An exploration of hypertextual narrative forms in print and online.
A senior English course to be offered by Athabasca University
(Alberta, Canada) in 2002 in three parts.

Part One: Hypertext: Pasts, Presents, Futures

Hypertext is a complex form with many incarnations, purposes and implementations and this course is intended as an introduction to the field. The automated link is what sets hypertext apart from other forms of writing, stitching together nonsequential blocks of text or screens of 'information' with a click of the mouse. Hypertext can only exist in an electronic environment, and its reasons for being vary widely.     In Part One, Hypertext: Pasts, Presents, Futures, you will encounter hypertext as an aesthetic and an artistic medium. Entering the world of a new literacy, you will explore a diverse selection of texts in a burgeoning art form and new medium for literature. In Part Two, The Politics of Hypertext, you will examine the social, linguistic and political implications of hypertext as a rhetoric. Part Three, Hypertext and Literary Research, will give you an introduction to the field of humanities computing, showing you how to use the computer and the hyperlinked World Wide Web as tools for literary exploration and research. The differences between hypertext as medium, mode of speaking and tool are enormous, and you should try to keep the three sections separate in your thinking. As a result of this, do not feel compelled to approach this course in the order reproduced in your course book. Each of the units is freestanding and you should start with the section that seems the most inviting to you. In keeping with the nonsequential nature of hypertext itself, this course is organized in three associationally linked parts, uniting the study of literature and literary theory with the computer and electronic methods of delivery. This is a hallmark of the very inclusivity that makes this field a new area of study.

Part Two; The Politics of Hypertext by Monique Tschofen Hypertext as Medium; The Rhetoric of Hypertext: Theorizing Hypertext; Feminist Praxis and Hypertext; The End of the Book; Hyperreality; The Virtual Class

Part Three: Hypertext and Literary Research by Steven Totosy Online Research and Hypertext Materials; The Dissemination of Research; E-Journals and Literature

     The first part of the course will begin with a brief overview of the thought and history that informs hypertext, focusing in particular on how it is modeled on the archive and oral forms of storytelling. Hyperlinked fiction, unlike the larger network of the web, draws its narrative inspiration from the print-based novel; its structure, however, is derived from that digital archival model, the database, and its design from visual thinking. As a hybrid form, the archival text is a new genre in a new medium for fiction (since genre is a way of categorizing various literary structures) that allows the reader to leap from one spatio-temporal coordinate to another. It is dynamic, although not necessarily interactive, embodying movement as a part of the reading experience. In hypertext, the story always lives as much in the gaps -- in the pause between the heartbeat of the links -- as on the screen. Students will explore three texts which talk back to the book and one which addresses orality in literature.

Reading:
Janet Murray, Hamlet on the Holodeck, Chapters 2 and 3

Hypertext Readings:
Jennifer Ley, This is Not a Book (allow time for images to load)
Lars Wikström, A Lost Manuscript: A Small Book of Circular Geometry
Giselle Beiguelman, The Book After the Book
and Christian Crumlish, No Bird But An Invisible Thing

from The Book After the Book © Giselle Beiguelman, 1999/2000

    Further reading (optional): Rob Shields, "Hypertext Links: The Ethics of the Index and its Space-Time Effects." The World Wide Web and Contemporary Cultural Theory. Andrew Herman and Thomas Swiss, Eds. New York: Routledge, 2000. 145-160.

    Janet Murray sees the networked computer as a gathering place. Another theorist, Brenda Laurel, sees computers as theatre. Marshall McLuhan sees the technological world as a global village. Jay David Bolter sees the computer as a hiding place that shields us from the information overload of contemporary culture. Mirroring our engagement with society, Murray argues that what she calls 'multiform stories' allow us to hold multiple, contradictory narrative alternatives in our minds simultaneously. Students will read "The Garden of Forking Paths" as an introduction to a classic example of this kind of storytelling, and then explore two electronic examples of multiform stories that deal with issues of embodiment. These digital works all problematize issues surrounding virtuality and subjectivity through varied approaches to speaking the body. An exploration of the effects of the narrative contradictions and the privileging of sensation in such environments will be undertaken with an eye toward how this does or does not reflect a changing world.

