Schedule
Most of our readings will be available freely on the web. There are a few books you must buy (as indicated in the course policies) and others available in our class course packet in Leganto. I will show you how to use Leganto in our first session together, but in general if there’s not a direct link that’s where you should check.
Wednesday, September 5: Introductions
Introduction to the class and to each other
Keyword 1: Reading
Thursday, September 6: Novelties
Read:
- Leah Price, “You Are What You Read”
- Ruth Graham, “Against YA”
- Hannah Natanson, “Yes, teens are texting and using social media instead of reading books, researchers say”
- 19th-Century Commentaries on Novel Reading:
- “On Novel Reading”, The Guardian; or Youth’s Religious Instructor (1820)
- “The Reading of Young Ladies”, American Magazine of Useful Knowledge (1836)
- “Devouring Books”, The American Annals of Education (1835)
In-class: Introduction to Markdown for “Domain of Your Own” and blogging assignments
Monday, September 10 : Astrolabes &
Read:
- Nnedi Okorafor, Binti (bookstore)
In-class: Continuing with Markdown and introduction to Github Pages for “Domain of Your Own” and blogging assignments
Wednesday, September 12: Library Orientation
Meet in Snell Library Room 422
Thursday, September 13: Paper or Plastic?
Read:
- Ferris Jabr, “The Reading Brain in the Digital Age: The Science of Paper versus Screens”
- Maria Sachiko Cecire, “Massively Open”
In-class: Continuing with Markdown and Github Pages for “Domain of Your Own” and blogging assignments
Monday, September 17: Reading Futures
Read:
- Octave Uzanne, “The End of Books” (1894)
- N. Katherine Hayles, “How We Read: Close, Hyper, Machine” (PDF in Leganto)
- Craig Mod, “Future Reading”
Wednesday, September 19: 17776
DUE: Draft of Course Grade Contract
Read:
Thursday, September 20: Writing Workshop
Read:
- The Craft of Research chapters 3-5
Interlude: Speak
Monday, September 24
Read:
- Louisa Hall, Speak, Prologue-Book One (pg. 1-78)
Keyword 2: Writing
Wednesday, September 26: Writing as Technology
Read:
- Ted Chiang, “The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling” (PDF in Leganto)
Thursday, September 27: Fake News!
Read:
- Rasmus Kleis Nielsen and Lucas Graves, “‘News You Don’t Believe’: Audience Perspectives on Fake News” (PDF in Leganto)
- Sarah McGrew, Teresa Ortega, Joel Breakstone, and Sam Wineburg; “The Challenge That’s Bigger Than Fake News” (PDF in Leganto)
In-class: Library research session
Window opens for drafting Wikipedia writing assignment
Monday, October 1: Wikiworld
Read:
- Joseph Reagle, “Nazis and Norms” and “Encyclopedic Anxiety”
- Michelle Moravec, “The Endless Night of Wikipedia’s Notable Woman Problem”
In-class: orientation to Wikipedia
Wednesday, October 3: Writing Workshop
Read:
- The Craft of Research chapters 7-9
Complete:
In-class: Wikipedia Continued
Thursday, October 4: Writing in Public
Read:
- Annemarie Perez, “UndocuDreamers: Public Writing and the Digital Turn”
Monday, October 8: NU Observes Columbus Day
No class
Wednesday, October 10: Writing Programs
Read:
- Annette Vee, “Understanding Computer Programming as Literacy” (PDF in Leganto)
- Samuel Woolley, Danah Boyd, Meredith Broussard, Made, “How to Think About Bots”
Browse (choose at least 1 entry you’d like to discuss in class and get to know it):
- Posts on “Letting Neural Networks Be Weird”
- Electronic Literature Collection: Bots
- Jetson et al, Sunspring
- Any of the bots mentioned in this New Yorker article (there’s some overlap from above)
- Amaranth Borsuk, Jesper Juul, and Nick Montfort, “The Deletionist”
- Computational Poems by Nick Montfort:
Interlude: Speak
Thursday, October 11
Read:
- Louisa Hall, Speak, Book Two and Three (pg. 79-184)
Keyword 3: Attention
Monday, October 15: What Gorilla?
