What is literature? Today the term literature embraces all things printed, from fiction to nonfiction to advertising (yes, even your junk mail), from highbrow to low. This course will take a comparative view of the term literature as well as its ideas, practices, and forms. Given that literature historically has been tied to writing, to print, or to the book, what does it mean to study literature today—in an age when the book (and possibly print itself) may be vanishing?