Hypertext Reading and Writing
Autumn 1999, Thursdays 1830-2120

Instructor: David S. Miall
[home page]

ENGL 417: Literary Theory: Studies in Rhetorical Modes
Department of English, University of Alberta

Schedule Course description Assessment
Opening moves Commentaries Bibliography/Internet
 Student web sites Discussion Web authoring

 

Schedule

Please note that the class will meet online for most of the term. Class meetings noted below are primarily for discussion and evaluative purposes. Reading should be completed prior to the date shown. Note that several of the books you will be reading are the focus of my commentaries (see below). NB. The following schedule is provisional but should represent fairly well what we'll do in at least the first few weeks:

Date Class Reading Assessment
Sept 9 HC 2-14 Introduction to web site, readings, and class procedures
Sept 16 Rutherford
South 2-03 		Snyder; Terms
Sept 23 Rutherford
South 2-05A		 Opening Moves (below);
Postmodern theory: Landow, Chs. 1-2
Sept 30 -- -- Landow, Ch. 3 Operative web site and report due
Oct 7 -- Critique: Birkerts, Chs. 8-11
Oct 14 -- On reading: Birkerts, Chs. 4-7; Selfe: 10, Charney; 11, Smith
Oct 21 -- Educational implications: Landow, Ch. 7; Selfe: 9, Moulthrop & Kaplan; 11: Dryden, Dobrin
Oct 28 HC 2-14 Cultural implications: Landow, Ch. 8; Birkerts, Chs. 12-14
Nov 4 Rutherford
South 2-05A		 Choose further reading from recommended books list and bibliography First draft of hypertext due Nov 3
Nov 11 Remembrance Day
Nov 18 --
Nov 25 HC 2-14 Course evaluation Final version of hypertext due
Dec 2 HC 2-14 Presentations by Teresa Dobson and Paul Dyck Review paper due

 

Course description

Electronic readers and writers have finally arrived at the land promised (or threatened) by post-modern theory for two decades: the world of pure signs. . . . In other words, the play of signs is not merely a literary pastime; it takes over and defines the world of human intelligibility. (Bolter, 1992, pp. 204-205)

The prophecy that electronic writing will transform the nature of literary studies is one that is now heard with increasing frequency. It advocates have recently begun to put a new and powerful argument: computer technology for transmitting or representing texts within the medium of hypertext will allow us to bring these processes a major step nearer to the activities of actual readers. This in turn is revolutionizing understanding of the nature of textuality itself, in line with the claims of postmodern theorists from Barthes to Hillis Miller. If this is true, the forthcoming shift in the domain of the literary will be on a tectonic scale, analogous to that brought about in the visual arts by the invention of photography and film.

In this course we will 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 hypertext in order to assess their role in teaching and learning. Students will be expected to develop some skill in creating hypertexts of their own, whether in the form of essays or short fiction. These will be located on students' own web sites (following instruction in basic HTML coding, document construction, and web site management).

The theoretical focus of the course will involve three main components:

1. Hypertext as postmodern theory. Does hypertext instantiate the claims of postmodernist accounts of text? We will ask how well existing examples of hypertext bear out such claims. What do the new rhetorics of hypertext claim for the status of literary texts in particular, and do they point to the creation of new literary forms?

2. Reading texts and hypertexts. A central claim of hypertext theory concerns the process of reading: the printed book is often seen as imposing monologic reading, while hypertext facilitates dialogic or participatory reading. Yet little empirical study of literary reading has taken place, whether with conventional texts or hypertext. We will test theoretical claims about hypertext against actual studies of reading and learning through hypertext.

3. The cultural place of literature. If hypertext and hypermedia come to dominate the cultural market, the literary experience will necessarily change. It is also possible that other forms of electronic entertainment will supersede literary reading. We will attempt to assess the implications of the recent rise of computing and the internet for the fate of literature.

Students registering for the course must have ready access to a computer and to the internet. A basic familiarity with word-processing will be assumed, but other computer skills will be taught during the course.

Required Texts

Recommended Texts (i.e., a limited number will be in the bookshop)

 

Assessment

Assessment will include contributions to a discussion group and the design and content of web sites that students will create. The breakdown of marks will be as follows:

Contributions to web discussion, 20%
Create web site and mount a short discussion piece (approx. 500 words), due Sept 30, 30%
Hypertext essay or fiction (equivalent to about 2500 words), due Nov 30, 40%
          (first drafts to be available for commentary by Nov 4)
Short assessment (on paper) of one or more students' web sites, due Dec 2, 10%

Please note that there will be no final examination in this course.

More details on the form these assignments might take will be given later, but you might bear in mind that that major assignment can be either something like an academic essay, or it can be in fictional form. In either case, however, it must show clear signs of taking advantage of the hypertext format. For technical help on web authoring see the section below.

 

Opening moves

In the several nodes at the links below, I begin a discussion about what hypertext is (this is instead of lectures). You might want to begin with the Terms document. This offers a primer of hypertext terms, based on passages in Ilana Snyder's book, Hypertext (1997), together with questions about how they are used.

