For the previous few hundred years, Western cultures have trusted print. while writing was once complete by way of a quill pen, inkpot, and paper, it used to be effortless to visualize that writing used to be not anything greater than a way in which writers may possibly move their ideas to readers. The proliferation of technical media within the latter 1/2 the 20 th century has printed that the connection among author and reader isn't so uncomplicated. From telegraphs and typewriters to twine recorders and a sweeping array of electronic computing units, the complexities of communications know-how have made mediality a imperative quandary of the twenty-first century.

Despite the eye given to the advance of the media panorama, rather little is being performed in our educational associations to regulate. In Comparative Textual Media, editors N. Katherine Hayles and Jessica Pressman compile a magnificent diversity of essays from best students to deal with the difficulty, between them Matthew Kirschenbaum on archiving within the electronic period, Patricia Crain at the connection among a child’s formation of self and the ownership of a e-book, and Mark Marino exploring the way to learn a electronic textual content no longer for content material yet for lines of its underlying code.

Primarily arguing for seeing print as a medium in addition to the scroll, digital literature, and computing device video games, this quantity examines the aptitude changes if educational departments embraced a media framework. eventually, Comparative Textual Media deals new insights that permit us to appreciate extra deeply the results of the alternatives we, and our associations, are making.

Contributors: Stephanie Boluk, Vassar university; Jessica Brantley, Yale U; Patricia Crain, NYU; Adriana de Souza e Silva, North Carolina nation U; Johanna Drucker, UCLA; Thomas Fulton, Rutgers U; Lisa Gitelman, ny U; William A. Johnson, Duke U; Matthew G. Kirschenbaum, U of Maryland; Patrick LeMieux; Mark C. Marino, U of Southern California; Rita Raley, U of California, Santa Barbara; John David Zuern, U of Hawai‘i at Mānoa.