ENGL345-25S2 (C) Semester Two 2025

Close to the machine: digital literatures from the avant-garde to AI

30 points

Details:
Start Date: Monday, 14 July 2025
End Date: Sunday, 9 November 2025
Withdrawal Dates
Last Day to withdraw from this course:
  • Without financial penalty (full fee refund): Sunday, 27 July 2025
  • Without academic penalty (including no fee refund): Sunday, 28 September 2025

Description

This course offers a wide-ranging exploration of ways in which literary reading and writing are being amplified, deterritorialised or hybridised by digital computing and the Internet. We will read a variety of combinatory writing, interactive fiction, as well as literary texts emerging from digital lifeworlds such as those of social media and software, and will examine how digital objects and processes - such as randomness, networks and machine learning - relate to narrative and poetic techniques. Alongside these, the course will consider wider cognitive and cultural implications connected to these shifts, including for literary research.

The course will ask: What is electronic literature, and how does it relate to prior literary forms and genres? How do the technologies driving digital culture create new kinds of reading, writing and research practices? In what ways do the cognitive, cultural and political implications of digital media impact upon literary studies? We will read a range of texts and media, including hypertext fiction, interactive fiction, text games, and hybrid media texts.

Learning Outcomes

  • By the end of the course students will:
  • Have become familiar with a range of works notable in digital culture
  • Be able to define electronic literature and explain its significance as a mode of cultural production
  • Understand the key historical and cultural contexts that inform works of electronic literature as well as print literature responding to digital technologies
  • Understand how text is encoded, transmitted and displayed in digital media.
    • University Graduate Attributes

      This course will provide students with an opportunity to develop the Graduate Attributes specified below:

      Critically competent in a core academic discipline of their award

      Students know and can critically evaluate and, where applicable, apply this knowledge to topics/issues within their majoring subject.

      Employable, innovative and enterprising

      Students will develop key skills and attributes sought by employers that can be used in a range of applications.

      Globally aware

      Students will comprehend the influence of global conditions on their discipline and will be competent in engaging with global and multi-cultural contexts.

Prerequisites

Any 30 points at 200 level from DIGI or ENGL, or
any 60 points at 200 level from the Schedule V of the BA.

Restrictions

Equivalent Courses

Timetable 2025

Students must attend one activity from each section.

Lecture A
Activity Day Time Location Weeks
01 Tuesday 10:00 - 12:00 Meremere 105 Lecture Theatre
14 Jul - 24 Aug
8 Sep - 19 Oct
Computer Lab A
Activity Day Time Location Weeks
01 Thursday 11:00 - 13:00 James Logie 214-Mac Computer Lab
21 Jul - 24 Aug
8 Sep - 19 Oct

Course Coordinator / Lecturer

Christopher Thomson

Assessment

Assessment Due Date Percentage  Description
Participation 15% You will complete brief activities as part of your preparation for each class.
Essay draft commentary 10%
First Essay 25% 2500 words
Video presentation 20% A short video presentation on a topic relating to one of the electronic texts studied in the course.
Second essay 30% 3000 words

Textbooks / Resources

(Image: "Art.ficial 078 Achituv & Utterback - Text rain" by Marlus Watz, licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.)

Course links

Library portal

Indicative Fees

Domestic fee $1,788.00

International fee $8,200.00

* All fees are inclusive of NZ GST or any equivalent overseas tax, and do not include any programme level discount or additional course-related expenses.

For further information see Humanities .

All ENGL345 Occurrences

  • ENGL345-25S2 (C) Semester Two 2025