This section of ENGL 231 will concentrate on the avalanche of cultural changes that are produced when seismic shifts in technology have occurred, first during the Industrial Revolution and now in the Digital Revolution. In order to deepen our understanding of the significance of reading and writing to understanding the human experiences associated with these shifts, we will first study the codex novel Middlemarch (published in 1871 but set at the turn of the nineteenth century), before viewing the intermedial adaptations on BBC and YouTube. While the BBC version (1996) is a traditional heritage film, Middlemarch: The Series (2017) was written and directed by an undergraduate student who modernized the hypotext to reflect the digital, global present (for example, by highlighting multi-racial characters and LGBTQ themes). In other words, we will study one nineteenth-century novel as well as a faithful adaptation and a twenty-first revisionary appropriation in order to explore how mechanical and digital technologies have impacted the ways we write about, read, and understand our own subjectivity—personally, racially, politically, and sexually. We will record our thoughts and discoveries along the way by engaging in critical making through multimodal (i.e., alphabet, image, aural, video, and code) writing techniques.

Link:

Middlemarch (the book only)