English 8060: Seminar in Criticism and Theory

admin August 11th, 2009


English 8060: Seminar in Criticism and Theory
New Media Theory
M 7-9pm
Dr. Jeff Rice
ricejr at missouri dot edu

This seminar begins with Marshall McLuhan’s claim that “the age of writing has passed; we need a new metaphor.” “Writing,” a metaphor for a specific type of expression, no longer explains the types of expression we experience daily: Websites, digital music, wikis, TV, film, YouTube, and so on. In the university, where writing underlines all areas of study, this point deserves further attention. How has our ability to express ourselves, communicate, produce meaning been affected by new media? What theories and practices must we invent in order to address the changes we experience? Can we still be scholars without understanding new media?

In the age of new media, theoretical frameworks shift as we discover new metaphors that describe the ways we produce meaning in Humanities based scholarship. This seminar will focus on theorists who either implicitly or explicitly address a specific theoretical shift attributed to new media. In particular, we will read writers whose own writing is shaped by questions relevant to new media. Thus, some of our texts will be performative, and some will challenge the organizational and rhetorical models print culture supports. The purpose of course readings will not to be to create an exhaustive reading list or to offer a complete overview of new media theory. Instead, we will treat course readings as part of a larger heuristic that will allow us not only to examine but produce a (or several) new media theory for our own research needs. Such work will address concerns relevant to rhetorical, literary, film, and cultural studies.

Texts
Understanding Media – Marshall McLuhan
Heuretics, or the Logic of Invention – Gregory Ulmer
Writings – Vilem Flusser
Wetwares – Richard Doyle
Camera Lucida – Roland Barthes
The Time of the Tribes – Michael Maffessoli
Convergence Culture – Henry Jenkins
The Art of the Motor – Paul Virilio
The Postmodern Condition – Jean François Lyotard

Requirements:
Blog (100 pts). Everyone needs to make an account at wordpress.com and create a new blog for this course. Your blog will be used to post weekly notes. Notes must be posted by the Friday before class so that everyone has access to each other’s notes. Notes should be expository (what the reading says), can (and maybe should) focus on main points rather than the whole text, and can make connections to other readings and texts. Notes are not critiques of the books.

Responses (300 points). You will be required to turn in three responses. The responses bring together at least three readings into one space by identifying connections, patterns, associations you make among the readings.

Presentations (300 points total). You will do two presentations. One presentation will be on a reading and one presentation will be on a concept, idea, work, you have created.

a. Reading presentation (100 points) You are responsible for leading class discussion for that day. Your task is not to summarize the text nor to critique it, but rather to teach it. It may be useful to focus on one idea, to draw out a connection between the text and some other idea/reading/concept, to explore the pedagogical implications, to demonstrate the text as a new media object or as a performance, or some other gesture that sparks discussion and thinking.
The worst way to begin a reading presentation is to ask: So, what did you all think of the book?

b. Final presentation (200 points) This presentation takes the place of the traditional seminar paper. The experiment asks you to work from the response papers you have prepared this semester in order to present a new media object that demonstrates some type of critical point. Wherever your response papers have led you, you should have a concept in mind.
Your object may be a Flickr demonstration, a slideshow, a wiki text, a web text, a video, or any medium classified as “new media.”
The value here is not in your new media skills (i.e., whether or not you are a skilled video filmmaker) but rather in your ability to navigate the complex ideas we’ve encountered as a new media text. In other words: you make the theories work for you.

Schedule
August 24 First day

August 31 McLuhan

September 7 Labor Day

September 14 Lyotard (Scott)

September 21  Flusser (Shelli)

September 28 No class

October 5 Ulmer (Patricia)

On blogs: Project planning/ What will we make

October 12 Maffesoli (Susan)

October 19 Virilio (Stephanie)

October 26 Jenkins (Lars)

November 2 Barthes (Khem)

November 9 Doyle (Eric)

November 16 Presentations on projects

November 23 Thanksgiving

November 30 Presentations on projects

December 7 Wrap up

This page has the following sub pages.

  • Comments(0)

Comments are closed.