ENGLISH 286NM The Novel in the History of Media

Deidre Lynch

T 2:00pm - 3:59pm

This course investigates the rise of the novel in conjunction with the rise of modern communications networks and information technologies.  It investigates this literary genre’s accounts of people’s interconnectedness alongside those projected by the postal system, the telegraph, and the radio. We’ll read widely in the history of English-language fiction-- from Daniel Defoe to Jennifer Egan, by way of Sterne, Gaskell, James, and others--and in recent works of media archaeology.