OutsideTheText (Class Archive)

Academia, Literary Studies, New Media, Politics . . .

Below is a list of links to the course material for some of the courses I have taught in past semesters. Each link contains a home page for the class, a list of reading, and assignments. Many of the assignments can still be downloaded, although you will not be able to access the old discussion forums. If you have any questions about these classes, assignments, or classes I have taught which are not listed here, please feel free to email dp0711 at albany.edu.

Classes for Spring 07 (University of Texas at Dallas)

• StoryTelling for New Media(ATEC 4346):With the rise of digital literacy, what was once marginal “geek” culture has come to dominate the social landscape. While storytelling used to take place via a relatively narrow set of channels, born digital narratives are now opening up new structural possibilities (hypertext, blog fiction, YouTube shows, digital games). Criticism has ranged from outright dismissal (“nothing has changed”) to hyperbolic (“nothing will ever be the same”). Regardless of where one takes up position along this spectrum, the now ubiquitous potential of the digital text raises two crucial questions: What/How much changes in the digital text? And perhaps more importantly, how does this move to the digital text affect us as readers? In class we will ask these questions (along with a host of others) of a variety of narrative forms. In order to adequately address these issues, we will read creative works from a variety of genres (novels, hypertext, digital games, web fiction), while supplementing our approach through the reading of critical texts. Students will produce critical and creative work for class.
• Digital Narratives-ATEC 6V81:We are in a culture moment which, for lack of a better term, I would describe as being in a “change-over.” That is, we are slowly but surely moving from storytelling structures which are supported by analog means (book and film) to narratives which are supported by digital ones (digital games, web fiction, distributed narratives). By reading a variety of literary and critical texts we will seek to understand what it means to be in this change, to understand both what possibilities these new narrative forms open up and which ones they foreclose. For example: Are there new paradigms of knowledge formation and literary work enabled by digitally networked structures? What should we make of the difference between non-linear and linear narratives? Does it even make sense to talk of non-linear narratives? What should we make of the increasingly short time allowed these narratives? Are images supplanting words, or are images still relegated to the regime of text?

Fall 07-University of Texas at Dallas

• Introduction to Computer Mediated Communication:In December of 2006, Time magazine declared “you” the person of the year, “for seizing the reins of the global media, for founding and framing the new digital democracy, for working for nothing and beating the pros at their own game.” But who is this “you”? and how does one decide who is “you” and who is not “you”?  In this course we will look at the substantial change brought on by the shift from an analog writing to a digital networked writing. We will focus on the praxis of this change, by engaging in writing for the digital age in various forms (blog, wikis, etc.), and seek to understand its implications by reading about how they have been theorized. And while this course will focus primarily on “writing,” we will also examine how what writing is and means changes in the digital, moving past the idea that it is simply words. We will consider rhetorical, technical, cultural, theoretical, and ethical issues surrounding communication in a networked digital era.  A new type of digital divide is developing, one which is based not only on consuming ever-increasing content, but, more importantly, on how to produce and critique it. (No prior technical skills required.)
• Writing the Networked Archive: In the introduction to Smart Mobs, Howard Rheingold argues that in the future people will be divided between “those who know how to use new media to band together [and] those who don’t” (xix). In this class we will examine how the technological change from the analog to the digital AFFECTS the ability to produce and disseminate knowledge in order to understand how these networked media are changing society. Once powerful institutions seem to be losing relevance by the day (consider how quickly Wikipedia has trumped Britannica). But at the same time we should not be tricked into seeing these new networked digital spaces as utopian democracies, for there are still substantial rhetorical and cultural forces at work. While focusing on the question of writing (blog, wikis), we will at the same time question what it means to “write” (should podcasts, Youtube, and Twitter count as writing?). Central to our examination will be how technology, rhetorics, and ethics shape our use of this networked communication. We will divide our time between engaging the theoretical questions and supplementing such an examination by using these new technologies of knowledge creation and dissmination. (No prior technical skills required.)

Spring 2006-SUNY Albany

• Introduction to Writing in English Studies-Eng 205z
• Hyper-Literary-Eng 226