Wendy Brown

For Thursday, I would like everybody to read the first two and then the final two short pieces of the Brown book Politics Out of History. For those who are curious, if we had stuck to the syllabus and devoted another week to the Brown I would have also assigned Chapters 4 and 5. But as it is this will give us plenty to talk about. The Chapters for Thursday, then, are "Politics Out of History," "Moralism as Anti-Politics," "Democracy Against Itself," and "Specters and Angels." Enjoy!

Our In-class Test

So, here's the example we created in class.

Wikipedia: Critical Theory

Mabel pointed out to me that the Wikipedia entry for the term Critical Theory covers much of the same ground I rambled on about last week in our Introductory discussion. She's right, it's really pretty good. Check it out if you want a concise refresher or overview of the history, problems, methods of critical theory.

Syllabus

Critical Theory A
Critique, Subjection, Prostheses

Fall 2005

Thursdays, 9.00-11.45, Conference Room
Instructor: Dale Carrico, dalec@berkeley.edu
Office Hours: Before and after class and by appointment.

Sept 1 Introduction
Donna Haraway, “A Manifesto for Cyborgs”
http://www.stanford.edu/dept/HPS/Haraway/CyborgManifesto.html

Sept 8 Diagnostic Essay Due, 2-3pp.
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The German Ideology

Sept 15 Marx and Engels, The German Ideology (continued)

Sept 22 Roland Barthes, Mythologies

Sept 29 Barthes, Mythologies (coninued)

Oct 6 Louis Althusser, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses”

Oct 13 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish
Paper Due, 4-5pp. due

Oct 20 Foucault, Discipline and Punish (continued)

Oct 27 Michel Foucault, History of Sexuality

Nov 3 Foucault, History of Sexuality (continued)

Nov 10 Judith Butler, Undoing Gender

Nov 17 Butler, Undoing Gender (continued)

Nov 24-25 Thanksgiving Holiday

Dec 1 Wendy Brown, Politics Out of History
Take Home Exam Due

Dec 8 Brown, Politics Out of History (continued)

Dec 15 Concluding Remarks
Donna Haraway, “A Manifesto for Cyborgs” (revisited)
Paper Due, 4-5pp.

Four Aims of Argument

I've gotten a couple of questions about the reference in the Mid-Term to the "Four Aims of Argument." This is NOT a reference to the "Four Habits of Argumentative Writing." Here's a hint: One of the four "Aims" is -- Persuasion.

See everybody tomorrow morning in Dwinelle 188. Be on time!

Text of the Midterm Exam

For those few of you who were unable to attend class Thursday, this is the text of the take-home mid-term examination I distributed then. You are to hand it in Tuesday morning when you arrive in class. Remember, we are screening a film Tuesday in Room 188 of Dwinelle Hall. Please arrive on time, because the running time of the film demands we get right underway.

You still have plenty of time to complete the exam. It is adapted from an exam I have administered to students in my Rhetoric 10 course, and they are able to complete it, without notes or other resources at their disposal, in under three hours.

Your Name:
Rhetoric 110
Summer, 2005

Midterm Examination

Part I (50 pts., total)

Section 1: Short Answer (20 pts.)

1. Describe the three rhetorical appeals, ethos, logos, and pathos.
2. Name the four Aims of Argument, as we have discussed them in class.
3. Name the four “Master Tropes”
4. What is the difference between a syllogism and an enthymeme?
5. What distinguishes a hypothetical from a categorical syllogism?
6. What is the inductive leap?
7. What is the difference between a scheme and a trope?
8. According to the Toulmin Schema, what is an argument’s warrant?
9. What is the difference between a paradox and an oxymoron?
10. What is the difference between the fallacies of division and composition?

Section 2: Identifications (10 pts. [incl. 2 free pts.])

Identify the form of the inference (the logical argument) in each of these syllogisms, and say whether they are valid or fallacious.

1. P, then q.
Not p.
So, not q.

2. If a, then b.
B is the case.
Thus, so is a.

3. S, then t.
Not t.
And hence, not s.

4. x, then y.
x
Therefore, y.

5. Circle the antecedent in this proposition:

If you studied for the exam, then I expect you will do quite well on it.

6. Is the following a deductive or inductive argument?

“Self-esteem appears to be at least a necessary condition for happiness. All the happy people I’ve known, whatever their other differences in personality and goals, seem to have basic self-esteem, whereas people who don’t have that trait never seem to be happy.”

7. Which of the following two sentences is a Trope and which a Scheme? Indicate your answer by putting a “T” or “S” in the space in front of the sentence.

“Band-Aids: Your child’s new body-guards.”

“I am stuck on Band-Aids, ‘cause Band-Aids stuck on me.”

8. What type of deductive syllogism is the following argument?

“According to the union contract, either we have to close the plant on labor day, or we have to pay the workers twice the regular pay. But we have too much work to close the plant, so we’ll have to pay the workers double time.”

Section 3: Matching

Matching Fallacies (10 pts. [incl. 1 free pt.])

1. Ad Ignoratiam
2. Ad Populum
3. Ad Misericordiam
4. Ad Baculum
5. Ad Verecundiam
6. Denying the Antecedant
7. Undistributed Middle
8. Petitio Principii
9. Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc

___ Teacher to Student: “And, finally, in reconsidering your position, you might want to remember who gives out the grades in this course.”

___ Parent to Child: “Fine. Go ahead. Quit school. Why should you care if you are breaking a poor parent’s heart?”

___ Why are you so skeptical about the existence of UFOs? Nobody has ever proved they don’t exist!”

___ Time is money, and time heals all wounds. So, it’s no surprise that money heals all wounds.

___ Anarchy would be a fine and beautiful system for society to adopt, if men were angels. Alas, they are not.

___ The Golden Rule is a sound moral principle, since it’s basic to every system of ethics in literally every known culture.

___ Order is indispensable to justice, for justice can only be achieved in the context of a social and legal order.

___ “I must say I’m not surprised Tara slipped on that banana peel and broke her leg, when not five minutes before I watched her step on a crack, walk under a ladder, cross a black cat’s path, and break her compact mirror without giving it a second thought.”

___ You should buy the new Bottle Blond Boyz Album. All the kewl kids are.

Matching Figures (10 pts.)

