This page will serve as the home base for our class this semester.
I will update this page for each class meeting. Items that appeared on this page from previous meetings can be found via the "<previous home-page items>" link at the bottom of this page.
The menu on the left will give you access to other materials related to the course.
Roll
Syllabus. On the first day, we'll be looking carefully at the syllabus.
Tour this site
For Thursday
Read over the syllabus to see if you have any questions.
Obtain a USB drive (a.k.a., jump drive, thumb drive, key-chain drive), and create a structure of folders which looks like this.
You don't need to buy a new drive if you already have one with at least 100 MG of space on it. You can also use a Zip disk, though these are less durable.
What choices in writing emails reveal peoples' personalities, backgrounds, attitudes, etc.?
Also for Thursday:
Come in ready to talk about 3 movies, TV shows, books, stories, or narrative song lyrics, etc. in which the action is primarily verbal rather than physical.
Tuesday, January 27
Roll
To Get Ready for Today:
Open Dreamweaver and import your site information ("www.ste" file)
Get out your cluster
Open up the file with your revision of the first paragraph of Richardson's Clarissa.
Have your Murray book handy.
For Today You Were To
1. Compose and bring in a cluster of characters, places, events, etc. detailing ideas for your Email Narrative idea.
2. Re-read the first letter from Samuel Richardson's 1748 epistolary novel Clarissa. Be prepared to discuss these questions by making marginal notes:
How does this letter serve to create tension and anticipation, even though no physical action takes place during its writing/reading?
What techniques and devices can we adapt from this eighteenth-century novel to our twenty-first-century task of writing an email narrative?
...to the challenge of writing the opening email(s) of such a project to capture the audience's interest?
3. Try rewriting the first paragraph of the letter in the style of a contemporary email writer--a young woman of your own creation. Bring in your rewrite on your USB drive.
4. Obtain the books for the course and read Janet Murray's Chapter 1, pages 13-64.
Course Assessment
Please complete this brief set of questions, which will be used to measure what we teach in this class. You will answer the same questions at the end of the semester. Your answers here will not affect your grade in any way.
For Thursday
Today, I will give you a copy of the handout Logging into Webx Discussion Board (.doc). Try to follow the directions on your own before Thursday, and then copy your rewrite of Richardson's first paragraph into a message sent to the discussion "clarissa 2009." If you have problems, bring your questions to class.
Try writing a sample email for your Email Narrative Project: perhaps the first the audience will read, perhaps not.
Read Murray's Chapter 2, "Harbingers of the Holodeck," starting on page 27.
Clarissa, Letter 1: Adapting Techniques and Devices
Here again are the questions you were to consider when you read this opening passage to Richardson's Clarissa:
How does this letter serve to create tension and anticipation, even though no physical action takes place during its writing/reading?
What techniques and devices can we adapt from this eighteenth-century novel to our twenty-first-century task of writing an email narrative?
...to the challenge of writing the opening email(s) of such a project to capture the audience's interest?
From Clustering to Framing to Sequencing
For Thursday, you'll try writing a sample email. The goal is try to "hear" your character's voice, to imagine the physical and psychological context in order to, like Richardson, write "to the moment."
One way to conceive the over-all shape of the project is Freytag's pyramid,which envisions the "arc" of a plot in terms of time and tension.
Janet Murray, Chapter 1 (page 13)
Fears?
In Chapter 1, Murray compares the anxiety inspired by today's digital/virtual media to fears generated in the past by then-new media such as movies and television. What are some lines and passages from Murray that suggest what those fears are? Why do New Media seem threatening to some?
Continuities?
On page 24-25, Murray asks, "Will the literature of cyberspace be continuous with the literary traditions of the Beowulf poet, Shakespeare, and Charlotte Bronte...? What are some features of these traditions, according to Murray? What ideals do these traditions represent, what negative values do they oppose?
When we are finished, you'll post this exercise's folder (www/5230/exercises/jello) to the Web, visit the page with your browser, and copy the URL into the Webx discussion "jello URLs" (available the second week of classes).
