This dissertation studies the politics of multimedia in the humanities. It urges that we adopt new strategies for legitimizing technological practice in the humanities, strategies that may mean disrupting traditional notions of humanities instruction ad research. It considers threats, both real and imagined, to the humanities as an institutional organization of academic disciplines and as the institutionalized study of cultural expression. It encourages our engagement with technological practice so that we may successfully influence technology's socially equitable development and use.;First, this study considers the relationship between the humanities and technology within its historical context to show how deeply rooted the bias against technology is in traditional conceptions of the humanities and how the humanities is under increasing pressure to demonstrate its relevancy within the context of economic growth. Second, it considers hypertext theory as a significant attempt to legitimize technological practice in the humanities. While most hypertext theorists uncover constructive connections between technological practice and human expression, their theorizations ignore the materiality of multimedia production and consumption. Their focus upon linguistics-based and narrative-based theories of meaning prove inadequate to understanding our astonishment at participating in technological spectacle. As such, they retain the parallel binaries between word/mind/intellect and image/body/emotion that have played a significant role in defining the humanities against technology and technological practice. This study ends with a consideration of the performativity of astonishment in computers games that maintains connections between the physical and the psychological in our experience of multimedia.
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