Terms

The set of documents that follows is based rather closely on Landow's book, Hypertext (1997), with references also to Bolter and other authors. Note that the same set of links appears at the bottom of each document.

opening moves | introduction
the postmodern assumption | instability of electronic text
the place of the literary | information processing model | the question of reading
critique of the book | the functionalist fallacy
democratizing power of hypertext | cultural implications
bibliography/external links | course information

Linking. Note that you can easily link your own web-based discussion to any paragraph in an 'Opening Moves' or 'Commentaries' text. For instance, suppose you wanted to argue with my comments on Bolter and topographic space, you could link to the paragraph in question with this URL:

http://www.ualberta.ca/~dmiall/hyperead/function.htm#02
(note that all paragraphs are numbered; the target link in each case uses two digits, e.g., 02). Numbered target links are embedded in all the discussions available from this web page. Just note the URL of the document and the paragraph number you want to link to.

 

Commentaries

Here I provide more extended commentaries on books on the course or on readings in the bibliography. These are linked, where appropriate, to texts in the Opening Moves section.

 

Students' web sites
Home pages and Essay I
main course project
Shelley Babich project
Lauren Baker project
Diane Brouwer project
Douglas Bruce project (requires Internet Explorer)
Melanie Conroy project
Myrl Coulter looking for lotso
Clayton Dach follow link from home page; best viewed with Internet Explorer
Sage Davis hypertext poetry
Catherine Descheneau The palm in the middle of quad
David Foster project (best viewed with Internet Explorer)
Blaine Holczer ecoadvertising
Sheila Koenig [click through]
Robert Lemke second essay
Colin MacGregor Essay Two
Michael Maclean project
Natasha Nunn project (in progress, but viewable)
Jonathan Turner writing the anathema...
Kristie Wiwad project
Scott Woodley narrative

Essay 1 digest -- pointers in the debate

 

Discussion

WebBoard discussion (click here to connect)

The web discussion forms a key part of the course: You should aim to contribute to it regularly, at least once or twice a week, raising questions or making comments based either on your own reading or in response to messages posted on the board by other students.

Annotated summary of discussions (up to October 22)

 

Web authoring

Hypertext offers a wide variety of forms and styles: you should know something this about before designing your own web site and term paper essay. For a basic introduction to hypertext rhetoric, see my essay on reading and writing hypertext.

But to begin, if you need a place to start, here is a sample web page that you can download: in Netscape click on File, then Save As, and save the file to the drive of the workstation in front of you or a floppy disk. This information is also repeated at the bottom of the sample page itself. You can then load the file into Netscape Editor and begin modifying it to suit your own purposes. CNS provides a couple of other examples you might want to try.

The first, main page on your web site should be called index.html. This will allow you to cite your web address as "http://www.ualberta.ca/~yourid/", since the GPU web demon will look first for a default file "index.html" and load it. (Note the CNS example pages mentioned above should be renamed.)

The bibliography for your web-based papers will almost certainly include online sources. Here are some guides to electronic citation, MLA style: Li and Crane (University of Vermont); Janice R. Walker and Todd Taylor (Columbia Guide).

For special accented characters and other symbols, see this guide (in case your HTML editor doesn't automate them for you).

Home Page construction

You may want to go beyond the facilities provided by your editor, and poke into the HTML codes to see what they can do. For help in writing HTML, see U of A guides -- probably a lot more here than you'll actually need; or Learning HTML. There are a number of pointers at both sites to the basic information you'll need.

One useful tip, however, is to examine the source of a document which has a feature that you want to imitate. In Netscape, click on VIEW, then on SOURCE, to see the code. And, don't forget that you can download a document (use Save as...) to examine at your leisure (links to other local documents or images referenced in it will be inoperative, but everything else will be intact).

Creating graphics requires another set of tools (scanners are available at several locations on campus). To obtain some nifty icons, animated gifs, etc., see the Media Builder site where numerous free downloads are available (see the menu for Free Image Files halfway down the left of the main screen).

Setting up a web page

You will be setting up your own web site during the first three weeks of the course. Here is how to create a publically accessible web page. This will be located in your user area on the GPU server (where you have an upper limit of 5 MBs to play with).

Telnet to your directory on GPU. Lynx starts up by default, so press Q to quit Lynx. You should then drop down to your GPU directory, with an input line something like this: gpu3{yourID}: . Now input the following commands in lower case, ignoring the commentary in parenthesis, and substituting your own ID name where indicated (note that the system will make replies to a couple of these commands). 

     mkdir public_html
     fs setacl ~idname system:anyuser l        (that's a letter L)
     fs listacl ~idname
     fs setacl public_html system:anyuser rl

That's all. Now you can ftp your home page document and any other files to your public_html directory. The URL address for your home page, assuming you have prepared an index.html file, will be: 

              http://www.ualberta.ca/~idname/
(Substitute your actual IDNAME in this string, of course. The squiggle to the left of the idname is a tilde.) To see your page and test it out, start Netscape. Click on File, then Open Location, and type the URL address.

If you use a lot of graphics on your home page, you'll need to keep an eye on the space you have left. To do this, drop down to GPU level by Telnet (exit Lynx), and at the unix prompt type: 

/usr/afsws/bin/fs listquota

You have up to 5 MB, but avoid getting too close to this, as your GPU area is also used for email and other files.

Once you are satisfied with your home page and all seems to work as you expect, then you might want to take the next step: register your site with one or more of the web search services. To initiate this here are a couple of places: Alta Vista and Yahoo. Make sure you read the document carefully before filling in the form and submitting it!

Return to Miall home page
Document created August 27th 1999 / Last revised January 14th 1999