e-reading: the seminar

In the Fall of 2010 at Loyola University New Orleans, we will pilot a year-long seminar on the subject of e-reading devices.

This seminar will treat the e-reading device as a shell for traditional texts, and as a text itself. In other words, we will not only read texts on e-reading devices; we will also discuss the material, intellectual, and physiological implications of the e-reading device as a 'new media' form in the English discipline.

We will explore such questions as:

How do e-reading technologies affect our understanding of literature?
How can we use literature as a way to understand the textuality of e-reading devices?
When are books more effective than e-readers? (And what can e-readers do that books cannot?)
What are the resistances to e-reading?
What are the promises of the new media technologies? (Are they fulfilled?)

This blog therefore serves to open up questions and considerations for e-reading in the English classroom. Here we will discuss different possible e-reading devices, and we will outline possible strategies for teaching on, with, and through e-reading devices.