A Poem is a Made Thing

Tuesdays and Thursdays 11:00 a.m.-12:15 p.m. in Cocke Hall 101.

This course--open to both advanced undergrads and to new graduate students--investigates material texts, mixing theory and practice. We'll sample bibliography, thing theory, artifact-oriented scholarship and visit Special Collections, campus Fab Labs, and the Puzzle Poetry group. Readings will feature writers that experiment with form and shape: that is, pattern poems, iconographs, concrete poetry, the poetics of controlled vocabularies, and artist books. Readings in theory will (likely) be drawn from Karl Marx, Martin Heidegger, Bill Brown, Quentin Meillassoux, Ian Bogost, Michael Fried, and Walter Benn Michaels. For contrast and complication, we’ll also read Tom McCarthy's novel "Remainder" and spend a day playing and talking about the video game "Baba is You". For this theory/DH course on making and fabrication, students will be asked at midterm to remediate a poem by means of laser-cutting, 3D-printing, or open-source electronics and hardware. Classwork will culminate in a final maker's project or a research essay

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