Reading:
Jay David Bolter, "Network Culture" (reading file)
Jorge Luis Borges, "The Garden of Forking Paths" (reading file)

Hypertext Readings:
Shelley Jackson, 'my body': A Wunderkammer

and choose one:
Carolyn Guyer and Michael Joyce, Lasting Image
Liz Miller, Moles: A Web Narrative
Eugene Thacker, ftp_formless_anatomy: counter-anatomical database
Lori Weidenhammer, Brain Dress B

Respectively: from 'my body': a Wunderkammer © Shelley Jackson; from ftp_formless anatomy © Eugene Thacker

    Further reading (optional): Stuart Moulthrop, "Reading from the Map: Metonymy and Metaphor in the Fiction of Forking Paths." Hypermedia and Literary Studies. Paul Delaney and George P. Landow, Eds. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1991. 119-132.

    The interface is the visual realm where we as users interact with the computer. In the Windows and Macintosh operating systems, the metaphor we engage with is that of an office desktop via files, folders and a trash can. In electronic narratives, the principle is similar, but the interface is designed anew for each text with the metaphor being specific to the content of that particular work. Koskimaa discusses how these conceptual maps occupy cognitive space as highly symbolic directional or navigational indicators. In some ways, these interface metaphors in electronic fiction are most remarkable for their uselessness. They create a sense of order in the midst of randomness and remind us that we are 'lost' in the text. They signal that cartographic space is not literally navigable and encourage us to seek out the gaps and unexplored areas of the text, what Koskimaa calls the "'blank areas' on the map." Coverley and Jenik's sophisticated novels -- the first two full-length hypermedia novels -- are radical experiments in narrative, truly revisioning (or abandoning) the notions of print-bound narrative to find native forms of storytelling and conceptual design for electronic spaces.

Reading:
Raine Koskimaa, "Visual Structuring of Hyperfiction Narratives"

Hypertext Readings:
M.D. Coverley, Califia (CD-ROM for Windows)
OR
Adriene Jenik, Mauve Desert: A CD-ROM Translation (CD-ROM for Macintosh)

Further explorations (optional):
Lisa Jevbratt, 1:1
Erik Loyer, Lair of the Marrow Monkey
Tim McLaughlin, 25 Ways to Close a Photograph
Diana Reed Slattery (with Daniel O'Neil and Bill Brubaker), Glide
Stanza, The Central City

Respectively: from Califia © M.D. Coverley, 2000; from Mauve Desert © Adriene Jenik, 1997.

    Electronic narratives exist in multidimensional space. The act of navigation in real time adds third and fourth dimensions to hypertext readings that cannot exist on the page. Students will choose two out of a possible four narratives that use the architecture of the city to explore spatial themes. Physical navigation of these texts is made explicit in the urban 'rooms' that comprise these works. How the spatial aesthetics and structure of these texts create immersive environments will be explored in detail, with parallels made between the medieval cathedral, the movie theatre, the holodeck from Star Trek and the collective anonymity of the urban sensory overload experience.

Reading:
Janet Murray, Hamlet on the Holodeck, Chapter 4
John Tolva, "Ut Pictura Hyperpoesis: Spatial Form, Visuality and the Digital Word"
Carolyn Guertin, "Gesturing Toward the Visual" (reading file)

Hypertext Readings (choose two):
Isabel Chang, High-Rise
Thomas Swiss, City of Bits
Annette Weintraub, Pedestrian (offline due to WTC disaster; should be back online by end of January 2002)
Jody Zellen, Ghost City

Respectively: from City of Bits © Thomas Swiss; from Ghost City © Jody Zellen

While hypertext is clearly an interim form that is in a state of technological flux, the model of immersive interactivity that it is aiming for is something closer to that of the computer-based adventure game than the printed novel. A comparative study of the different kinds of games that are being used by literary hypertexts and commercial adventure games will reveal how narrative is being realized in these divergent models. Integral to this discussion are notions of interactivity and agency. Janet Murray argues that agency is acquired through the physical act of navigating a text. The student will look at how true this is for hypertext, explore issues surrounding the constraints established by authors, and compare and contrast the ergodics of the literary text with the multiform visual narrative approach of the adventure game genre.

Reading:
Janet Murray, Hamlet on the Holodeck, Chapters 5 and 6
Espen Aarseth, "Some Issues in Adventure Game Criticism" from Cybertext, pp. 106-114 (reading file)

Hypertext Readings (one of):
Diane Bertolo, channelUntitled (offline due to WTC disaster; should be back online by the end of January 2002)
Natalie Bookchin, The Intruder
Helen Thorington, Solitaire

And an adventure game:
Myst or Riven (for Windows or Macintosh)

Respectively: from Myst © Cyan, 1998; from Nightfall © Altor Systems 1999

Further reading (optional): Stuart Moulthrop's "Misadventure: Future Fiction and the New Networks."