Read:
- Cathy Davidson, from Now You See It (PDF in Leganto)
- Michael H. Goldhaber, “The Attention Economy: The Natural Economy of the Net”
- Barbara Fister, “It’s the Attention Economy, and It’s Stupid”
Wednesday, October 17: Internet Famous
Read:
- Susanna Paasonen, “Fickle focus: Distraction, affect and the production of value in social media”
- Abby Rabinowitz, “The Meme as Meme”
- Jim Ridolfo and Dànielle Nicole DeVoss, “Composing for Recomposition: Rhetorical Velocity and Delivery” (make sure to read each of the sections in the table of contents at the top)
Thursday, October 18: Writing Workshop
Read:
- The Craft of Research chapters 7-10
Monday, October 22: It’s Pronounced ‘Gif’
Read:
- Kate M. Miltner and Tim Highfield, “Never Gonna GIF You Up: Analyzing the Cultural Significance of the Animated GIF”
- Lauren M. Jackson, “We Need to Talk About Digital Blackface in GIFs”
Wednesday, October 24: Work work work work work
Read:
- Melissa Gregg, “The Productivity Obsession”
- Ian Bogost, “Hyperemployment, or the Exhausting Work of the Technology User”
Thursday, October 25 : #Unplug
Read:
- Virginia Heffernan, “The Internet Is the Uncanniest Valley. Don’t Get Trapped in It”
- Bianca Bosker, “The Binge Breaker”
- Baratunde Thurston, ”#Unplug: Baratunde Thurston Left The Internet For 25 Days, And You Should Too”
Keyword 4: Data
Monday, October 29: ROFL
Read:
- Naomi Kritzer, “Cat Pictures Please”
- Elyse Graham, “The Great LOLCat Massacre”
Window opens for drafting Dear (My) Data writing assignment
Wednesday, October 31: Data Visualization
Read:
- Giorgia Lupi and Stefanie Posavec, Dear Data (spend time with this book and identify 3 visualizations you find particularly interesting/compelling/infuriating for discussion in class. If you are reading the book in library reserves take a picture of the pages you want to discuss)
- Shirley Wu, “An Interactive Visualization of Every Line in Hamilton”
Thursday, November 1: Writing Workshop
Read:
- The Craft of Research chapters 13-15
Monday, November 5: Quantified Selves
Read:
- Gary Wolf, “The Data-Driven Life”
- Kim Brillante Knight, “Wearable Interfaces, Networked Bodies, and Feminist Sleeper Agents” (PDF in Leganto)
Wednesday, November 7: Don’t Be Evil
Listen:
- 99% Invisible, “The Age of the Algorithm”
Read:
- Safiya Umoja Noble, from Algorithms of Oppression (PDF in Leganto)
Thursday, November 8: Data Afterlives
Watch:
- Owen Harris, “Be Right Back” episode of Black Mirror
Monday, November 12: Veterans’ Day
No class
Wednesday, November 14: Data Transcendent
Read:
- Ted Chiang, “The Lifecycle of Software Objects” (PDF in Leganto)
Thursday, November 15: Writing workshop
Read:
- The Craft of Research chapters 16-17
Interlude: Speak
Monday, November 19
Read:
- Louisa Hall, Speak, Book Four and Five (pg. 185-314)
Wednesday, November 21-Sunday, November 25: Thanksgiving Holiday
Window opens for drafting Interactive Twine Essay writing assignment
Keyword 5: Play
Monday, November 26: You Can’t Go Home Again
Play:
- The Fullbright Company, Gone Home
In-class: introduction to Twine
Wednesday, November 28: Arcade
Read:
- Janine Fron, Tracy Fullerton, Jacquelyn Ford Morie, and Celia Pearce, “The Hegemony of Play”(PDF)
- Elizabeth Losh, “#GamerGate 101”
We’ll play (some of) these in class:
- merritt k, Lim
- Molleindustria, Unmanned
- GOP Arcade, Thoughts and Prayers
- Jordan Magnuson and Kevin MacLeod, Loneliness
- Anna Anthropy, Queers in Love at the End of the World
- Porpentine, Howling Dogs
- ——, With Those We Love Alive
- McKinney, Spent
- Financial Times, The Uber Game
- Zoe Quinn, Patrick Lindsey, and Isaac Schankler, Depression Quest
- Star C. Foster and Daniel Ravipinto, Slouching toward Bedlam
- Jason Nelson, game, game, game and again game
- ——, i made this. you play this. we are enemies
- Molleindustria and Jesse Stiles, Every day the same dream
In-class: Twine continued
Thursday, November 29: Writing Workshop
Monday, December 3: Choose Your Own Adventure
Choose one of the following to play or, alternatively, pick another game to play and analyze. Either way, you need to get far enough into the game that you can talk about it in detail during class, so start well in advance of this session:
- Braid
- A Dark Room (the app provides a fuller narrative)
- Depression Quest
- Papers, Please
- Passage
- Save the Date
- The Stanley Parable
- The Walking Dead
- Thomas Was Alone
- To the Moon
- What Remains of Edith Finch