1. Prosopopeia
2. Litotes
3. Metaphor
4. Auxesis
5. Hyperbole
6. Metonymy
7. Alliteration
8. Assonance
9. Antanaclasis
10. Oxymoron

___ Summer session courses go on for an absolute eternity.

___ O miserable abundance, O beggarly riches! -- John Donne, Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions

___ Last week I saw a woman flayed, and you will hardly believe how much it altered her appearance for the worse. – Jonathan Swift, A Tale of a Tub

___ And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window panes. – T.S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

___ The prosecutor was a missile, zeroing in on his culminating point.

___ “Tho’ we’re apart, you’re a part of me still.” – lyrics of the song, Blueberry Hill

___ …and with firm confidence in justice, freedom, and peace on earth that will raise the hearts and the hopes of mankind for that distant day when no one rattles a saber and no one drags a chain. – Adlai Stevenson, acceptance speech, 1952

___ Progress is not proclamation or palaver. It is not pretense nor play on prejudice. It is not the perturbation of a people passion-wrought nor a promise proposed. – Warren G. Harding nominating William Taft in 1912.

___ It shreds the nerves, it vivisects the psyche – and it may even scare the living daylights out of more than a few playgoers. – Review in TIME, 1966

___ Whales in the wake like capes and Alps Quaked the sick sea and snouted deep. – Dylan Thomas, “Ballad of the Long-Legged Bait”

Part II (50 pts, total)

Section 1: Exercises (15 pts.)

A. Reconstruct the following arguments by identifying their conclusions and their premises. Then identify whether or not the arguments are valid.

1. The TELEBEARS system asks me all sorts of questions when I dial in. And we all know that if a computer were a conscious being it would ask me all sorts of questions. So TELEBEARS must be a conscious being.

2. If the United States completes a missile defense system before the rest of the world does, they wil gain enormous leverage over all other nations in any confrontation. For if the US completes its defensive shield firsdt, they will pose a credible threat of a first strike, and if they pose such a threat they will gain enormous leverage.

B. For each of the following enthymemes: 1. Supply the missing premise or conclusion. 2. Identify whether the missing element is a major premise, a minor premise, or the conclusion.

1. He must be annoyed, because he’s scowling all the time.

2. Mary crossed the picket line, so her lamb must have crossed it too.

3. New Yorkers are well-mannered, and no well-mannered people are uncivilized.

4. True freedom demands responsibility, and that is why most folks dread it.

5. No enthymemes are complete, and so this argument is incomete.

Section 2: Toulmin Schema (15 pts.)

Construct a strategy of support using the Toulmin Schema for the following enthymeme: “”Serpents make vile pets, because they cannot be trusted.” Be sure to identify all the parts of the Toulmin Schema, the claim, the stated reason, and to supply a plausible warrant, qualification, grounds, etc. [By “construct a strategy of support” I mean simply to provide an argument, but one which exhibits all the characteristics the Toulmin Schema identifies for analyzing arguments.]

Section 3: Short Essay (20 pts.)

Write an essay of approximately two pages in length [students who received the handout will probably produce handwritten essays that cover the blank space of the page on which this question appears, plus the back of the sheet, as necessary] analyzing the following passage from Frederixk Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave. Your essay should identify what you take to be the central claim of the passage, and then discuss how Douglass uses figurative language to make his claim and express it more forcefully.

“It was called by the slaves the Great House Farm. Few privileges were esteemed higher, by the slaves of the out-farms, than that of being selected to do errands at the Great House Farm. It was associated in their minds with greatness. A representative could not be prouder of his election to a seat in the American Congress, than a slave on one of the out-farms would be of his election to do errands at the Great House Farm. They regarded it as evidence of great confidence reposed in them by their overseers; and it was on this account, as well as a constant desire to be out of the field from under the driver’s lash, that they esteemed it a high privilege, one worth careful living for… The competitors for this office sought as diligently to please their overseers, as the office-seekers in the political parties seek to pelase and deceive the people. The same traits of character might be seen in Colonial Lloyd’s slaves, as are seen in the slaves of the political parties.”

Reading

I realize everybody is hard at work polishing up their papers for tomorrow -- but do remember to give the pieces by Alex Steffen (rather short) and Paulina Borsook (rather long, but very amusing) a good read to prepare for our discussion in class. Also, we will be moving to a classroom in Dwinelle Hall next Tuesday to screen the film "Desk Set." Be sure to remind me tomorrow to give you good directions how to get there.

Welcome!

People are starting to accept their blogger invites, and as they arrive I'm waking up your sidebar links so that the links connect readers directly with your e-mail accounts. If you indicated to me that you do not want your e-mail released I have not included you in the sidebar, but everybody can post to the blog, whether they are visible in the sidebar or not. If you would prefer that your sidebar link direct people to a different account or a home page or whatever else, please just let me know and I'll alter it. If I have misspelled your name or misremembered your nicknames or anything like that, let me know and I'll alter it.

Experiment with the blog and make it your own. Discuss the course, discuss your papers, discuss the readings, discuss the discussions, discuss your disgust with the weather, with politics, whatever you like.

There are some great technoloculture/technoethics links on the sidebar that I thought might interest folks in the class, as well as general writing resources. Check them out, and always feel welcome to discuss what you encounter in them in the course.

I hope this is a useful separate space for you all -- sorry it took me so long to bring it online! See everybody Tuesday morning. d

Syllabus for Rhet 110, Summer, 2005

Rhetoric 110
Advanced Argumentation and Argumentative Writing:
Varieties of Techno-Ethical Discourse

Summer 2005

24 Wheeler Hall, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, 9.30-12 noon

Course Instructor

Dale Carrico
Mailbox: 7408 Dwinelle
Messages: 642-1415
E-Mail: dalec@berkeley.edu
Office Hours: For an hour after class Tuesdays and Thursdays and by appointment.
Course Description

This course is devoted to the study and practice of advanced argumentative techniques and assumes a basic background in writing and argument. We will examine works of theory and cultural criticism, popular editorials, legal and political policy, as well as literary and media texts. The texts in the class are all broadly organized around the theme of technological development, considered as a space both of imaginative investment and social struggle.

