Realism 2.0

This chapter looks to the future of teaching realism with Web 2.0 technologies. After discussing the ways in which technologies of data modeling can reveal patterns for interpretation, the chapter examines how these technologies can update the social-reform agenda of realism as exemplified by William Dean Howells’s attempted intervention into the Haymarket Riot in 1886. The advent of Web 2.0 techologies offers students a way to harness the genre’s sense of social purpose to knowledge-sharing mechanisms to create a vehicle for political consciousness-raising in real time. The result is “Realism 2.0,” a realism that enables readers to engage in their world, which is less text-centric than it was for previous writers.