Abstract

Today’s English departments might well use design principles to navigate their way from their traditional emphasis on writing and literature to include a new emphasis on communication in today’s global web and new media environment. Design is also a means by which English departments can serve the needs of today’s new media world, with its new form of communication technology. Design is also forward looking and promotes change-- fitting precisely the needs of English departments today--departments which wish to carry forward traditional views of literature and writing-- but who also want to justify their existence in a world of new media, where literature and the products of a writer may be unrecognizable by the old standards, even as new standards develop through evolution.