The problems and skills that emerge from our focus should have a wide applicability for research and criticism across the humanities. We will divide our time between three argumentative modes: deliberation, demonstration, and debate. Among the topics and questions we will be grappling with are: How should an argument that seeks to call basic assumptions into question be different in form from one that hopes to arrive at conviction, or to impact conduct, or to reconcile antagonistic viewpoints? How do we properly anticipate and assess the demands of a variety of specific audiences? How do we identify and deploy the argumentative content of figurative language? Just what is this process that is called "close reading" and how precisely does it relate to the Toulmin schema for the analysis of arguments? What kinds of claims properly emerge from the close reading of texts and how are they substantiated? What constitutes a "fact" in philosophical and literary criticism devoted to practices of close reading?

Required Texts (Primarily to be found in our Course Reader)

Laurie Anderson, “The Language of the Future”
Hannah Arendt, “Prologue to The Human Condition”
John Perry Barlow, “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace”
Paulina Borsook “The Crypto Wars,” from Cyberselfish
David Brin, “The End of Photography as Proof of Anything at All”
David Brin, “Three Cheers for the Surveillance Society”
Octavia Butler, “The Evening and the Morning and the Night”
Daniel Harris, “The Futuristic,” from The Aesthetics of Consumerism
Donna Haraway, “A Manifesto for Cyborgs”
Eric Hughes, “A Cypherpunk’s Manifesto”
James Hughes, “Using Democracy to Cure Future Shock”
Thomas Jefferson. The Declaration of Independence.
Walter Lang, dir. Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy. Film: “Desk Set”
Timothy C. May, “The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto”
Katsuhiro Otomo. Film: “Roujin Z”
Nick Rombes, “Professor DVD”
Valerie Solanas, “The SCUM Manifesto”
Thomas Starr, “The Real Declaration”
Alex Steffen, “The Tech Bloom”
Bruce Sterling, “Maneki Neko,” from A Good Old-Fashioned Future
Marc Stiegler, “A Gentle Seduction”
Oscar Wilde, “The Soul of Man Under Socialism”

Also, each student is required to purchase a blank notebook in which they will keep a writer’s journal, as well as a folder to keep track of all written assignments.

Course Requirements and Policies

1. Attendance – This is a six week intensive course and absences must be kept to an absolute minimum. You should warn me in advance about absences. When this is not possible, call the Rhetoric Office (642-1415) and leave a message explaining why you are absent. Keep in mind that missing classes or arriving late disrupts the community of the classroom, especially since you will be doing a great deal of work with your peers this term. Absences and lateness will affect your performance negatively, and will lower your final grade significantly.

2. Deadlines -- You are required to observe assignment deadlines. If you anticipate trouble completing an assignment on time, you must speak to me in advance about an extension. Any paper or homework assignment handed in late without an extension will be reduced by a half of a letter grade for each day  including Saturdays and Sundays –- that it is late. Try to break the procrastination cycle: leave enough time so that printer failures, disk errors, and lines at the printout place do not make you late.

3. Format -- All written work for this course must be printed on a word processor or typed. Written work that is not printed on a word processor or typed will not be accepted (unless of course it is an in-class assignment), and the late policy (see #2 above) will apply. Always spell-check your written assignments. Resist the use of your computer’s thesaurus. Use your own vocabulary. ALWAYS proofread your papers after you have printed them out. Excessive spelling and proofreading errors will be subject to significant grade reductions. Also, it is a good idea to keep copies of papers and other important written assignments. Papers do get lost, and if an instructor loses a paper it is your responsibility to provide a new copy.

4. Participation -– Participation in class discussion is REQUIRED. I know that some people are less enthusiastic about class participation than others. Let me state my philosophy on this: Classroom discussion is the only way I know to make visible the genuinely broad range of valid responses any complicated argument will provoke. Understanding objections to your viewpoint will either sharpen the effectiveness of that view or it will change your mind, and either outcome can only be a good thing. If you are pathologically shy it may be possible to satisfy the participation requirement by attending office hours regularly. But please make an effort at class participation –- I’ll do what I can to make the class a safe environment for the exploration and dispute of ideas. Feel free to disagree with one another or with me or with anybody, but always respect one another and keep an open mind about other viewpoints. And keep in mind also that borderline grades will be affected both positively and negatively by regular classroom participation or by its lack.

Your final grade will be determined by summing the grades of the following assignments in the given proportions:

1. Peer Responses on the First Paper Draft 05%
2. First Paper 10%
3. Peer Responses on Second Paper Draft 05%
4. Second Paper 10%
5. Take-Home Mid-Term Exam 10%
6. Peer Responses on Third Paper Draft 05%
7. Third Paper 10%
8. Peer Responses on Final Paper Draft 05%
9. Final Paper 10%
10. Homework and In-Class Work 10%
11. Class Participation 10%
12. Final Report 04%
13. Journal 04%
14. Quizzes 02%

Course Requirements and Policies

I have read, I understand, and I agree to all of the course requirements and policies.

I. Attendance ________________

II. Deadlines ________________

III. Format ________________

IV. Participation ________________


Print Name:________________________________

Signature:_________________________________


A Provisional Schedule of Meetings

Week One

May 24
Course Introduction
SKILL SET: An argument is a claim supported by reasons. Ethos/Pathos/Logos.

May 25
2-3 Minute Introductory Speeches
SKILL SET: Four Habits of Argumentative Writing: 1. Formulate a Strong Thesis; 2. Define Your Terms; 3. Substantiate/Contextualize; 4. Anticipate Objections.

May 26
Hand in Diagnostic Essay (2-3pp) on Anderson’s Piece
Laurie Anderson, “The Language of the Future,” Brin, “The End of Photography”
SKILL SET: Audiences/Intentions; Reading Critically is a Kind of Writing

Week Two

May 31
Hand in Drafts of First Paper to Peer Revision Groups
Wilde, “The Soul of Man Under Socialism”
SKILL SET: Intentions – Interrogation, Conviction, Persuasion, Reconciliation

June 1
Peer Revision/Discussion of Drafts
Jefferson, The Declaration of Independence
Barlow, “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace”
Starr, “The Real Declaration”
SKILL SET: Audiences –- Sympathetic, Unsympathetic, Apathetic; Rogerian Rhetoric

June 2
Hand in Paper One, Precis (3-4pp.) of Wilde’s Essay
May, "The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto"
Hughes "A Cypherpunk's Manifesto"
SKILL SET: The Toulmin Schema

