Composing Digital Cultures
- Spring 2016
Additional Details:
This course satisfies the “W” university requirement and introduces multi-modal composition by focusing on writing in the digital culture. Working from Vincent Miller’s book, Understanding Digital Cultures, and a selection of critical readings, we will learn to both produce and analyze “writing” in a world with a growing intersection between material and digital spaces. In practice, our writing will give us an opportunity to experiment with different platforms, technologies, modes, and genres that digital spaces provide. For instance, how might we use platforms like Twitter or WIX or Facebook to achieve our rhetorical ends? What happens when these processes are automated? Who is the writer? Our analysis will also allow us to experiment with various approaches to analyzing “writing” within digital culture. For instance, how might we do genre or discourse analysis of a website or a blog or other multi-modal, digital ""writing?"" How might a plugin guide us to less biased web-browsing? What can a million Tweets tell us about Grammar Policing? By the end of the quarter, you will be in a better position to navigate and compose in a society increasingly defined by an interaction between the digital and the analog.