Try to follow the directions on the handout Logging into Webx Discussion Board (.doc) before today, and then copy your rewrite of Richardson's first paragraph into a message sent to the discussion "clarissa 2009." If you have problems, bring your questions to class.
Try writing a sample email for your Email Narrative Project: perhaps the first the audience will read, perhaps not.
Read Murray's Chapter 2, "Harbingers of the Holodeck," starting on page 27.
Read Janet Murray's Chapter 3 " From Additive to Expressive Form," starting on page 65
Using the Email Form....
Remember that one of the features of email is the ability to embed links, which can refer the reader to texts (or lexias) outside of the email form itself. Look again at the project "Two Minutes" from Jill Walker's Email Narratives page (about half-way down the page).
Rewrites of Richardson (Literary First Person)
Read over the different versions of the first paragraph of the first letter of Clarissa. As you read, think about how each one potentially suggests
a different Anna,
different intentions on Anna's part,
a different relationship with Clarissa,
a different culture that Anaa and Clarissa share
a different reader
a different story to come.
Reply to two of these rewrites. In each of those replies, do a "close reading" of it, describing what you inferred from that revision and what about the way it was written made you infer it.
Janet Murray, Chapter 1 Notes
Fears of new media and and the prospect of continuities between New Media storytelling and literature.
sensation vs. imagination
fragmenting vs. integrating
constructive of meaning vs. destructive of meaning
When we are finished, you'll post this exercise's folder (www/5230/exercises/jello) to the Web, visit the page with your browser, and copy the URL into the Webx discussion "jello URLs" (available the second week of classes).
Choose to save the "inbox" and open it in Dreamweaver to see how its designed.
Open your "Jello Page Design" exercise and try adapting it for a similar "inbox" format.
Plot, Desire, and Duration
1. Online, find a detailed plot summary for a narrative (a movie, for example) that you know well. See for instance this one for Hitchcock's Psycho.
2. In Word, open a file, save it as "plot desire duration" to your "nonwww" folder. Create a two-column table with 10 rows.
3. Label the top of the columns "Event/Situation" and "Desire"
4. Under Event/Situation, type (or copy) in the plot's first event/situation that creates some kind of desire in the audience.
5. Under "Desire," put into words what that desire is: what do "we" want to see happen? What are we looking forward to seeing or knowing?
6. Keep going, tracking the shifting desires, questions, and possible "frames."
7. Save the document, delete the content from the table, and save it again as "PDD email." Now try to do the same thing for your own Email Narrative project. Note that an "event" might be something happening verbally, socially, or personally in the emails, rather than a physical event being described. Try to describe what might be the (increasingly) mingled and complicated desires your audience can feel....
Thursday
We will discuss Janet Murray's Chapter 3 on Thursday. Please review this reading, assigned for today, for then.
Alternatively, if you'd like to use images you've already selected for your own project, you will need two images to work with:
an image that provides an overall scene or background
a different image with an object that you want to include in the scene or against that background
I will let you know when you will be responsible for posting these banners to the Web and sending the URL to the Webx discussion "banner URLs."
Thursday, February 5
For Today You Were To
Review Murray's Chapter 3 for discussion
Bring in notes, pictures, links, and any other materisl related to your Email Narrative Project (due a week from tomorrow)
Roll
For Tuesday
We will have a "Studio Day" on Tuesday to give you time in class to work on your Email Narrative Project, whch will be on Thursday, 12/12 at the beginning of class. Though you will be working individually, this is still a class meeting, and you will be expected to attend and stay the full time. I will go over in detail how you wil be turning in this project.
Please bring your Murray book so we can conclude our discussion of Chapter 3, especialy the Four Principles of DIgital Environments (PEPS).
Plot, Desire, and Duration
Open up the Word file "plot desire duration.doc" from your "nonwww" folder and continue tracking the shifting and evolving desires audience feel in the plot you've chosen.
The question we want to answer is this:
What provides the continuity or unity to a narrative experience if audiences' desires and sense of framing is so frequently changing?
Online, find a detailed plot summary for a narrative (a movie, for example) that you know well. See for instance this one for Hitchcock's Psycho.
