Introduction

Welcome to ENG 480, a course which investigates the theory and practice of working with computers, writing, and other new media. How does the “and” in “computers and writing” function? This course will investigate the ongoing shift from a culture in which writing is the most important form of discourse, to one in which writing is supplemented with the technologies of electronic media, especially networked computing. We will consider this shift by reading relevant theory in media studies and by producing essays, web pages, and other media.

Graduate students enrolled in the course will extend this inquiry to the discipline of “Computers & Writing” through meetings and other discourse which supplement the work of the course outlined here. If you are a graduate student, please refer to the addendum to this syllabus.

The course has two prerequisites: ENG 180 and ENG 280. Unfortunately, if you have not earned credit for both those courses, you may not take this course. Please speak with me immediately if this is the case.

Course objectives

• Learn skills required to produce Web pages and other forms of online communication and writing—or extend existing skills—by completing course assignments in a workshop or studio environment.

• Develop an understanding of grammatology, the history or science of writing, through analysis and discussion of course readings.

• Investigate the interactions of media, culture, and society by considering the course readings, your opinions about computers and writing, and by creating written and electronic works.

• Consider the relationships between different forms of media, and the ways “new” media affect existing forms—for new media of both yesterday and today.

• Analyze predictions about the behavior of media made in the course readings, and make predictions of one’s own, demonstrated through the production of media in different forms.

Required texts

1. Gail Hawisher and Cynthia Selfe, eds. Passions, Pedagogies, and Twenty-First Century Technologies (for graduate students only).
2. Lev Manovich, The Language of New Media.
3. Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man.
4. Walter Ong, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word.
5. Greg Ulmer, Internet Invention: From Literacy to Electracy.

INDEX

INTRODUCTION

ASSIGNMENTS

POLICIES

SCHEDULES

RESOURCES

CONTACT

© Copyright 2003
C Bradley Dilger