This course will introduce students to hypertext, and to digital text more broadly, as a mode of textual practice. We will attempt to understand what digital texts are (and aren't) and to evaluate critically the claims that are being made for them. We will explore some of the new literary and critical genres now emerging and the technologies underlying them, as well as the surrounding socio-technical infrastructure within which these works are embedded, such as copyright and preservation. The course will include several in-depth studies, among them hypertext fiction as a literary movement and online games and the narrative possibilities they provide.