In Word, open a file, save it as "plot desire duration" to your "nonwww" folder. Create a two-column table with 10 rows.
Label the top of the columns "Event/Situation" and "Desire"
Under Event/Situation, type (or copy) in the plot's first event/situation that creates some kind of desire in the audience.
Under "Desire," put into words what that desire is: what do "we" want to see happen? What are we looking forward to seeing or knowing?
Keep going, tracking the shifting desires, questions, and possible "frames."
Save the document, delete the content from the table, and save it again as "PDD email." Now try to do the same thing for your own Email Narrative project. Note that an "event" might be something happening verbally, socially, or personally in the emails, rather than a physical event being described. Try to describe what might be the (increasingly) mingled and complicated desires your audience can feel....
Chapter 3: Key Terms
additive forms (e.g. "photoplays")
Four Properties of Digital Environments (PEPS)
Procedural (Elza)
Participatory
Spatial
Encyclopedic
scripting the interactor
Vannevar Bush vs. Ted Nelson
— In what ways are Email Narratives characteristic of digital environments? In what are they not? How could they be made more so?
Alternatively, if you'd like to use images you've already selected for your own project, you will need two images to work with:
an image that provides an overall scene or background
a different image with an object that you want to include in the scene or against that background
I will let you know when you will be responsible for posting these banners to the Web and sending the URL to the Webx discussion "banner URLs."
Tuesday, February 10
For Today You Were To
We will have a "Studio Day" on Tuesday to give you time in class to work on your Email Narrative Project, whch will be on Thursday, 12/12 at the beginning of class. Though you will be working individually, this is still a class meeting, and you will be expected to attend and stay the full time. I will go over in detail how you wil be turning in this project.
Please bring your Murray book so we can conclude our discussion of Chapter 3, especialy the Four Principles of DIgital Environments (PEPS).
Roll
For Thursday
We will not meet as a class on Thursday.
By 2:00 p.m. turn in the printout of your Email Narrative project my mailbox in the Writing Studies department, Humanities 420
For Tuesday, February 17
Read Chapter 4 of Murray, "Immersion," starting on page 97. Bring your Murray book to class.
Chapter 3: Key Terms
additive forms (e.g. "photoplays")
Four Properties of Digital Environments (PEPS)
Procedural (Elza)
Participatory
Spatial
Encyclopedic
scripting the interactor
Vannevar Bush vs. Ted Nelson
— In what ways are Email Narratives characteristic of digital environments? In what are they not? How could they be made more so?
You will have the remainder of today's classtime to work on your Email Narrative Project
Though you are working individually, plan on staying until the end of the period.
Tuesday, February 17
Roll
To Get Ready for Today:
Open Dreamweaver and import your site information (the "www.ste" file we exported previously).
For Today You Were To
Read Chapter 4 of Murray, "Immersion," starting on page 97. Bring your Murray book to class.
Questions?
For Thursday
We will again not meet as a class. Instead, I will ask you to send me the paragraph you produce in Step 4 of the Brainstorming 1 handout using the form below. I will respond before Tuesday 2/24, when Brainstorming 2 should be completed.
By Thursday, February 19 at 2:00, please paste the paragraph into the following text box and click "Send."
I will also give you the handout "Brainstorming 2," which should be completed by the beginning of class next Tuesday.
Janet Murray, Chapter 4
"aesthetics of the medium" vs. four "essential properties" (PEPS)?
immersion
liminal objects, liminal trance
fourth wall (theater)
immersion vs. arousa
spectacle
Creating Multi-Layered Image in Photoshop
In this exercise, you'll learn to create a multi-layered document in Photoshop. This image will be inserted on a Web page in Dreamweaver, and made into an "image map" with what DW calls "hotspots."
Can you think of other examples of these four "tropes"? Other tropes entirely? Find at least one on the Web to add to this list and send the URL in a message to the Webx discussion "new-media grammar."
