Teaching Digital Literature: Didactic and Institutional Aspects

Digital media is increasingly finding its way into the discussions of the humanities classroom. But while we have a number of grand theoretical texts about digital literature we as yet have little in the way of resources for discussing the down-to-earth practices of research, teaching, and curriculum necessary for this work to mature. The book Reading Moving Letters, edited by Roberto Simanowski, Jörgen Schäfer and Peter Gendolla, addresses this need and provides examinations by nine scholars and teachers from different national academic backgrounds. While the first section of the book provides definitions of digital literature as a discipline of scholarly treatment in the humanities, the second section asks how and why we should teach digital literature and conduct close readings in academia and discusses institutional considerations necessary to take into account when implementing digital literature into curricula. The following text is the introduction to section two.