This seminar investigates the range of literary reading theories and practices employed in our time of narrative innovation, with special focus on narrative adaptation and the ideological currents that tend to keep readers anchored tightly to a narrow range of reading formats and secluded theoretical ports out of fear of drifting out into deeper seas and yet unfathomed reading depths and perspectives. The goal of this seminar is to set ourselves to sea but not adrift, to chart reading theories and use them to navigate around various bodies of textual adaptations made buoyant in our time of multimedia innovation. Essays on reading theory, as well as print fiction and nonfiction and their electronic adaptations and targeted audiences, will form the core class texts, just as traditional as well as innovative reading, sophisticated research, and intellectually-engaged discussion will fill class sessions.