English 101W
Digital Rhetoric: Social Media and Persuasive Games
YouTube Video about the Class
Instructor: Elizabeth Losh
Fall 2007
TLTC Room 1030
Mondays 9:30-10:50 AM, Wednesday 9:30-10:50 AM
YouTube Channel
Facebook Group
Class Wiki
Class Blog
Week One: Digital Rhetoric
October 1
Introduction to Digital Rhetoric
Reguired
New Media Reader #47 -
J. David Bolter, "Seeing and Writing"
Manovich Ch. 1 Language
of New Media ("What is New Media?")
Bogost Ch.
1 Persuasive Games ("Procedural Rhetoric")Media Inventory Due
October 3
Where the Boys Are:
Early Social Media
The Memex and Xanadu
Required:
New Media Reader #2 - Vannevar Bush, "As We May Think"
Recommended:
New Media Reader #30 - Theodor H. Nelson, "Literary Machines"
J.C.R. Licklider "The
Computer as a Communications Device";
Welcome from Judi Franz
Domain Name Thought Experiment Due
October 5
Extra Credit Event!
The Work of Course Authors Nick Montfort and Noah Waldrip Fruin on Display!
Beall Center
Symposium 1-5PM, Performances 6-8PM
Week Two: Intertextuality
October 8
Borrowing, Copying, Appropriation, Allusion, Imitation, Plagiarism, and Piracy
New Media Reader #36 - Richard Stallman, "The GNU Manifesto"
Lawrence Lessig, Free Culture (selections) and Code 2.0 (selections)
Guests: Steve Franklin and Barbara Cohen
October 10
No Class
Week Three: Paths of Most Resistance
October 15
Anonymity, Identity, and the Critique of Heterosexism
Required:
New Media Reader #3 - Alan Turing, "Computing Machinery and Intelligence"
New Media Reader #35 - Donna Haraway, "A Cyborg Manifesto"
Recommended:
Amy Bruckman, "The Turing Game: Exploring Identity in an Online Environment"
The Queer Internet - guest speaker Jonathan Alexander, author of "In Their Own Words: LGBT Youth Writing on the World Wide Web"
Change Profile
October 16
Extra Credit Event
Humanitech Panel on "Technology, Translation, and Transformation" with Course Author Ian Bogost
HIB 135
October 17
No Class
Week Four: Telling Stories
October 22
Reason and Repression
Required:
New Media Reader #24 - Joseph Weizenbaum, Computer Power and Human Reason
Recommended:
New Media Reader "27 - Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus
New Media Reader #22 - Augusto Boal, Theatre of the Oppressed
dana boyd - "Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace."
dana boyd - "Social Network Sites: Public, Private, or What?"
Ian Bogost, "A Professor's Impressions of Facebook"
Disability Videos
Facebook / My Space Profile Change Rationale Due
October 24
Required:
New Media Reader #50 Scott McCloud, "Time Frames"
The Electronic Literature Collection
Recommended:
New Media Reader #52 Espen Aarseth, "Nonlinearity and Literary Theory"
Lev Manovich, “Generation Flash”
Creating Electronic Literature Assignment
Week Five: Web 2.0
October 29
Personal Publishing: Desktop to Web
Required:
Edward Tufte - The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint
Ellen Strenski's The PowerPoint Debate
Recommended:
New Media Reader #9 - Ivan E. Sutherland, "Sketchpad"
New Media Reader #26 - Alan Kay and Adele Goldberg, "Personal Dynamic Media"
Manovich
Facebook/MySpace Profile Self-Assessment
October 31
Meet in HIB 135!
Blogs as Memoirs
Required:
New Media Reader #14 - Selections by Marshall McLuhan
Recommended:
Bonnie Nardi, "Blogging as a Social Activity, or, Would You Let 900,000,000 People Read Your Diary?"
Blog Rules Due
Blogs as Journalism
War journalism: Salam Pax, Riverbend, military bloggers, etc.
Guest speakers: UCI Bloggers Panel (Scott Kaufman, Peter Krapp, Catherine Liu, Julia Lupton, etc.)
Blogroll Due
Week Six: How is Truth Framed?
November 5
Required:
Bogost - Persuasive
Games,
Ellen Strenski's Encyclopedia Britannica vs. Wikipedia
Wiki Assignment
November 7
Meet in Room 3030!
A tale of two college students: Aleksey Vayner vs. James Kotecki
YouTube Video Essays
Guest Speaker (via teleconference): James Kotecki
YouTube Proposal
Week Seven: Remix Culture
November 12
Holiday
November 14
File Sharing and Remixing: Photoshop and Sound Files -
Required:
Manovich Ch 3 ("The Operations") and
Recommended:
Video File-Sharing – Manovich Ch. 6, "What is Cinema?"
Henry Jenkins - Nine Propositions Toward a Cultural Theory of YouTube
YouTube Script
Week Eight: Web 3.0
November 19
Rhetoric and Interactivity
Visit to Anteater Island
Manovich
YouTube Shot List
November 21
Bogost, Persuasive
Games,
Advertising and Government Campaigns in Second Life
Guest speakers: Joshua Fouts of the
Second Life Assignment Due
Week Nine: The Rhetoric of Videogames
November 26
Bogost, Persuasive
Games,
November 28
Game Development Workshop
Super Columbine Massacre RPG
My Trip to
Blog Comments Due
Week Ten: The Social in Social Media
December 3
Alternate Reality Games – McGonigal
Cruel 2B Kind
Guest Speaker – Mark Marino
Machinima, Chatbots, and Interactive Fiction
Blog Tags Due
December 5
Conclusion
Game Evaluation: Immune Attack and Selene
December 12
8:00-10:00AM - Makeup Class
YouTube Final Video Due
