Consult Program office for descriptions. May be repeated for credit. Examines how we decide whom to regard as an expert when we do not understand completely what we hear. Focus on the resources that experts, and the people they talk to, bring to their conversations. Explores assumptions about experts, conventions of conversation, and issues of status.
Students analyze traditional negotiations of expert status and develop alternatives.
The application of economic and literary theory to the process of verbal communication, whether spoken, written, or otherwise. The transformation of literary criticism from the New Criticism toward post-structuralism is examined with the use of theories from literary criticism itself, as well as from the field of economics. Examines the possible effects of changing technological conditions of production, or of changing composition of market demand conditions, or other economic circumstances, in the supply and demand of literary texts. This course examines the history of major revolutions of the past from the viewpoint of economics and other social sciences, to extrapolate beyond the established paradigms of telecommunications, computer science, and software engineering to examine how the information revolution may unfold in the future. This broadly interdisciplinary course aims to establish, in a classroom setting, a productive dialogue between producers and consumers of information-age goods.