In a couple of sentences in that message, name the trope and describe how it does either or both of the following:
combines words, diagrams, and images
structures meaning across multiple lexia
Creating Multi-Layered Image in Photoshop
In this exercise, you'll learn to create a multi-layered document in Photoshop. This image will be inserted on a Web page in Dreamweaver, and made into an "image map" with what DW calls "hotspots."
I will give you a copy of the in-class handout. The exercise will continue with...
Making Your Multi-Layered Image an Interactive Page in Dreamweaver
Post the final product to the Web (in the folder www/5250/exercises/multi), visit the page with your Web browser, and paste the URL into the Webx discussion "multi image URLs."
Thursday, February 26
For Today You Were To
Complete the following questionaire about the V/V Project
Roll
For Tuesday
Come in with one lexia of your Visual/Verbal Project completed in Photoshop (not necessarily the main or start page).
Rethinking
Let's consider these sample ideas for the V/V Project.
Remember the essence of this project is to translate a work of Old Media into New Media:
to visualize verbal language
to mingle words and images
to restructure the work using New Media tropes...
...all to achieve a particular effect or make a specific point.
Some Samples
Let's consider how we might sharpen and push the following ideas to make them more completely accomplish all four of these goals:
It may help to imagine a particular song, show, movie, or book to suggest some specifics.
Look at the New-Media tropes page we talked about (and added to) last time for ideas to help solve some of these potential problems:
Original: a song.
Translation: a slide show illustrating the lyrics like a music video.
Potential Problems
Goal 1: Beyond simply typing the lyrics on each screen, how is the visual look of the words going to be important to the effect? Goal 2: Will the words appear just as captions at the bottom of each screen? Can they be integrated and coordinated into the images? Goal 3: a music video without the music or the video? Goal 4: if this translation can never be as musical as the original, how can it be better or at least different in its effect?
Original: a movie
Translation: a homepage showing all the characters and where you can click to a "loop" for each character.
Potential Problems:
Goal 1: Assuming that these loops include both words and images, how are the words visualized? What visual styles (font, size, placement, color, texture) are needed? What are the intended effects (Goal 4).
Goal 2:
Goal 3:
Goal 4: What does a survey of each of the characters (each in isolation) tell us about the movie?
Original: a television show
Translation: a homepage showing the setting of a key scene and where you can click on various objects and people to read a commentary on that object or person's place in the series.
Potential Problems:
Goal 1:
Goal 2:At least as described, it appears the images and words aren't really working together on the same screen. The main screen is visual, the commentaries are verbal.
Goal 3:
Goal 4:
Making Your Multi-Layered Image an Interactive Page in Dreamweaver (continued)
Post the final product to the Web (in the folder www/5250/exercises/multi), visit the page with your Web browser, and paste the URL into the Webx discussion "multi image URLs."
Selecting With Masks
For this exercise, you'll need to visit the Techniques Site page "Selecting with Masks" and download two images.
Visit the image with your Web browser, copy the URL, and paste it into a message to the Webx discussion, "selecting with masks URLs.
Child Windows
If we have time, we will begin this exercise. See the example on the Techniques site.
You will post the URL to this exercise in message to the Webx discussion, "child windows."
Tuesday, March 3
For Today You Were To
Come in with one lexia of your Visual/Verbal Project completed in Photoshop (not necessarily the main or start page).
Roll
Email Narrative
Help me remember to return your Email Narratives at the end of class today.
For Thursday
We will be having a Studio Day in class on Thursday to give you an opportunity to consult with others and ask questions while you work on your Visual/Verbal Project. The project will be due on Monday, March 9 by noon (posted to the Web and the URL sent to a message to the Webx discussion, "visual verbal URLs."
Selecting With Masks
For this exercise, you'll need to visit the Techniques Site page "Selecting with Masks" and download two images.
Visit the image with your Web browser, copy the URL, and paste it into a message to the Webx discussion, "selecting with masks URLs.
Child Windows
If we have time, we will begin this exercise. See the example on the Techniques site.
You will post the URL to this exercise in message to the Webx discussion, "child windows."
Color Swatch
This exercise provides you with a tool for defining a limited color palette for visual projects like the Visual/Verbal Project.
