Module overview
The global industries shaping contemporary literary cultures are diverse, dynamic and rapidly changing. They incorporate children’s literature, graphic novels, plays and poetry, site-specific and experimental writing, popular genre fiction, as well as the canonical works of the heritage industry. This module will give you a critical understanding of these innovative industries and the skills needed to engage and develop them. It particularly focuses on literature’s digital revolution and the ways in which new media has radically transformed the meaning and processes of writing, publishing, editing, adapting, reading and reviewing. Issues to be examined on the module include the use of interactive writing platforms, the role of literary narrative in gaming, the adaptations of fiction into film, television, hypertexts and immersive experiences, the use of locative technologies in writing and reading. The module concludes with in-depth case studies that allow students to read literary texts through their complex cultural and economic contexts. These case-studies allow you to look at specific examples of the issues involved in the marketing, selling, copyrighting, adapting, translating, reading and interpreting of influential, often ground-breaking, cultural practices.