Syllabus

WEEK	DAY	TOPIC	READINGS DUE
1	T 8/28		N/A

1	Th 8/30	defining digital; defining rhetoric	REQUIRED Elizabeth Losh, “Digital Rhetoric: Genres, Disciplines, and Trends” "Digital Rhetoric" (program transcript) Bill Gates, “Everyone, Anytime, Anywhere” Jay David Bolter, “Introduction: Writing in the Late Age of Print” RECOMMENDED Carolyn Handa, "Letter from the Guest Editor: Digital Rhetoric, Digital Literacy, Computers, and Composition" James Zappen, “Digital Rhetoric: Toward an Integrated Theory”
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2	T 9/4	exploring the history of the internet	REQUIRED Bruce Sterling, “A Short History of the Internet” Anthony Anderberg, “History of the Internet and Web” Stuart Moulthrop, “A Subjective Chronology of Cybertext, Hypertext, and Electronic Writing"
2	Th 9/6	exploring the history of the internet	REQUIRED Pew Internet and American Life, "Internet: The Mainstreaming of Online Life" John Battelle, "The Birth of Google" Pew Internet and American Life, “America's Online Pursuits: The Changing Picture of Who's Online” (pages 1-9) Billie Walhstrom and Chris Scruton, “Constructing Texts/Understanding Texts: Lessons from Antiquity and the Middle Ages”
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3	T 9/11	doing digital research; searching the web	REQUIRED Mary Sellen, “Information Literacy in the General Education: A New Requirement for the 21st Century” Adam Penenberg, “Searching for The New York Times” United States of America Federal Trade Commission, “Re: Commercial alert complaint requesting investigation of various Internet search engine companies for paid placement and paid inclusion programs” Danny Sullivan, “Buying Your Way In: Search Engine Advertising Chart” RECOMMENDED Madeleine Sorapure, Pamela Inglesby, and George Yatchisin, “Web Literacy: Challenges and Opportunities for Research in a New Medium” Nicholas Burbles, “Rhetorics of the Web: Hyperreading and Critical Literacy” Michelle Sidler, “Web Research and Genres in Online Databases: When the Glossy Page Disappears”

3	Th 9/13	investigating digital literacies, part 1: information literacy	REQUIRED Laura J. Gurak, “Cyberliteracy: Toward a New Internet Consciousness” (electronic reserve) Association of College and Research Libraries, "Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education" Johndan Johnson-Eilola, “Living on the Surface: Learning in the Age of Global Communication Networks” (course pack) RECOMMENDED Lester Faigley, “Literacy After the Revolution” Christina Haas, “On the Relationship between Old and New Technologies”
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4	T 9/18	investigating digital literacies, part 2: reading and writing in digital spaces	REQUIRED Jim Porter, “Why Technology Matters to Writing: A Cyberwriter’s Tale” Crawford Kilian, ““Effective Web Writing” Constance J. Petersen, “Writing for a Web Audience” Geoff Hart, “Content, Structure, and Relevance: The Ploy's the Thing” Scott Berkun, “The Role of Flow in Web Design” Scott McCloud, "10 Suggestions for First-Time WebComics Artists" RECOMMENDED Web Style Guide, Chapter 6: “Editorial Style” (electronic reserve) Todd Taylor and Irene Ward, Introduction to Literacy Theory in the Age of the Internet Ilana Snyder, Introduction to From Page to Screen: Taking Literacy into the Electronic Era (electronic reserve)