Notice the power of using such a limited color palette in Seven.
I will give you a copy of the in-class handout.
For some images to use as color models, try using an image from your current Visual/Verbal Project materials, or dowload an image (right-click, choose "Save Image As..." from art-museum sites such as the MIA or the Met.
Let's consider these sample ideas for the V/V Project.
Remember the essence of this project is to translate a work of Old Media into New Media:
to visualize verbal language
to mingle words and images
to restructure the work using New Media tropes...
...all to achieve a particular effect or make a specific point.
Some Samples
Let's consider how we might sharpen and push the following ideas to make them more completely accomplish all four of these goals:
It may help to imagine a particular song, show, movie, or book to suggest some specifics.
Look at the New-Media tropes page we talked about (and added to) last time for ideas to help solve some of these potential problems:
Original: a song.
Translation: a slide show illustrating the lyrics like a music video.
Potential Problems
Goal 1: Beyond simply typing the lyrics on each screen, how is the visual look of the words going to be important to the effect? Goal 2: Will the words appear just as captions at the bottom of each screen? Can they be integrated and coordinated into the images? Goal 3: a music video without the music or the video? Goal 4: if this translation can never be as musical as the original, how can it be better or at least different in its effect?
Original: a movie
Translation: a homepage showing all the characters and where you can click to a "loop" for each character.
Potential Problems:
Goal 1: Assuming that these loops include both words and images, how are the words visualized? What visual styles (font, size, placement, color, texture) are needed? What are the intended effects (Goal 4).
Goal 2:
Goal 3:
Goal 4: What does a survey of each of the characters (each in isolation) tell us about the movie?
Original: a television show
Translation: a homepage showing the setting of a key scene and where you can click on various objects and people to read a commentary on that object or person's place in the series.
Potential Problems:
Goal 1:
Goal 2:At least as described, it appears the images and words aren't really working together on the same screen. The main screen is visual, the commentaries are verbal.
Goal 3:
Goal 4:
Thursday, March 5
For Today You Were To
We will be having a Studio Day in class on Thursday to give you an opportunity to consult with others and ask questions while you work on your Visual/Verbal Project.
Roll
Help me Remember... to return your Email Narratives at the end of class today.
Visual/Verbal Project Due by Monday, March 9 at noon
To turn in the project:
post the entire project to the Web (at "www/5250/visualverbal"),
visit the site with your Web browser,
copy the URL of the home page,
paste the URL in message to the Webx discussion "visualverbal URLs."
For Tuesday, March 10
Read the assignment page for the next project, Parody, and come in with three ideas of possible genres or texts to parody.
Studio Day
Though we will be working individually today, this is still a class meeting and you should remain in class being productive until 3:15.
Tuesday, March 10
For Today You Were To
Read the assignment page for the next project, Parody, and come in with three ideas of possible genres or texts to parody.
Roll
For Thursday
1. Commentary
Write a commentary for your Visual/Verbal Project.
In the commentary,
talk about the specific ways your project fulfills the assignment's goals and criteria.
Identify some of the visual/verbal tropes that you employed, and the meanings and effects you tried to achieve with them. Since this is an experimental assignment, also...
reflect on what this project made you realize about mingling visual/verbal elements, about translating old-media forms to new, and about what you would do differently in a revision.
Print your commentary and be ready to turn it in at the beginning of class.
2. Workshop
We will begin an in-class workshop of the Visual/Verbal Projects, taking them one at a time to discuss. I will expect each of you to have constructive and insightful things to say.
Preparing for Workshop: Before class, please do the following:
Review the workshopping page for ideas about what you might discuss in your comments.
Type written comments and suggestions for each project in a word-processing document saved on your disk.
Also, Printout the comments to bring to class for your use during the workshop.
By the midnight on workshop day,
Copy and paste all the written comments you've made for everyone today into the form "Workshop Comments for Today" and click "Send." Be sure to label each set of comments with the project number and name of the project's author.