Week Three

June 7
Hand in Drafts of Second Paper to Peer Revision Groups
Brin, “Three Cheers for the Surveillance Society”
SKILL SET: Literal/Figurative Language; Figures/Tropes; Four Master Tropes

June 8
Peer Revision/Discussion of Drafts
SKILL SET: Syllogisms, Enthymemes; Formal Fallacies

June 9
Second Paper (4-5pp.) Due
Borsook "The Crypto Wars"
Steffen, “The Tech Bloom”
SKILL SET: Informal Fallacies

Week Four

June 14
Hand in Take-Home Mid-Term Exam
Screening of “Desk Set”

June 15
Rombes, “Professor DVD”
Discussion of “Desk Set”
SKILL SET: Terms for Film and Media Criticism

June 16
Sterling, “Maneki Neko”
Harris, “The Futuristic”

Week Five

June 21
Hand in Drafts of Third Paper to Peer Revision Groups
Stiegler, "The Gentle Seduction"
Hughes, “Using Democracy to Cure Future Shock”

June 22
Peer Revision/Discussion of Drafts
Solanas, “The SCUM Manifesto”

June 23
Third Paper (4-5pp) Due
Screening on “Roujin Z”

Week Six

June 28
Hand in Drafts of Final Paper to Peer Revision Groups
Butler, “The Evening and the Morning and the Night”

June 29
Hand in Final Report
Hand in Journals
Peer Revision/Discussion of Drafts
Haraway, “A Manifesto for Cyborgs”

June 30
Final Paper (5-6pp) Due
Arendt, "Prologue to The Human Condition"
Closing Remarks: Technocriticism, Technoethics, Technocultures

This is it.

Hey, check this place out. Tomorrow's the last day, people. Definitely bring your final papers and any other odds and ends you may have on hand. We'll try to tie together the loose ends and talk through the major themes and finish up Smart Mobs. Any final questions, comments, perplexities, flights of fancy -- tomorrow's your last chance!

Tomorrow's Class

We're coming down to the wire folks. Is anybody giving an in class presentation tomorrow? Anybody handing in late writing assignments? We'll be talking about the next two chapters (5-6) of Smart Mobs and talking about your final papers. You should have a thesis in mind and we'll talk about what the final papers should be shaping up as.

Professor Peevish

First off, tomorrow looks to be pretty enjoyable. The reading from Smart Mobs is Chapter Four, "The Era of Sentient Things," some of which dovetails in interesting ways with one of the in-class presentations, on David Brin's Salon.com piece, "Three Cheers for the Surveillance Society." The next presentation is Nick Rombes' "Professor DVD" which is short, but packs a lot of punch and ties in to a number of discussions we have had all along about how the availability of information on digital networks alters the credentializing role of professional criticism.

I was "expecting" to see short essays from several of you on the blog this week (remember those diagnostics you never got around to?), and there are in fact several outstanding writing assignments from some of you. I want to stress now as the term winds down that it is crucial that everybody hand in all the assigned work from the class if they expect to receive a passing grade in the course. I will not be accepting late work after next Tuesday, because at that point I have to devote myself to grading final papers.

Everybody in our little community can easily do well in the course, and I want you to do well, but you simply must do the work to do well.

Since a couple of you have attended the last classes only sporadically, I'm blogging this to all in the hopes that everybody will see the entry here or that in the spirit of civic mindedness you knock some sense into slack classmates if you stumble into any of them on campus over the course of the week. Questions, problems, comments contact me or talk to me after class or schedule an appointment to talk to me.

Tomorrow

Actually, I'm thinking there won't be a student presentation tomorrow. If I'm wrong about that, and you are planning to deliver one, please let everybody know asap so we can find and read the paper you mean to present on. Otherwise, it looks like we'll be catching up on Smart Mobs. We can devote a section of class to Chapter One, and then the next section to Chapter Two. It would be great if everybody came to class with a claim from the text that they were willing to defend as the thesis of each of these chapters, and at least one problem or perplexity they found in each chapter. In order to be sure everybody has a chance to do their presentations in class we may need to double up next week. Anyone who isn't clear about presentations or other assignments due to this point should talk to me tomorrow or e-mail me. See you all tomorrow.

Up For Next Class

We'll be talking about Chapter One of Smart Mobs, so be sure to remember we're switching from the Lunenfeld volume to the Rheingold book. We've got two in-class presentations coming up, one on Valerie Solanas' SCUM Manifesto, and the other on James Boyle's essay, "Enclosing the Genome." Also, be sure to read "The Four Habits of Argumentative Writing," and be prepared to ask me what I mean by it, because my expectations for the final paper will be defined by the guidelines you'll find there and we should talk about them in the weeks to come as you begin to think about what you'll be writing next. Looks like another jam-packed Tuesday morning coming up.

Tomorrow

There's a huge amount happening tomorrow so hold on to your hats. In-class presentations on two of my favorite essays in the world: Wilde's Soul of Man Under Socialism, and Solanas' SCUM Manifesto. Links available elsewhere on the blog, so scoop them up and read them. I suspect it will take more than one class to work our way through these pieces. The Hyptertext as Collage essay from DD will start us off. I have papers to hand back and discuss, plus we'll need to get back our bearings in general. Fun/intriguing stuff on the blog to play around with as well. There's lots to talk about, so see you bright and early.

Back in the Saddle Again

Howdy, all. Taura, I have you down for an in-class presentation Tuesday, but I cannot remember what you'll be talking about. Can you let us all know again, and possibly post a link to the text online? We'll also be talking about Wilde's Soul of Man Under Socialism, so be sure to look over that piece again before you arrive. We'll also discuss George P. Landow's essay, “Hypertext as Collage-Writing,” from The Digital Dialectic. I'm still missing one mid-term paper that needs to get handed in to me, preferably via e-mail asap. If you have questions, comments, recriminations, etc. you know how to reach me. Enjoy the last bits of the break, see you all soon.

Hm.

Maybe when we return to class from break at the end of the month we can turn our attention briefly to issues of exponentially recursive dissemination and ponzi schemes and other assorted annoyances that propagate with special virulence on digital networks.

I'll be teaching a couple of courses at SFAI next fall

So, you know, tell your friends, warn your friends, or what have you...

English Composition A: "Ranting, Raving, Writing"

This is a course in argumentative reading and writing, which means for me a course in expository writing and critical thinking. But the works we will be reading together are anything but exemplary argumentative texts. Our texts rant and rave, they are brimming with rage, dripping with corrosive humor, suffused with ecstasies. In ranting and raving arguments are pushed into a kind of crisis, and in them rhetoric becomes a kind of poetry.

