Did you ever have to dump books at an airport due to excess luggage after a long trip with many souvenirs? I just had. Awful expirience. Almost like dismissing friends. But despite having gone more and more digital after I participated as a student in last year’s first run of the terrific Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) Literature in the Digital Age, I still brought three paperbacks with me on my 10-weeks-research trip to Australia.
I did it because I still and always will love the feeling of having „book-books“ around me. They look, feel and smell nice, they never run out of batterie and they are just a lovely companion on any kind of lonesome trip. And yet they can become quite bothersome or even an obstacle if you have to travel or move a lot, especially in globally connected, flexible and racy times like ours.
For situations like these an ebook reader is certainly a great alternative, although no substitute, if you ask me. But „literature in the digital age“ is so much more than only reading or writing a text on an electronical device. As the lead educator Philipp Schweighauser explains in this interview very nicely, the reading strategies of „social reading“ and „distant reading“ are just two of various examples how digital technology challenges literature and books nowadays.
In this MOOC Philipp Schweighauser, Professor of American and General Literatures at the University of Basel (Switzerland), will take you on a six week journey through the world of literature in evolution. Together with my colleagues I will be one of the four mentors of this course and it would be my pleasure to attend you on this trip. You can join anytime but it is most fun to start in Week 1 with most of the other participants from all over the world. Just have a look!