Use the e-mail function in Webx to send each author your comments on his or her project.
genre: a type of writing or communication, distinguished by its characteristic features, styles, audience, and use (collectively known as conventions). Examples: house renovation blogs, Amazon music page.
conventions: the features and styles that compose a genre.
parody: an imitation of a serious work for satirical or comic purposes
target: in a satire or parody, the particular social or cultural phenomenon being revealed or criticized, especially pretenses, subtexts, or concealed agendas.
façade: the literary effect of writing/designing in the "voice" of a character to make that character reveal more to the reader than he/she realizes. On a Web site, the facade is often created through "consistent inconsistencies."
pretense, subtext, concealed agenda: in a satire or parody, the gap between the character as publicly presented and the who or what character actually is.
(sub)culture: sets of social practices that constitute shared ways of seeing, acting, and being.
satirical intention: the ridicule of a social phenomenon, practice, or type, ideally to criticize and reform some representative vice or weakness for the general benefit of human society.
literary intention: the aesthetic presentation of character(s) and situation(s) to tell or suggest a story.
story: a set of cause-and-effect conditions presented to move a reader/viewer emotionally and intellectually.
"not men but manners": The eighteenth-century satirical novelist Henry Fielding said, "I describe not men, but manners; not an individual, but a species."
Now, go to the Webx discussion "parody analysis" and follow the same process using another example (from the samples on the assignment page, or of your own choosing). Speak to as many of the critical terms above as you can.
We will discuss your choices when you are done.
Downloading and Editing an Existing Page
Tracing Images in Dreamweaver
Thursday, March 12
For Today You Were To
1. Commentary
Write a commentary for your Visual/Verbal Project.
In the commentary,
talk about the specific ways your project fulfills the assignment's goals and criteria.
Identify some of the visual/verbal tropes that you employed, and the meanings and effects you tried to achieve with them. Since this is an experimental assignment, also...
reflect on what this project made you realize about mingling visual/verbal elements, about translating old-media forms to new, and about what you would do differently in a revision.
Print your commentary and be ready to turn it in at the beginning of class.
2. Workshop
Be ready to begin an in-class workshop of the Visual/Verbal Projects. We will take the first four projects in the list below one at a time. I will expect each of you to have constructive and insightful things to say.
Roll
For Tuesday, March 24 (After Spring Break)
Prepare for our workshop of the remaining Visual/Verbal Projects:
Review the workshopping page for ideas about what you might discuss in your comments.
Type written comments and suggestions for each project in a word-processing document saved on your disk.
Also, Printout the comments to bring to class for your use during the workshop.
By the midnight after the workshop,
Copy and paste all the written comments you've made for everyone today into the form "Workshop Comments for Today" and click "Send." Be sure to label each set of comments with the project number and name of the project's author.
Use the e-mail function in Webx to send each author your comments on his or her project.
Type written comments and suggestions for each project in a word-processing document saved on your disk.
Also, Printout the comments to bring to class for your use during the workshop.
By the midnight after the workshop,
Copy and paste all the written comments you've made for everyone today into the form "Workshop Comments for Today" and click "Send." Be sure to label each set of comments with the project number and name of the project's author.
Use the e-mail function in Webx to send each author your comments on his or her project.
Roll
Questions?
No Class Meeting Thursday
For Tuesday, March 31 Come in with a written plan (in some digital form on your USB) for the Parody Project. A plan would include decisions and details about the following:
the genre of Web site or New Media form you're parodying
specific examples of what your parodying
a clear idea of the behaviors, attitudes, perceptions, beliefs, pretenses you're satirizing (your target: "not men but manners")
the "facade" you'll create with your narrator/implied author: that is, how this fictional figure behind the text is different from you.
For Today You Were To
Come in with a written plan (in some digital form on your USB) for the Parody Project. A plan would include decisions and details about the following:
the genre of Web site or New Media form you're parodying
specific examples of what your parodying
a clear idea of the behaviors, attitudes, perceptions, beliefs, pretenses you're satirizing (your target: "not men but manners")
the "facade" you'll create with your narrator/implied author: that is, how this fictional figure behind the text is different from you.
Roll
Questions?
