New Media Production

This fall I will be piloting a New Media Production class for our PhD program. This aims to be different from my usual "read a colossal amount of theory" approach to graduate courses; the emphasis will be on that final word, production, and providing graduate students to experiment with and learn html and css coding, podcasting and video editing, and probably photography and photo manipulation. Here's the write-up for our catalogue I submitted this morning:

Course Description

Beyond familiarity with the ethical and epistemological implications of new media, 21st century humanists require intimate working knowledge of new media communicative tools and techniques. These tools and techniques include: html, css, javascript, rss, blogging, podcasting, vblogging, wikis, and Flash. This course provides students with a rhetorically-oriented introduction to using these tools. Additionally, course readings and discussions will address how the "newness" of these tools refigure the ways we conceptualize the relationships between writers, audiences, and media.

While this course is a production lab, I do not expect any students to enter the classroom with any level of technology skill above being able to save an MS Word document. We will learn coding languages from the ground up.

Course Texts (Subject to Change)

• Ulmer, Gregory. Internet Invention
• Holmevik, Jan Rune. Inter/vention: Free Play in the Age of Electracy
• Rice, Jeff. Digital Detroit: Rhetoric and Space in the Age of the Network
• Kalman, Maria. The Pursuit of Happiness

Additionally, we will read a number of contemporary articles. Furthermore, I have a recommended list of HTML and CSS tutorial guides, most notably Karl Stolley’s How to Design and Write Web Pages Today.

Course Requirements (Subject to Change)

1. MyStory Project: Following Ulmer’s Internet Invention and its call for Egents ready to participate in the EmerAgency, we will construct websites that unpack our participation in four different socio-discursive networks (career, school, entertainment, and community)
2. SF Zero Project: Building from Holmevik’s theory of play, we will evaluate the potential of real world MMO hybrids such as SF Zero for post-critical, post-pedagogy. If there is sufficient interest, we will begin development on USF Zero
3. Derive Project: Using both Rice’s Digital Detriot and Kalman’s Pursuit of Happiness as relays, we will invent new forms for research and representation that seek to better integrate our logical, ethical, and pathetic/affective relations to spaces
4. Portfolio Project: We will all construct Professional Web Presences show casing the print and digital works produced as members of USF’s Graduate Program. These portfolios should help students think about how they will market themselves on the job market (or, if MA students, how they will package themselves for PhD programs)