ENGLISH w112  --  Technologies of Writing from Plato to the Digital Age
Professor Evelyn Tribble
etrib@temple.edu

Is electronic communication altering the way we read and write? If so, is it also altering our "interior consciousness"? In order to approach these questions about reading and writing in (what some have called) a post-print age, this course will explore the history of writing technologies from the Ancient Greeks to today. We will consider how changes in writing technologies--from handwriting to printing to computers--have changed not only what we write but who we are, individually and culturally. We will explore the history of writing/printing technologies by reading about them, looking at them (in the library’s Special Collections and online), and using them ourselves. As we do so, we will consider how the computer fits into this history of writing. We will read debates on whether the "age of print" is over, we will experiment with web-based writing, and we will explore what it means to be a "writer" or an "author" in an electronic age.

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