Help Me Remember... to return your Visual/Verbal Projects to you at the end of class today
For Thursday Bring your Dreamweaver book and all materials you have gathered for your Parody/Facade Project.
Send Me Your Plan
Defining Some Terms:
Parody vs. Satire vs. Hacking
Selected Reponses to Previous Parody/Facade Projects Since I don't always have legal rights to show you previous projects, however, I will give you a handout of some of the responses these projects have received.
Let's try to identify some of the issues previous writers/designers have had with this assignment, and the ways they've dealt with them (or not).
What principles can you apply to your own project as you get it started?
1. Downloading Pages to Edit see for example <Mike Industries>
2.Tracing Images in Dreamweaver
Thursday, April 2
For Today You Were To
Bring your Dreamweaver book and all materials you have gathered for your Parody/Facade Project.
Roll
Questions?
For Tuesday 1. Come in with an example of an online parody or satire. Be ready to share the URL and to discuss the parody/satire using the terms we've been using in class:
parody
satire
hacking
facade
target
sympathetic satire
pretext, subtext, concealed agendas
"not men but manners"
objective correlative
2. Bring in your Dreamweaver book and all materials related to your Parody/Facade Project.
Objective Correlative How do you suggest what is inside your narrator's mind and heart without explaining it?
The venerable term "objective correlative" from literary criticism can help us flesh out our parodies to make them genuinely tell stories.
Using the Webx discussion "objective correlatives," we will share some examples of objective correlatives from movies, television, or plays.
Then we'll turn to our Parody/Facade projects. Where might we need an objective correlative to reveal the inner workings of our characters/narrators.
Dreamweaver Skills Since each of you is working on a different kind of project, I want us to get accustomed to using the Dreamweaver books for solving problems of design.
Find a skill/tool in the DW book that may be useful in preparing your Parody/Facade Projects and try it out. Post the result to the Web in a folder "www/4250/exercises/skills1".
Then go to the Webx discussion "dreamweaver skills 1" and post a message with the name of the skill/technique, the page number, a little commentary and/or advice about using the skill, and a link to your sample.
Tuesday, April 7
For Today You Were To 1. Come in with an example of an online parody or satire. Be ready to share the URL and to discuss the parody/satire using the terms we've been using in class:
parody
satire vs. hacking
facade
target
sympathetic satire
pretext, subtext, concealed agendas
"not men but manners"
objective correlative
2. Bring in your Dreamweaver book and all materials related to your Parody/Facade Project.
Roll
Questions?
For Thursday Bring in all materials related to your Parody/Facade Project for the Studio Day.
Coming Up
Your Parody/Facade Projects will be due Monday, 4/13 by noon.
On Tuesday, 4/14 you will turn in your commentary on the Parody/Facade Project
Also on Tuesday, 4/14 we will begin a workshop of the Parody/Facade Projects, which will continue on Thursday 4/16. More about this next time.
On Tuesday, 4/21 we will begin our reading assignments for the Essay Project (assignment TBA) and the Final Exam.
Your Parody/Satire Examples Please post a message to the Webx discussion "parody/satire examples" with the URL of the sample you found and an explanation of how the example can be used to illustrate one of the critical terms above.
Thursday, April 9
For Today You Were To
Bring in all materials related to your Parody/Facade Project for the Studio Day.
Roll
Questions?
Parody/Facade Project Due by Monday, April 13 at noon
To turn in the project:
post the entire project to the Web (at "www/5250/parody"),
Also in that message, write a paragraph explaining the context of your parody/satire: the sub-culture or "manners" being satirized, the original text or genre being parodied (links to examples would be helpful), etc.. Do not explain the "text" of your project: that is, the facade, humor, or anything else that we are to grasp from the project itself.
For Tuesday
1. Commentary Write and print out your commentary on the Parody/Facade Project to turn in at the beginning of class.
2. Workshop We will begin an in-class workshop of the Visual/Verbal Projects, taking them one at a time to discuss. I will expect each of you to have constructive and insightful things to say.
Preparing for Workshop: Before class, please do the following:
Review the workshopping page for ideas about what you might discuss in your comments.