4	Th 9/20	investigating digital literacies, part 3: dynamics of print and digital publishing	REQUIRED Scott McCloud, "I Can't Stop Thinking" Chip Scanlan, “The Web and the Future of Writing” James R. Kalmbach, “Publishing Before Computers” (electronic reserve) John Dujay, “Will ‘E-books’ Make Paper Ones Obsolete?” Pew Internet and American Life Project, “Content Creation Online” RECOMMENDED Mark Zeltner, “New Media and the Slow Death of the Written Word” Scott Lloyd DeWitt, “The Current Nature of Hypertext Research in Computers and Composition Studies: An Historical Perspective” Johndan Johnson-Eilola and Amy C. Kimme Hea, “After Hypertext: Other Ideas”
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5	T 9/25	investigating digital literacies, part 4: blogs	REQUIRED Laura Gurak, Smiljana Antonijevic, Laurie Johnson, Clancy Ratliff, and Jessica Reyman, "Introduction: Weblogs, Rhetoric, Community, and Culture" Kevin Kelly, "We Are the Web" John Hockenberry, “The Blogs of War” "Online Weblog Leads to Firing" "How Not to Get Fired Because of Your Blog" RECOMMENDED Matthew D. Barton, “The Future of Rational-critical Debate in Online Public Spheres” David Huffaker, "The Educated Blogger: Using Weblogs to Promote Literacy in the Classroom"

5	Th 9/27	investigating digital literacies, part 5: social networking	REQUIRED Daily Show: Martin, "Trendspotting: Social Networking" Albert-László Barabási, "The Physics of the Web" Chad Lowe, Alida Pask, and John Vickery, "The Small-World Problem: Six Degrees, Friendster, Mr. Micawber and Kevin Bacon" Molly Wood, "Five Reasons Social Networking Doesn't Work" Barry Levine, "Bill to Ban Social Sites in Schools Moves to Senate" RECOMMENDED danah boyd and Jeffrey Heer, “Profiles as Conversation: Networked Identity Performance on Friendster" Bonnie A. Nardi, Steve Whittaker, and Heinrich Schwarz, "It's Not What You Know, It's Who You Know: Work in the Information Age"
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6	T 10/2	investigating digital literacies, part 6: video games	REQUIRED Clive Thompson, “Game Theories” John Seely Brown and Douglas Thomas, "You Play World of Warcraft? You're Hired!" Entertainment Software Rating Board, "Game Rating and Descriptor Guide" Stephen Colbert interviews Steven Johnson RECOMMENDED Laurie Taylor, "When Seams Fall Apart: Video Game Space and the Player" Viviane Gal, Cécile Le Prado, Stéphane Natkin, and Liliana Vega, "Writing for Video Games"

6	Th 10/4	access and divides, part 1: race, class, economies	REQUIRED Wikipedia: Digital Divide “Perspective: What Digital Divide” Pew Internet and American Life, "Who's Not Online" Howard Besser, “The Next Digital Divide” Anthony Walton, “Technology Versus African-Americans” RECOMMENDED Jonathan Sterne, “The Computer Race Goes to Class: How Computers in Schools Helped Shape the Racial Topography of the Internet” (electronic reserve) Jeffrey T. Grabill, “Utopic Visions, the Technopoor, and Public Access: Writing Technologies in a Community Literacy Program” National Telecommunications Information Administration “Falling Through the Net: A Survey of the Have Nots in Rural and Urban America” (1995) National Telecommunications Information Administration “Falling Through the Net: Toward Digital Inclusion” (2000) National Telecommunications Information Administration “A Nation Online: Entering the Broadband Age” (2004)
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7	T 10/9	access and divides, part 2: dis/abilities, usability	REQUIRED “Disability Statistics and Facts” W3C, “Scenarios of People with Disabilities Using the Web” WebAIM, “Introduction to Web Accessibility” U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Research-Based Web Design and Usability Guidelines, Chapter 3: "Accessibility" RECOMMENDED John Slatin, “The Art of ALT: Toward a More Accessible Web” Donald E. Zimmerman, Michel Lynn Muraski, and Michael D. Slater, ”Taking Usability Testing to the Field” Christi-Anne Postava-Davignon, Candice Kamachi, Gregory Kushmerek, et al., “Incorporating Usability Testing into the Documentation Process”