What does it tell us about argument in general to observe it in extremis like this? How can we read transcendent texts critically, in ways that clarify their stakes without dismissing their force, and enable us to communicate intelligibly to others the reactions they inspire in us and the meanings we find in them?

Anonymous, “Fuck the South”
Plato, Symposium
Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo
Oscar Wilde, “The Soul of Man Under Socialism”
Fiodr Dostoievski, “Notes From the Underground”
Virginia Woolf, Orlando
Allen Ginsberg, Howl
William Burroughs, “Immortality”
Film, Network. Dir: Sidney Lumet
Valerie Solanas, The SCUM Manifesto
Donna Haraway, “A Manifesto for Cyborgs”
Gary Indiana, “Reproduction”
Diane Dimassa, Hothead Paisan
Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body
Cintra Wilson, “Statement of Intent”


Critical Theory A: "Critique, Subjection, Prostheses"

The potted description in the catalogue says that "[t]he Critical Theory sequence develops students¹ facility in understanding and assessing theoretical models such as psychoanalysis, historical and dialectical materialism, structuralism and semiotics which extend their understanding of the visual image, the written word, and cultural phenomena."

My reading list begins with the very basic post-Emersonian turn against Platonic philosophy (in Europe post-Nietzschean philosophies, in America pragmatisms) and so Richard Rorty's “Hope in Place of Knowledge” provides the broad situation, then we shift into ideologiekritik, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The German Ideology, into culture and ideology, Oscar Wilde, “The Decay of Lying,” Roland Barthes, Mythologies, and then use Louis Althusser's, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses” to take us from ideology into subjection. For subjection we read from Michel Foucault's, History of Sexuality, Part One, then Wendy Brown, “Wounded Attachments” and Judith Butler, “The Lesbian Phallus and the Morphological Imaginary,” turning then to Franz Fanon's, Black Skin, White Masks, and then read Gayatri Spivak's, “History.” There we turn into "prostheses," techocriticism and technopolitical discourses, Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” Marshall McLuhan, “Understanding Media,” Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” sections of Hannah Arendt's magisterial, The Human Condition, and then conclude with Donna Haraway's, “Manifesto for Cyborgs.”

Progress Report

Howdy, all. I've just returned from New York where I gave a talk on Peer-to-Peer Network Culture to a conference of advocates for a Basic Income Guarantee. It was a great meeting, but I've spent a whole lot of time in airplanes (no games of Simon Says with the pilots, I'm happy to report) and am a bit wiped out. So, I'm sorry I haven't kept up with the blog very well, and I realize I have a few e-mails in my inbox to respond to. Never fear, I'll get around to everything.

For tomorrow, the crucial thing, of course, is that your papers are due. I'll get those graded and back to you, along with presentation papers you've handed in, when we all return from the Spring Break later in the month.

Also, be sure to read Oscar Wilde's wonderful, hilarious (in my opinion) rant "The Soul of Man Under Socialism," for which we'll have an in-class presentation, and also Florion Brody's "The Medium Is the Memory," from The Digital Dialectic anthology. Big day coming up, but a big break afterwards in which to recuperate. Reading over the blog from the last few days, things are looking pretty good -- keep up the conversation and I'll see you all tomorrow.

Til Tuesday

(How depressing is it that I'm probably the only reader of this blog playing out the "Voices Carry" video in my head now...) Okay, all, for tomorrow we are talking about William Mitchell's short piece "Replacing Place" -- but be sure to read Paul Miller (aka DJ Spooky)'s Material Memories as well, and to bring along your Lev Manovich from last week, too. There will be a couple of in-class presentations tomorrow.

Also, I mean to force you to talk about your papers in class since you aren't doing it here for the most part. Come prepared to tell me which essay you are writing about and have a nice short clear thesis statement in mind you might want to argue for (fear commitment? don't worry, I won't hold you to anything -- but you need a point of departure and that's that). Attendance isn't optional, and having something in hand to work with for the paper is also non-optional. The paper's due a week from tomorrow and I want everybody to do well. Please come in a talkin' mood, even if you need to be juiced to get there.

Political Blogs As News Source

Interesting tracking of political blogs by Chris Bowers over at MyDD:

Using the blogad traffic rankings as my source (since these involve money, as far as I am concerned no other ranking system matters), I have produced a list of the fifty most trafficked partisan, political blogs that can be considered part of a larger leftist or rightist network…. As a whole, these blogs receive more traffic than the websites of CNN, MSNBC and Fox News combined. By the 2008 election, blogs might become the number one online source of news for Americans. The rankings are in the extended entry.

Hell's Bells

Where is everybody this week?

Upcoming Papers

So, has anybody decided yet which of the essays they mean to write their papers on from The Digital Dialectic? Are people leaning toward essays we've already covered in class or essays we haven't gotten around to yet? Anybody thinking yet what sort of thesis they may want to support in their papers? Anybody have questions about what I mean by a "thesis"? Remember to click on the Four Habits for Argumentative Writing link for more of a sense of what I am looking for in general terms from a paper. Don't hesitate to work through your papers on the blog together -- we don't meet often enough in a weekly class for me to give you useful detailed feedback over the whole writing process. Some of that has to happen here or via e-mail.

Up Next

For tomorrow, don't forget to read the Erkki Huhtamo essay from the Digital Dialectic, and the Lev Manovich piece available online here. L'Affaire Propagannon continues to rage on, and so we can talk some more about blogracking if you like, but I'd also be interested to hear what else you may have stumbled onto in the blogosphere this week. If there is time I would like to return briefly to the Katherine Hayles piece as well -- so if you have comments or questions that weren't addressed last week, you may have another shot at it. See you tomorrow morning.

Ted Hitler Weighs in on Propagannon and Blogracking

[via Crooks and Liars]Scroll down to "Gannon/Guckert on the Daily Show." So good and so good for you.

Creative Commons

Well, we've talked about it for so long now it's started to seem like the comedy of the commons. I'm satisfied at last that everybody's had a chance to figure out the issues and express their preferences, and so I've added a CC License to our blog. Yesterday, there were five votes each for a License insisting on attribution and noncommercial use for any works based on original material created by us here. There was one vote for a License insisting that derivative works also have a License permitting the same terms as our own, and there were no votes at all for restricting derivative works to verbatim copies. In the spirit of democracy, then, the License I tacked onto the blog insists just on the first two and that's that. Click on the icon to see the License itself.