Type written comments and suggestions for each project in a word-processing document saved on your disk.
Also, printout the comments to bring to class for your use during the workshop.
By the midnight on workshop day,
Copy and paste all the written comments you've made for everyone today into the form "Workshop Comments for Today" and click "Send." Be sure to label each set of comments with the project number and name of the project's author.
Use the e-mail function in Webx to send each author your comments on his or her project.
On Thursday, 4/16 we'll complete the workshopping of the Parody/Facade Projects.
On Tuesday, 4/21 we will begin our reading assignments for the Essay Project (assignment TBA) and the Final Exam.
Studio Day Though you are working individually today, please plan on staying and working productively until 3:15.
Tuesday, April 14
For Today You Were To 1. Commentary Write and print out your commentary on the Parody/Facade Project to turn in at the beginning of class.
2. Workshop We will begin an in-class workshop of the Visual/Verbal Projects, taking them one at a time to discuss. I will expect each of you to have constructive and insightful things to say.
Preparing for Workshop: Before class, please do the following:
Review the workshopping page for ideas about what you might discuss in your comments.
Type written comments and suggestions for each project in a word-processing document saved on your disk.
Also, printout the comments to bring to class for your use during the workshop.
By the midnight on workshop day,
Copy and paste all the written comments you've made for everyone today into the form "Workshop Comments for Today" and click "Send." Be sure to label each set of comments with the project number and name of the project's author.
Use the e-mail function in Webx to send each author your comments on his or her project.
For Thursday Please read Janet Murray's Chapters 7 (page 185) and 10 (273).
As you read, keep in mind that this is the first of the readings that will culminate in the essay and the final exam. We will discuss the essay assignment on Tuesday. Today, we'll look at the guidelines for the final exam.
Copy and paste all the written comments you've made for everyone today into the form "Workshop Comments for Today" and click "Send." Be sure to label each set of comments with the project number and name of the project's author.
Use the e-mail function in Webx to send each author your comments on his or her project.
Tuesday, April 21
For Today You Were To Please read Janet Murray's Chapters 7 (page 185) and 10 (273).
As you read, keep in mind that this is the first of the readings that will culminate in the essay and the final exam. We will discuss the essay assignment on Tuesday. Today, we'll look at the guidelines for the final exam.
Roll
Questions?
For Thursday Please read Read Alan Liu's Introduction and Epilogue from his book The Laws of Cool: Knowledge Work and the Culture of Information.
I will ask that you print out these and the other readings from the library's electronic reserve and to bring these printouts to class.
For Today You Were To Please read Read Alan Liu's Introduction and Epilogue from his book The Laws of Cool: Knowledge Work and the Culture of Information.
I will ask that you print out these and the other readings from the library's electronic reserve and to bring these printouts to class.
As you read, keep in mind that this is the first of the readings that will culminate in the essay and the final exam. We will discuss the essay assignment on Tuesday. Today, we'll look at the guidelines for the final exam.
Roll
Questions?
For Tuesday Print out and read these two chapters from Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin's Remediation: Understanding New Media: Introduction and Chapter 1.
I will ask that you print out these and the other readings from the library's electronic reserve and to bring these printouts to class.
Alan Liu (Introduction and Epilogue) Opening Question Murray's book argues that New Media were in their infancy and that they would eventually grow up to be capable of "confront[ing] the unanswerable questions of human existence" just as literature has (280).
How is Liu 's book different in its approach to the future of "the literary" in a world dominated by New Media?
Is he more pessimistic?
Why?
How does he imagine "the future literary" working?
What are the obstacles to such as possibility?
Choose a line or passage from our readings and, in a message to the Webx discussion alan liu, type in the quotation and page number and write your own commentary on what he means and how the passage enables you to answer one or more of the questions above.
Tuesday, April 28
For Today You Were To Print out and read these two chapters from Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin's Remediation: Understanding New Media: Introduction and Chapter 1.
For Thursday 1. Bring in your Murray book and all the print outs of readings from this semester. We will talk about the exam on Thursday using this index of key terms and ideas from the semester.