The Future of the Book: Publishing and Scholarly Communications

In the digital age, is the academic book dead, dormant, or developing into a new form of communication? This course addresses these questions by providing a survey of the history and current state of scholarly communications and academic publishing, with particular focus on their intersection with digital technology. Students will become familiar with the theory and praxis of scholarly communications in the digital age, and learn to engage the informal and formal practices that characterize academic knowledge distribution through hands-on writing projects and critical readings. This course will dovetail with the themes established in the “Textual Studies in the Digital Age” course by considering, in brief, the history of academic publishing in print, using this topic to critique and reconceive of current digital practice and the future of the scholarly monograph or book. We will consider how new modes of scholarly communication and publishing intersect with questions of interdisciplinarity, pedagogy, and public knowledge distribution, as well as how these topics play out in both academic, corporate, and institutional environments. Other topics include digital dissertations, public humanities, the theory and praxis of social media engagement, and collaborative writing.

Offer as needed

030893