7	Th 10/11	Internet economies, part 1: dot com and dot bomb	REQUIRED Philip Elmer-DeWitt, John Heilemann, and David S. Jackson, “The Great Web Wipeout” Troy Wolverton, “Pets.com Latest High-profile Dot-com Disaster” Joseph D’Hippolito, “Dot Bomb” Museum of E-Failure RECOMMENDED Peter Fingar, Harsha Kumar, and Tarun Sharma, "21st Century Markets: From Places to Spaces" Marcia J. Bates, "After the Dot–bomb: Getting Web Information Retrieval Right This Time"
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8	T 10/16	internet economies, part 2: virtual economies	REQUIRED Clive Thompson, "EverQuest: 77th Richest Country" David Barboza, "Boring Game? Hire a Player" David Barboza, “Ogre to Slay? Outsource It to Chinese” James Lee, "From Sweatshops to Stateside Corporations, Some People are Profiting Off of MMO Gold" RECOMMENDED Edward Castronova, "On Virtual Economies"

8	Th 10/18	dynamics of digital ownership, part 1: intro to intellectual property	REQUIRED “Crash Course in Copyright” Keith Aoki, James Boyle, and Jennifer Jenkins, "Bound by Law? Tales from the Public Domain" RECOMMENDED Karla Saari Kitalong, "A Web of Symbolic Violence" Tharon Howard, "Who 'Owns' Electronic Texts?" Lawrence Lessig, "The Internet Under Siege" World Intellectual Property Organization, "COPYRIGHT"
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9	T 10/23	dynamics of digital ownership, part 2: remix culture	REQUIRED Bernard Schütze, "Samples from the Heap: Notes on Recycling the Detritus of a Remixed Culture" Lawrence Lessig, "Who Owns Culture?" William Gibson, “God’s Little Toys: Confessions of a Cut and Paste Artist” MSMDX (Media Streams Metadata Exchange), "Overview" RECOMMENDED Anne-Marie Boisvert, “On Bricolage: Assembling Culture with Whatever Comes to Hand” Dmitri Siegel, "Designing Our Own Graves" Lev Manovich, “Who is the Author? Sampling / Remixing / Open Source” Dànielle Nicole DeVoss and Jim Porter, “Why Napster Matters to Writing: Filesharing as a New Ethic of Digital Delivery” William McGeveran and William W. Fisher, “Digital Learning Challenge: Obstacles to Educational Uses of Copyrighted Material in the Digital Age” (optional)

9	Th 10/25	digital culture jamming	REQUIRED John Perry Barlow, “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace” David Scheck, Andrew L. Shapiro, and Steven Johnson, “Technorealism. Get Real! A Manifesto from a New Generation of Cultural Critics” Negativland, “Changing Copyright” Negativland, "Negativland's Tenets of Free Appropriation" metac0m, “What is Hacktivism? 2.0” John Whalen, “The Mayhem is the Message” Tracey Logan, “File-sharing to Bypass Censorship” RECOMMENDED Brian Still, “Hacking for a Cause” Sandor Vegh, "Hacktivists or Cyberterrorists? The Changing Media Discourse on Hacking"
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10	T 10/30	digital identities, part 1: general	REQUIRED Ju Gosling, “My Not-so-secret Life as a Cyborg” Karla Ptacek and Helen Varley Jamieson, “Writing 4 Cyberformance” Lisa Nakamura, Introduction to Cybertypes: Race, Ethnicity, and Identity on the Internet RECOMMENDED Angus Leech and Sylvie Parent, "The Stage is Everywhere: A Multimedia Musing about Distributed Online Performance" Lisa Nakamura, “Cybertyping and the Work of Race in the Age of Digital Reproduction” Barclay Barrios, “Of Flags: Online Queer Identities, Writing Classrooms, and Action Horizons”

