ENGL 889 (01) - Special Topics in English Teaching

Spring 2025 Special Topic: Digital Literacies

Even before COVID upended educational and social systems, definitions of literacy, language, literature, and even communication had grown contested. Our digital age has questioned, synthesized, and reframed traditional understandings of how we learn and teach English. Critical reading/viewing, synthesis, content curation for specialized audiences, and composing in partnership with AI tools are skills that have rapidly become anchors in our newly information-rich society — but all of them are complicated when misinformation, disinformation, and algorithmically-generated content are also rampant. What do these new communication patterns mean for our ways of life and connections with others? What do they mean for the study and teaching of English? 

In this course, we will examine questions including:

• What does it mean to become literate in the 21st century? How do researchers and teachers think about technology-mediated literacies, cultures, and intelligences?
• How are the processes and products of digital media and digital cultures changing what it means to read, write, create, and communicate?
• What, if anything, is different about learning and participation in person vs/ in digital media and cultures? Are there differences that are specific to social media cultures? 
• Right now, what are the elements of digital literacy that students and teachers of English need? What about elements of digital pedagogies (ways of teaching)?