"Recent Comments"

Since it is easy to lose track of ongoing conversational threads, as new posts scroll older stuff off the screen rather quickly with a team as big as ours (even with so few of you actually posting -- hint hint) I'd really like to have some kind of indication of "Recent Comments" visible high up in the sidebar so you can see who is responding to what as it happens. But I can't figure out how to do it. Does anybody have the skills for that? Help me out.

Reminder

For tomorrow: Brook is, if I remember correctly, going to give the first of our in-class presentations on an essay by Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron called "The California Ideology." It is available in more than one version online, but here's a link to one of the versions in case you haven't looked it over already and want to find it. I can't guarantee that this is the same version Brook will be taking as his point of departure. Since we're going to devote some of the class to a discussion of the piece everybody should at least give the thing a looksee.

Also, we will be discussing the Katherine Hayles essay from The Digital Dialectic. I think it's an important essay, so I'm looking forward to hearing your comments on it.

I'd also like to take a vote on the issue of which Creative Commons license we want to tack onto our blog -- if any (here's a link to a page that summarizes the options).

In our blog roundup early on I'll be interested to hear what you guys think of the Blogracking issue, how it relates to Folksonomy and some of the other topics we raised last time round, and I wouldn't mind getting your impressions of this piece I found on Social Design Notes, about online activism.

Many of you still haven't posted anything to the blog at all, by the way. What's up with that? See you tomorrow.

Blogracking

Interesting post over on kos this afternoon, inspired by l'Affaire Propagannon, about how blogging might transform muckracking investigative journalism -- and there's even a lovely neologism, blogracking, to describe the new phenomenon.

Next Up

For tomorrow be sure to have read Carol Giglliotti's short essay, “The Ethical Life of the Digital Aesthetic,” from The Digital Dialectic. Also, we should return to the Benjamin a bit, and tease at some of the stuff that has been coming up here in the blog. I'll also want to talk about the things you've found in your surfing... Is anybody following the folksonomy discussion on Many2Many, for example?

I'm very happy to see blog participation rising here, but many of you are still shying away from posting. Don't put it to the last minute, let's see some more aphorisms and discussions. Also, everybody should be thinking a bit about the general subject area and time frame when they'll want to do their in-class presentations. Browse the titles in the Virtual Reader from the Syllabus, or talk to me about your interests and we'll come up with something that works. Definitely, I'd like to see some presentations happening over the next few weeks, otherwise I'll get nervous we won't be able to fit everybody in. See you all tomorrow.

Another Log on the Fire

While we're tossing out tidbits of Benjamin, I'll toss this one out too, in the hopes that people will think about it more closely for some more discussion Tuesday as well...

With [the work of the photographer] Atget, photographs become standard evidence for historical occurences, and acquire a hidden political significance. They demand a special kind of approach; free-floating contemplation is not appropriate to them. They stir the viewer; he feels challenged by them in a new way. At the same time picture magazines begin to put up signposts for him, right ones and wrong ones, no matter. For the first time, captions have become obligatory. And it is clear that they have an altogether different character than the title of a painting. The directives which captions give to those looking at pictures in illustrated magazines soon become even more explicit and imperative in the film where the meaning of each single picture appears to be prescribed by the sequence of all preceding ones.

Now, there are many immediate perplexities that this passage calls to my mind. Why suggest that the political significance of evidenciary photography is "hidden"? Isn't it quite obvious and palpable actually? What is the force of the imagery of "free-floating" contemplation, which to me seems to call up the same immateriality of the imagery of the aura? Why doesn't it "matter" whether the "sign-posts" proposed by picture magazines are right or wrong? Why focus attention there if it doesn't matter?

But delving deeper, clearly there is some very contemporary sounding media criticism coming out of this comment on sign-posting and captions and images. The conjunction of image and text here is a multimedia insight, and the point about sign-posting makes me think of media criticism that distinguishes the manipulation of a "broadcast model" of content distribution from various networked, peer-to-peer models. It's easy to see how hypertext and open source break down what Foucault calls the "author-function" produced by traditional print publication, and then we have peer-to-peer breaking down *author*ized distributions of information... Does Benjamin's thesis about aura cast light on these developments? His final point that the actual "sequence" of frames that produces the illusion/representation of a moving image is itself an expression of the *same* kind of textual signposting that would direct our interpretations of "static" images blows my mind a bit, and I still don't know what to do with that idea. Are hypertext and tagging and wikis disintegrating or expressing this sign-posting function of textuality? I'd be interested to hear more from you on Tuesday.

In the meantime, get some aphorisms up folks. And remember to check out the sites on our blogroll and to link to interest things you find in them and elsewhere, and to blog about your impressions. I want to see more life in this space.

Nag

Remember that for tomorrow we are going to briefly return to the short Peter Lunenfeld essays in The Digital Dialectic, after which we'll move on to Michael Heim's essay from that volume, assigned for tomorrow on the syllabus, "The Cyberspace Dialectic." Newcomers and slackers who have not yet gotten a couple of pages to me on the Laurie Anderson piece we discussed last week, definitely throw something together for me for tomorrow. Again, this shouldn't be anything to break a sweat over, just a first contact with your writing for my own use. Also, tomorrow we are going to discuss Walter Benjamin's "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction." The piece is already familiar to some of you, is anthologized in a bazillion places, and is also available for you to read and print out online. (If you still have problems getting your hands on it, e-mail me. That's obviously a lot to cover, so we might get a bit behind already in the syllabus -- which, eventually, may mean I'll start dropping some stuff out. For now, though, I still want to try to keep up.

There are still a few of you who need to sign on to the blog, and if there are technical issues frustrating you let me know. Also, I'm very happy to see your contributions appearing here (they're certainly much more interesting than the administrative crud I tend to post here) -- keep the contributions coming! And don't forget to click on the sites in our blogroll on the sidebar, and blog your impressions of stories and conversations you find interesting and relevant to the themes of our course. We'll talk tomorrow first thing about our blog, Creative Commons, and about stuff in the other blogs you may have stumbled upon. Looks like another full day coming tomorrow.

