Syllabus

 

• View full syl­labus doc­u­ment (PDF) here:

  Sec­tion 028   |   Sec­tion 034

 

WRTG 3020 New Media & Civic Engagement

Fall 2014

Instruc­tor: Gary Hink, Ph.D

Pro­gram for Writ­ing & Rhetoric | Uni­ver­sity of Colorado

 

Overview

“Most young Amer­i­cans pos­sess lit­tle of the knowl­edge that makes for an informed cit­i­zen, and too few of them mas­ter the skills needed to nego­ti­ate an information-heavy, communication-based soci­ety and econ­omy. Fur­ther­more, they avoid the resources and media that might enlighten them and boost their tal­ents” (16)—so asserts Mark Bauer­lein in The Dumb­est Gen­er­a­tion: How the Dig­i­tal Age Stu­pe­fies Young Amer­i­cans and Jeop­ar­dizes Our Future (2009). This posi­tion presents our point of Con­trast: that our lack of “crit­i­cal think­ing” and delib­er­a­tive rea­son pre­clude demo­c­ra­tic cit­i­zen­ship; these reac­tions and con­ser­v­a­tive techno­pho­bia are artic­u­lated increas­ingly, on-going in recent pub­li­ca­tions and atti­tudes (for instance, about “mil­lenials”).
In con­trast, we will explore the poten­tial of the Net­work as par­tic­i­pa­tory com­mu­nity, guided by the The­ory of Gre­gory L. Ulmer. Elec­tronic Mon­u­ments (2005) pro­vides the method and gen­eral project, work­ing in “electracy”—the emer­gent appa­ra­tus beyond literacy—to engage “the Inter­net as liv­ing mon­u­ment” (xv) and the “group sub­ject” of electronically-mediated net­works: “a pri­mary site of self-knowledge both indi­vid­ual and col­lec­tive, and hence a site sup­port­ing a new pol­i­tics and ethics, as well as a new dimen­sion of edu­ca­tion” (xxi). Using the cul­tural logic of con­tem­po­rary media forms—particularly dig­i­tal cul­ture, memes, social platforms—we will develop the poten­tial for new aca­d­e­mic work as civic engage­ment through a series of inno­v­a­tive projects, which cul­ti­vate the unique skills and intu­ition of respon­si­ble “net­work par­tic­i­pants.” Com­bin­ing crit­i­cal think­ing, reflex­ive insights, and cre­ative expres­sion: the “Tar­get” of our exper­i­ment will com­pose medi­ated expres­sions of “col­lec­tive self-knowledge” (140) and par­tic­i­pa­tory experience.

 

Course Objec­tives

This course pro­ceeds from the fun­da­men­tal under­stand­ing that we are in the midst of an appa­ra­tus shift beyond lit­er­acy toward an emerg­ing par­a­digm of “elec­tracy.” Ulmer explains that ‘Elec­tracy “is to dig­i­tal media what lit­er­acy is to alpha­betic writ­ing: an appa­ra­tus, or social machine, partly tech­no­log­i­cal, partly insti­tu­tional” (Net­worked 2009). The effects of this shift impact not only com­mu­ni­ca­tion and iden­tity for­ma­tion, but cul­tural forms and social expe­ri­ence as well: one goal of this course is to employ the tech­no­log­i­cal tran­si­tions and new logic famil­iar to us in net­work soci­ety toward pro­duc­tive ends. A sec­ond part to this premise is that the prior “tele­vi­sion age” involved audi­ences’ pas­sively receiv­ing the dom­i­nant cul­ture as “con­sumers”; in con­trast, the “net­work age” sit­u­ates us in a par­tic­i­pa­tory role regard­ing infor­ma­tion, media, and dis­course. We will thus both study and exploit the rhetor­i­cal impli­ca­tions of this on-going shift for new forms of “civic” dis­course. The key under­stand­ing of the tran­si­tion to the new appa­ra­tus or tech­no­log­i­cal par­a­digm will be achieved by employ­ing the modes of the preva­lent dis­course emerg­ing today—social net­works, memes, games, viral circulation—examining these rhetor­i­cal phe­nom­ena and apply­ing strate­gies in our inno­v­a­tive com­po­si­tions, cul­mi­nat­ing with a “MemeMo­r­ial.” While this course requires ana­lyt­i­cal skills for writ­ing, it also draws upon (and enhances) stu­dents’ abil­i­ties with nar­ra­tive, images, and expres­sive media in the mode of aes­thetic author­ing, using freely-available soft­ware and Web platforms.

There are three lev­els at which we will exam­ine these issues, per­spec­tives and ques­tions to keep in mind dur­ing our study:

1. Tech­nol­ogy, media, and net­work devel­op­ments: impact­ing pos­si­bil­i­ties and forms of social rhetoric.
2. Shifts toward new and active roles, specif­i­cally in “civic dis­course” and par­tic­i­pa­tory cul­ture.
3. Lessons of dig­i­tal rhetoric to be applied for net­work com­mu­ni­ca­tion & cir­cu­la­tion about con­tem­po­rary social issues.

 
 

Required Texts:

Gre­gory L. Ulmer, Elec­tronic Mon­u­ments (Min­nesota UP, 2005)
Addi­tional arti­cles hosted online (Web and D2L)—see sched­ule and posts (front page) for links

 
 

Con­trast

» Mark Bauer­lein (2009): “Most young Amer­i­cans pos­sess lit­tle of the knowl­edge that makes for an informed cit­i­zen, and too few of them mas­ter the skills needed to nego­ti­ate an information-heavy, communication-based soci­ety and econ­omy. Fur­ther­more, they avoid the resources and media that might enlighten them and boost their tal­ents. An anti-intellectual out­look pre­vails in their leisure lives, squash­ing the lessons of school, and instead of pro­duc­ing a knowl­edge­able and queru­lous young mind, the youth cul­ture of Amer­i­can soci­ety yields an ado­les­cent con­sumer enmeshed in juve­nile mat­ters and secluded from adult real­i­ties.” “The insu­lated mind­set of indi­vid­u­als who know pre­cious lit­tle his­tory and civics and never read a book or visit a museum is fast becom­ing a com­mon, shame-free con­di­tion.” (p. 16)
—The Dumb­est Gen­er­a­tion: How the Dig­i­tal Age Stu­pe­fies Young Amer­i­cans and Jeop­ar­dizes Our Future