This course explores modes of textual production and circulation from the invention of writing through today’s digital moment. How have the technologies of the pen, the press, the postal system, the telegraph, and the computer affected concepts of communication? How can we best understand the ways these technologies successively interact with one another? And how have literary works responded to such developments? Through our readings and class discussions, we will see that contemporary conversations about the effects of new media are not specific to the digital age, and we will identify recurrent patterns in history of responses to new writing technologies. We may find that the pencil and the alphabet are as much technologies as the word processor and the Internet. This course will help us analyze how the choice of each of these media affects the meaning and reception of the messages we are trying to send.