Making a Splash

Well, it would appear our course has made a wee splash in the blogosphere (scroll down the "QuickChanges" sidebar a bit to see our name in lights, as it were), even if people seem to think it's happening at Cal rather than SFAI...

Reminders

Remember that I'm expecting a short piece of writing from you all tomorrow, a brief reading of the Laurie Anderson lyric stapled to the back of the Syllabus I handed out last week. I only expect a couple of pages and this isn't the sort of thing you should sweat over particularly. I'm just trying to guage writing levels, interests, and that sort of thing. The paper isn't graded but contributes to your final participation grade.

Since students can continue to add the class for over two weeks, it is possible that some students may be attending class for the first time tomorrow, and we'll find some way for you all to do the assignment. All these details will work themselves out soon enough.

Everybody please sign onto the blog as soon as you can. E-mail me if you are having trouble locating textbooks, signing up for the class, or signing onto this blog, or have other questions. (You can also reach me through the "Comment" button at the end of this post.) Also, remember that I have assigned the two short Peter Lunenfeld essays from "The Digital Dialectic" (the Introduction to the volume and the first Chapter) for our discussion tomorrow. Read them and have a few questions or comments or impressions in mind to talk about if you want to avoid listening me to drone on for three hours Tuesday morning...

Text Books

Remember, everybody, that of the two course textbooks it is crucial at this point that you buy the Peter Lunenfeld, ed., volume, The Digital Dialectic: New Essays on New Media. There are two short essays for you to read from that volume next Tuesday (check out the syllabus below for details). The other book, Smart Mobs, we're not getting around to for months -- so you can hold off on that one for now if you want. Let me know if anybody is having trouble getting a hold of the book. Also, e-mail me if you're having any problems climbing on board the blog here.

Administrivia

I've sent out invitations onto the blog to the e-mail addresses you gave me this morning. So, if you haven't received your invitation, that may mean I misread your writing or something, so let me know and I'll fix it. When you accept your invitations and create your blogger profiles and what have you I'll zap your name in the sidebar you see on the right there into a link to your e-mail (or if you'd prefer the link to send your thronging fans over to a homepage or whatever instead, just let me know).

Syllabus

Critical Theory B, Spring 2005:
Critical Theory, Network Politics, and “New” Media

Instructor: Dale Carrico, dalec@berkeley.edu
Tuesdays, 9.00-11.45, McMillan Conference Room
Office Hours: After class and by appointment.

Course Description

In this course we will focus our attention on some of the ways in which critical theory has tried to make sense of the ongoing impact of emerging information and communication technologies on public life, cultural forms, creative expression, and ethical discourse.

Our conversation this term will take as its point of departure the assumption that the basic categories through which we make sense of individual and collective agency, dignity, and claims of right are transforming under the pressure of emerging and converging digital networked information and communication technologies. Over the course of the term, we will survey a number of canonical and contemporary theoretical and polemical works all provoked by the problems and possibilities of these technological transformations.

To the extent that “new” media really are something new, it is hard to imagine a temperament less suited in some ways to think about these impacts than philosophers and critical theorists. Hegel pointed out that philosophy paints its gray on gray only when a form of life has grown cold. And true to form, even relatively recent and influential “new” media theory often seems quaint in its assumptions quite soon after it has been written.

Typically, when theorists speak of “new” media they mean to describe digital media in particular. And since digital media are in fact still consolidating their hold over the circulation and communication of information today, we will mostly stick to that understanding ourselves. But it is important to realize that there are possibly newer new media always emerging as well for which the enabling technologies, working assumptions, and expected effects are quite different.

There will be important differences in the discussion of media and surveillance, depending on whether one wants to focus on issues of digital encryption or biometrics instead. There will be differences in the discussion of media and intellectual property, depending on whether one wants to focus on copyright or patenting genetic information. There will be differences in the discussion of media and the manufacture of consent, depending on whether one wants to focus on the consolidation of broadcast media, the rise of social software tools and practices, or the mandated use of neuroceuticals on the basis of medical information.

In an important sense the course will be a collaborative performance, and so our more specific focus and problems and interests will depend in a significant measure on your own circumstances, concerns, and on the texts that you yourselves happen to respond to most forcefully. It remains to be seen just what conclusions we will find our way to by the end of the term and the end of this conversation.

In addition to exploring these personal and public lives of emerging media, the course will also provide an occasion for further training and practice in the writing of argumentation based on close textual reading, and will be a workshop in critical thinking, reading, and deliberation skills.

Expectations:

Students will be expected to develop sustained and coherent written arguments about the theoretical perspectives and various ideas we will be reading and discussing here. Further, everyone is expected to actively participate in the community of the course. Our class meetings will normally take the form of a seminar (with occasional lapses into lecture since I probably cannot help myself). Overall, I will provide you many different avenues for participation, and you can surely find one that suits your needs and temperament. In any case, I will always expect you to be prepared to discuss the readings assigned for each course meeting.

I will assign a short diagnostic essay (2-3pp.) at the beginning of the term that will not receive a letter grade, and then three short papers (just 5-7pp. each) over the course of the term. One of your papers will provide the point of departure for the class discussion of an essay from our virtual course “reader,” and these informal presentations will take place throughout the term. The other two papers will be due at mid-term and on the final class meeting. In addition to these short papers I will also expect everybody to register to participate in a regular way on the collaborative blog, “BloggingTEC: Technology, Ethics, and Culture.”

Many of the materials and activities associated with the course are online, but I can arrange to provide materials and alternative activities for anyone for whom online access is unavailable or awkward. Please speak to me about this as soon as possible, and we will arrange an alternative together. Despite the emphasis on online material and work, the regular attendance and participation of your physical body in the physical classroom is nevertheless a strict requirement.

If you must miss a class, please let me know in advance that this is taking place (unless of course circumstances make that especially difficult) so that I can smoothly accommodate your absence, and keep you on track. If you miss more than three classes, come what may, you will certainly fail the class. Both the readings and assignments in this initial version of the syllabus may change somewhat according to my emerging sense of what your needs and interests are, individually and as a group.

