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How do we experience stories when we have to wait to see what happens next? This class juxtaposes 21st-century television with 19th-century fiction — Baltimore’s own The Wire alongside Dickens’s Bleak House, amongst others — to think about how artists manipulate our behavior as readers to expand our thinking: to make us perceive the structures of society differently, to make us understand something new about the possibilities of fiction as an art form. Whether we’re forced to wait or eager to rush ahead to the next part, how we read or watch stories has always been the subject of lively debate — and central to narrative’s lasting impact.