New Media Narratives – Writing and publishing in a developing Field (Comm 597)

The University of Alberta Faculty of Extension: Winter Term

Registration Deadline December 15, 2010

This course will provide students and practitioners with insights into the role of new media in the practices and processes of writing and experimenting with new narrative formats and platforms. The course will focus on the very nature of narrative and how new media affects story; its creation and dissemination. A key aspect centres on a critical assessment of current developments in new media narrative alongside interpretations, transformations and challenges of traditional concepts and functions of publishing. As such, a main aim of the course is to promote and transform the thinking of narrative in light of new media. An element necessary to this transformative thinking revolves around the developing concept of transliteracy. As noted by Thomas, Joseph, Laccetti et al., transliteracy may be seen as a unifying perspective for literacy today: it is the “ability to read, write and interact across a range of platforms, tools and media from signing and orality through handwriting, print, TV, radio and film, to digital social networks.”