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.