10	Th 11/1	digital identities, part 2: gender	REQUIRED Ellie Gibson, "Lady Gamers Get Voice Changer" GDC Q&A: "Women's Advocate, Industry Hero, Sheri Graner Ray" Richard Cobbett, "Writing A ‘Girls In Games’ Article" "Graphics, Visualization, and Usability Center General Survey Results Graphs" "Gender Gap Alive and Well Online" Laura L. Sullivan, " Cyberbabes: (Self-) Representation of Women and the Virtual Male Gaze" RECOMMENDED Kristine Blair and Pamela Takayoshi, "Introduction: Mapping the Terrain of Feminist Cyberscapes" (electronic reserve) Pamela Takayoshi, "Complicated Women: Examining Methodologies for Understanding the Uses of Technology" Linda Leung, ”Where Am I and Who Are ‘We’?: Self-representation and the Intersection of Gender and Ethnicity on the Web” Colleen Reilly, “Sexualities and Technologies: How Vibrators Help to Explain Computers”
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11	T 11/6	digital identities, part 3: online communities	REQUIRED John Perry Barlow, "Is There a There in Cyberspace?" Julian Dibbell, “A Rape in Cyberspace” netgrrrl and chicoboy26, " What Am I Bid?: Reading, Writing and Ratings at eBay.com" RECOMMENDED Constance Steinkuehler and Dimitri Williams, “Where Everybody Knows Your (Screen) Name: Online Games as "Third Places" Kacper Poblocki, “The Napster Network Community” Henry Jenkins, "National Politics within Virtual Game Worlds: The Case of China"

11	T 11/8	digital visual rhetorics: general	REQUIRED "Visual Rhetoric and Strategies of Persuasion" Meredith Badger, “Visual Blogs” Jim Andrews, "On Lionel Kearns" RECOMMENDED Carolyn Handa, Introduction to Visual Rhetoric in a Digital World Mary E. Hocks, "Understanding Visual Rhetoric in Digital Writing Environments" Craig Stroupe, “Visualizing English: Recognizing the Hybrid Literacy of Visual and Verbal Authorship on the Web” Anne Wysocki, “The Multiple Media of Texts: How Onscreen and Paper Texts Incorporate Words, Images, and Other Media” (course pack)
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12	T 11/13	digital visual rhetorics: interfaces	REQUIRED Don’t Click It Christina Wodtke, "Eat Me, Drink Me, Push Me: In Which the Subtle Arts of the Interface are Examined" RECOMMENDED Wysocki and Jasken, “What Should be an Unforgettable Face" Patricia Sullivan, “Practicing Safe Visual Rhetoric on the World Wide Web" Leah M. Reeves et al., "Guidelines for Multimodal User Interface Design"

12	Th 11/15	exploring new media, part 1: general	REQUIRED "Opening the Space" Daniel Anderson, “Prosumer Approaches to New Media Composition: Consumption and Production in Continuum” RECOMMENDED Anne Frances Wysocki, “Opening New Media to Writing: Openings & Justifications” (course pack) Madeline Sorapure, “Five Principles of New Media: Or, Playing Lev Manovich” Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin, “Introduction: The Double Logic of Remediation” Mark Zeltner, “New Media and the Slow Death of the Written Word” (last item in the index)
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13	T 11/20		Thanksgiving Break

13	Th 11/22		Thanksgiving Break
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14	T 11/27	exploring new media, part 2: creating new media	REQUIRED Web Style Guide, Chapter 8: Multimedia Jakob Nielsen, “Flash: 99% Bad” Flash: 99% Good, “The Future of Flash” RECOMMENDED Cheryl Ball, “Show, Not Tell: The Value of New Media Scholarship” Anne Wysocki, “awaywithwords: On the Possibilities in Unavailable Designs”

14	Th 11/29	cyborg bodies, biotech bodies	REQUIRED Charles Mann, “New and Improved! A User's Guide to Your Genetically Modified Future” Stelarc CyborgMommy Kevin Warwick, “Cyborg Morals, Cyborg Values, Cyborg Ethics” Celebrity Cyborgs Cyborg Name Decoder RECOMMENDED Donna Haraway, “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-feminism in the Late Twentieth Century” (course pack) Michelle Sidler, “The Not-so-distant Future: Composition Studies in the Culture of Biotechnology” Bruce Grenville, “The Uncanny: Experiments in Cyborg Culture”
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15	T 12/4	the futures of digital technologies and digital rhetorics	REQUIRED "The 10 Coolest Technologies You've Never Heard Of" "Visions of the 21st Century" Bill Joy, "Why the Future Doesn't Need Us" Bruce Sterling, “Dumbing Down Smart Objects" Found: Artifacts from the future, from Wired Magazine
	Th 12/6
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16	T 12/11
	Th 12/13
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