In E-Crit, Marcel O?Gorman takes an ambitious and provocative look at how university scholarship, pedagogy, and curricula might be transformed to suit a digital culture. Arguing that universities were founded on the logic of print culture, O?Gorman sets out to reinvent the academic apparatus, constructing a hybrid methodology that draws on avant-garde art, deconstructive theory, cognitive science, and the work of painter and poet William Blake.

O?Gorman explores the ways in which digital media might help to restore the critical, intellectual purpose of higher education, which has been repressed by the technocratic structures that dominate the modern university. He argues that the revolutionary, socio-critical impetus that spurred deconstructive theory and transformed the humanities was lost in the initial attempts to digitize the literary canon and demonstrate the convergence of critical theory and hypertext. Humanities disciplines, he argues, must reposition themselves through the invention of humanities-based interdisciplinary programs capable of adapting to the post-print vicissitudes of a digital culture. E-Crit is thus essential reading for anyone concerned with the practice ? and future ? of the humanities in higher education.

Marcel O?Gorman is an associate professor in the Department of English at the University of Waterloo.

Endorsements/Review Excerpts

?From its adventuresome spirit, and it?s deliberately provisional methodology, to its desire to reform academic discourses and practices, there is much to like about Marcel O?Gorman?s E-Crit. The author argues that critical methodologies, disciplinary structures, and entire universities need to be revised in order to accommodate a more open, less hierarchical, more visually intensive and culturally relevant education. This book makes an important contribution by advancing our thinking about how digital media can and should be incorporated in to academia.?

?E-Crit is a bold attempt to redefine scholarly communication in an era characterized by the arrival of digital media. The problem that the author addresses is this: New technologies of communication and representation (the Internet, computer graphics) seem to be implicated in fundamental shifts in popular media forms and in the delivery of scientific and even scholarly texts. Many critics in the humanities are exploring these issues in their work. However, the form of the work itself remains largely unchanged and unexplored. This is the paradox that O?Gorman seeks to confront, and his approach is both radical and practical. He attempts both explain and exemplify his E-Crit approach - to understand how digital writing can be different from linear writing for print, and to train his students in a new form of digital representation.?

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INTRODUCTION

1. The Canon, the Archive, and the Remainder: Reimagining Scholarly Discourse
2. The Search for Exemplars: Discourse Networks and the Pictorial Turn
3. The Hypericonic De-Vise: Peter Ramus Meets William Blake
4. Nonsense and Play: The Figure/Ground Shift in New Media Discourse
5. From Écriture to E-Crit: On Postmodern Curriculum

NOTES

WORKS CITED

ILLUSTRATION CREDITS

INDEX