Grade Breakdown:

Paper #1 (5-7pp. transcript of a class presentation on a text from the Virtual Reader): 20%

Paper #2 (5-7pp. on an essay in The Digital Dialectic): 20%

Paper #3 (5-7pp. on a section, idea, theme, or problem in Smart Mobs): 30%

Participation (includes: Diagnostic Essay, weekly blogging, and class discussion): 30%

Required Texts and Available Resources:

Text Books:

Peter Lunenfeld, ed.: The Digital Dialectic: New Essays in New Media
Howard Rheingold: Smart Mobs: Transforming Cultures and Communities in the Age of Instant Access


Blogs:

Our Course Blog: “BloggingTEC: Technology, Ethics, and Culture”:

Log in to Blogger.com and create a free account there if you haven’t got one already. E-mail me once you have done this and I will add you to the list of contributors to our blog, whereupon you can post contributions, comments, and relevant links provoked by our discussions, readings, assignments, material you find elsewhere that you want to introduce into the discursive mix, what have you.

I will ask that everyone pay regular attention to the posts on a few especially provocative or relevant blogs, and that you be prepared to register your ongoing impressions of the posts you find there both on our own blog and in class discussions.

Many2Many
Smart Mobs
Social Design Notes
WorldChanging

Again, if you do not have easy or regular access online, let me know this and we will arrange alternative ways for you to participate in this dimension of the seminar.

Virtual Reader:

Rather than create a costly additional printed reader, I am providing this list of pieces available online as a Virtual Reader from which we will select a piece for discussion each week. Each week someone will choose a text from the list and prepare for the next meeting a short introduction which will constitute the point of departure for an ensuing in-class discussion of the piece. Some of these texts are available online in different editions and rather than specify which one you should pick, I think we will let the possible confusions that might arise from this provide a topic for discussion. The same thing goes as well for the many differences and difficulties of variously accessing and making hard copies (or not) of the pieces you find online. Obviously, the number of works here exceeds the number of people in the class as well as the number of class meetings available to us. The texts you choose to discuss, and the order in which you choose to discuss them will be some of the ways in which you will have a definitive impact on the discursive trajectory our conversation takes over the course of the term.

Christopher Allen, “Tracing the Evolution of Social Software”
Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron, “California Ideology”
John Perry Barlow, “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace”
Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”
James Boyle, “The Second Enclosure Movement and the Construction of the Public Domain”
James Boyle, “Enclosing the Genome?”
David Brin, “Three Cheers for the Surveillance Society!”
Jamais Cascio, “Leapfrog 101”
Donna Haraway, “A Manifesto for Cyborgs”
Donna Haraway, “The Promises of Monsters”
Jeron Lanier, “One Half of a Manifesto”
Jeron Lanier, “Why Gordian Software Has Convinced Me to Believe in the Reality of Cats and Apples”
Lawrence Lessig, “The Creative Commons”
Lawrence Lessig, “What Things Regulate Speech”
Jessica Litman, “Sharing and Stealing”
Steve Mann, “The Post-Cyborg Path to Deconism”
Paul D. Miller (DJ Spooky), “Material Memories”
Mark Poster, “CyberDemocracy”
Nick Rombes, “Professor DVD”
Valerie Solanas, “The SCUM Manifesto”
Charles Stross, “The Panopticon Singularity”
Bruce Sterling, “Viridian Design Speech”
David Weinberger, “Why Open Spectrum Matters”
Oscar Wilde, “The Soul of Man Under Socialism”
Mark Winokur, “The Ambiguous Panopticon”

If there is some exciting text in technocultural, techno-ethical, techno-critical theory or media criticism which is among the many not included on this list, but which you would especially like to present a paper on and co-facilitate a class discussion around, just let me know in advance. The text must be freely available online and you must suggest the text amply enough in advance for me to have a look at it, and talk it over with you a bit. You may as well consider the Virtual Reader to be indefinitely open-ended.

Some Supplementary Resources for Argumentative Writing:

Four Habits of Argumentative Writing
Finding Your Argument
Peer Editing Worksheet

A Provisional Schedule of Meetings:

January 18: Introduction to the Course.

January 25: Diagnostic Essay Due. Blog survey. Discussion of Peter Lunenfeld’s Introduction, “Screen Grabs,” and essay “Unifinished Business,” from The Digital Dialectic. Discussion of the short Laurie Anderson piece, “The Language of the Futrue.”

February 1: Blog Survey. Discussion of Michael Heim, “The Cyberspace Dialectic,” in The Digital Dialectic. Presentation and discussion of Walter Benjamin’s, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.”

February 8: Blog Survey. Discussion of Carol Giglliotti, “The Ethical Life of the Digital Aesthetic,” in The DD. Presentation and discussion of an essay from the Virtual Reader.

February 15: Blog Survey. Discussion of Katherine Hayles, “The Condition of Virtuality,” in The DD. Presentation and discussion of an essay from the Virtual Reader.

February 22: Blog Survey. Discussion of Erkki Huhtamo, “From Cybernation to Interaction,” in The DD. Presentation and discussion of an essay from the Virtual Reader.

March 1: Blog Survey. Discussion of William J. Mitchell, “Replacing Place,” in The DD. Presentation and discussion of an essay from the Virtual Reader.

March 8: First (5-7pp.) Paper Due. Blog Survey. Discussion of Florian Brody, “The Medium Is the Memory,” in The DD. Presentation and discussion of an essay from the Virtual Reader. Roughly half of the Presentations should be done at this point.

March 14-25: Spring Break

March 29: Blog Survey. Discussion of George P. Landow, “Hypertext as Collage-Writing,” in The DD. Presentation and discussion of an essay from the Virtual Reader.

April 5: Blog Survey. Discussion of Lev Manovich, “What Is Digital Cinema?” in The DD. Presentation and discussion of an essay from the Virtual Reader.

April 12: Blog Survey. Discussion of Bob Stein, “We Could Be Better Ancestors Than This,” in The DD. Presentation and discussion of an essay from the Virtual Reader.

April 19: Blog Survey. Discussion of Brenda Laurel, “Musings on Amusements in America,” in The DD. Presentation and discussion of an essay from the Virtual Reader.

April 26: Hand in paper topics for Final Paper. Blog Survey. Begin discussion of Smart Mobs. All Presentations should be complete at this point.

May 3: Blog Survey. Continue discussion of Smart Mobs. Peer Editing of Final Paper Drafts.

May 10: Final (5-7pp.) Paper Due. Blog Survey. Conclude discussion of Smart Mobs. Concluding Remarks for the Class. General Bacchanal.