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Content: This module introduces students to the critical study of writing in relation to its historical, technological and social dimensions. We will explore the origins and development of writing systems and the technologies through which they are mediated, from proto-writing systems such as the quipu or ‘talking knots’ of the Inca people, to cuneiform and hieroglyphic scripts inscribed in clay, and on to alphabetic scripts transmitted in handwriting, print, or digital code. We will consider the impact on writing of developments in print and digital cultures, and the proliferation of new interfaces and devices through which it is practiced and encountered in the twenty-first century. Theories of the written word and its relation to memory, orality, the body, the brain, thought, artificial intelligence, haunting, magic and ideology will be introduced. Ìý

Emphasis will be given to writing's social and interpersonal functions and effects, whether in its earliest uses for accounting and inventory, its major roles in civil and legal codes and contracts, or in its most commonly used forms today: text messages, search-engine queries, emails, and so on. We will also consider where literature, and other kinds of writing with a significant aesthetic dimension, fit into this picture, investigating how literary forms have shaped and been shaped by writing's technological and social mediations, and what the future of literary writing will hold in the post-digital era.

Teaching delivery: 10 x 1-hour lectures and 10 x 1-hour seminars.

This module is taught at the ÐÂÏã¸ÛÁùºÏ²Ê¿ª½±½á¹ûEast campus in Stratford.