlantic course on hypertext writing. syllabus

syllabus with many interesting student projects.

syllabus. A survey of the postmodern scene, includes reading of Landow's Hypertext and Shelley Jackson's Patchwork Girl.

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course home page | Storyspace helpsheet

Includes readings from a variety of literary hypertexts. syllabus

Explores the practice and investigation of writing hyppertexts. syllabus

home page | readings

Hyperfiction group project | syllabus

syllabus

"Students in the class will be working on Web development projects for real customers. Projects will involve
+ electronic seismology laboratory for high school students, + virtual community for geographically-distributed nursing students, + creative religious worship online. | home page

Interface theory and theater theory are applied to analyze multi-user environments. Students participate in,critique, and develop multi-user environments. Students also have the option to work in web media, hypertext or multimedia programs and we will have a range of Eastgate hypertext fiction and poetry works available to them at the Center for Literary Computing. | course description | distance learnng course

This course will look at two print novels and three short electronic hypertext fictions in terms of their physical features as well as their words. An elaborate Web-based edition of Pride and Prejudice can be usefully compared to a paperback version. Ulysses, a work very much aware of print's opportunities and limitations, can be compared to my hypermedia version. The hypertexts now seem most interesting as problems: do their physical attributes overwhelm the content? is there meaningful content at all or only form and structure? We will also look at several critics and theorists who discuss literary works in terms of their physicality or their material conditions of production. A schedule and syllabus, plus links and related materials, are available at the course Web site .

The course will consider relations between hypertext and literature in four areas: 1) proto-hypertexts, or some print-based works that prefigure hypertext (Jorge-Luis Borges, "The Garden of Forking Paths," "The Library of Babel," and "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote"; James Joyce, Ulysses (excerpts); Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire; and Italo Calvino, If on A Winter's Night a Traveller; 2) examples of recent hypertext fiction (Michael Joyce, "Afternoon"; Carolyn Guyer, "Quibbling"; Shelley Jackson, "Patchwork Girl"); 3) print-based and hypertextual theories of hypertext (selections from Myron Tuman's collection, Literacy Online, and other photocopied essays; and 4) discussions of the relations between literary works and technology (excerpts from Jerome McGann, The Textual Condition; Walter J. Ong, Orality and Literacy). A schedule and syllabus, plus links and related materials, are available at the course Web site .

A survey of hypertext, with emphasis on Storyspace | syllabus

"Particular emphasis will be paid to expanding participants' understanding of computer applications for English Studies out beyond the composition classroom and into both literature and creative writing classrooms. Accordingly, we will read, write and experiment with computers at their intersection with the study of writing, texts, authors, genres, and theories--from concordance compilation to collaborative composing." | home page | student projects

Fresh news about the craft of hypertext -- on the Web and off. Updates almost daily!

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KITCHEN FEATURES

Literature and The Internet: New Forms of Electronic Writing: A trip report by Paola Carbone and Susana Pajares Tosca.

GameStudies.org by Justin Hall.

A Review of Jeffrey Veen's The Art and Science of Web Design by Charles Bennett.

A DAC DIALOG: Tosca and Tosca-Ko report from Bergen.

CALENDAR HIGHLIGHTS

HYPERTEXT 2002. Baltimore, MD. June 11-15, 2002. The premier hypertext research conference. Also home of The Bernies Award.

sponsored by Eastgate

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