Justin Hodgson

In the wake of the video game explosion in the early 1990s, scholars began to investigate the pedagogical, epistemological, and even cultural implications of "games."  Not surprisingly, games have been exceedingly fruitful for these discussions: from understanding how games offer immersive learning models (cf., James Paul Gee) to how games, based in critical theories of play, have proliferated the histories of humanity (cf., Johan Huizinga). Beyond those considerations, games offer access to a wide range of conversations, from narrative theory (narratology) to attention economies (as Richard Lanham has constructed them).  Add to this the fact that the gaming industry had greater sales last year than the cinema industry, and we see not only a cultural shift occurring but also a need for us to critically and creatively consider the rhetorical possibilities emerging with games.

As such, this course will focus on gaming rhetorics: beginning from the rhetorical considerations of ludology (theories of play), which has grounds/history in classical rhetoric, to conversations on social media and games (i.e,. Facebook games, WOW, PSP, PS3 Online, etc.), to serious games (games designed to make critical/cultural commentary, to engage in civic/social issues). Along the way, students will be ask not only to read works on games, but to play games, and to use those experiences as bases for research, as evidence and support (in ethnographical fashion) for ideas explored/developed in the course and in their work.

Additionally, given the "new media" realm in which video games finds themselves, our work in this course will also engage "writing" formats beyond traditional, print writing.  We will use a three-headed approach—knowing (theoretical knowledge), doing (practical/productive knowledge), and making (productive knowledge)—with emphasis placed on making for it is making, not knowing, that takes center stage in digital culture.  Thus, students will be asked to make projects that use actual game footage/images (i.e., machinima) and/or that apply gaming theories/concepts introduced in the course.

By the end of this course students will have learned

-       to navigate, identify, and critically engage norms, rules, guides for a social media gaming environment or gaming community;

-       to extend theories of play to include rhetorical and cultural considerations;

-       to analyze, articulate, and critically respond to issues related to game content, game experiences, game communities;

-       to develop rhetorical discourse through multiple methods/modes of communication: oral, textual, visual, and multimedia;

-       to work collaboratively to solve problems in gaming environments;

-       to write/produce/make as a collaborative;

-       to engage qualitative research methodologies.

Course Projects:

One critical component of the course will be students' level of involvement, which includes both traditional classroom participation and actively participating in a gaming environment.  As such, participation will play significant role in this course assessment, perhaps more so than in other courses. (Specific guidelines for how the assessment of this involvement/participation will be provided in class, but part of the grade will include self-reporting.)  Beyond involvement, this course includes both a "substantial writing component" and a "substantial production component" as students will be asked to complete traditional writing assignments as well as to produce discourse in varying types of media, with both subjected to process-based approaches (drafting, peer review, revision, and the like).

Course Grading:

10% (2) Critical Response Papers (3pg each) – (10% in total, 5% each)

40% Selection Projects (each PL is comprised of a series of assignments)

Students choose one of the following project lines (PL):

Character PL

Image PL

Presentation PL

Video PL

Research PL

25% Serious Games Game-Building Group Project

25% Involvement/Participation

            15% Daily In-Class Activities

            10% Discussion/Gaming Involvement

Course "Texts":

Gee, What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy

Bogust, Persuasive Games

Blizzard Entertainment - Worlds of Warcraft (computer game and online account)

Selected essays, articles, chapters (provided by instructor)

Moulthrop, "After the Last Generation: Rethinking Scholarship in the Days of Serious Play"

Eskilenin, "The Gaming Situation"

Huizinga, Homo Ludens – Selections include "Nature and Significance of Play as a Cultural Phenomenon," "Play and Contest as Civilizing Functions," "Playing and Knowing," and "Play-Forms in Philosophy"

Possible additional selections from:

Lyotard, Just Gaming

Aarseth, Cybertext

Flanagan, Critical Play: Radical Game Design

Pearce et al, Communities of Play

Sicart, The Ethics of Computer Games

Baudrillard, Simulations

Possible gaming platforms to include for consideration: Nintendo Wii, Play Station 3, Xbox, PSP

(Our emphasis, however, will be on the rhetorical/cultural elements of games in these platforms as well as the social media aspects emerging with each console's online community)

In this course, we will critically and creatively investigate rhetorical invention in relation to multimodal and multimedia communication—specifically, exploring the impacts of digital cultures and digital communicational technologies on the possibilities and potentialities of/for rhetorical invention.  We will focus on (1) how emerging digital ecologies have opened communicational possibilities beyond the singular limits of written (alphabetic) texts, and (2) how these changes in communicational technologies, specifically the media (and mediums) of digital communication, radically alter how we come to and come to understand rhetorical invention. 

With our focus being on digital communication technologies and rhetorical invention, we will approach the course in terms of knowing (theoretical knowledge), doing (practical/pedagogical knowledge), and making (productive knowledge)—placing an emphasis on making.  This emphasis is paramount as making not only opens a variety of ways to engage different types, kinds, processes, and practices of rhetorical invention, but also is one of the key advantages of working in digital culture: i.e., making, not knowing, takes center stage.  As such, students will be required to make several digital productions. 

By the end of the course students will have learned how to

-   communicate/create, with rhetorical purpose, in a variety of digital communication technologies;

-   engage and utilize a plethora of rhetorical invention approaches: from the classical topoi to new emerging sets of topoi;

-   critically analyze, interpret, and invent (with) images, sounds, texts, and their integrations;

-   critically/creatively respond to medium/message considerations, and the distinctions of orality, literacy, secondary orality, and digital literacy, and electracy.

-   approach intellectual property right regulations and plagiarism as well as understand how these issues manifest in murky areas of digital environs;

-   express themselves and their ideas through multivocality, and to learn to rhetorically invent and think in this polyvalence;

-   approach rhetoric in oral, textual, visual, and multimedia ways.

 Course Grading

30% Multimedia Research Paper/Digital Scholarship Project (ebook or website platform)

30% Group Projects (Viral Videos, 4-5 page Rhetorical Analysis, 2-3 page Project    

    Reflection, Class Presentation)

15% (3) Critical Response Papers (2-3pg each) – (15% in total, 5% each)

10%  Weekly Participation – online, scholarly conversation (blog, wiki, forum, etc.)

5%  Visual Rhetoric (static image) Creation & 1 pg Design Rationale

5%  Short Audio Production (e.g., podcast) & 1 pg Medium Reflection

5%  Micro-Video Production (e.g., YouTube) & 1 pg Audience Analysis

Course Texts

McLuhan, _Understanding Media_; Lanham, _The Economics of Attention_; Ulmer, _Electronic Monuments_ and _Teletheory_; Miller, _Rhythm Science_; Lars Von Trier & Jurgen Leth, _The Five Obstructions_ (film); selected essays, hypertexts, websites, ebooks, podcasts, and videos; additional readings.

In the preface to his book Internet Invention, Gregory L. Ulmer writes, "There is no consensus about new media education, about what skills are needed, what practices are available, for citizens to be fully empowered as native producers of digital texts" (xiii).  That is, there is a wide degree of variance from institution to institution and from instructor to instructor in terms of what we should teach, how we should teach it, and to what end it should be directed.  Despite this variance, there is a lingering tendency by many in the field to want to think of digital media production and/or electronic citizenry in literacy terms, as being a kind of digital literacy.  While literacy and its practices are of value for electronic/digital cultures, the entirety of "electrate" practices cannot simply be housed within the literacy horizon.

As such, this course will take a different approach and follow a trajectory offered by Ulmer—a turn toward electracy.  Ulmer opens us to this neologism as an attempt to help us transcend (and transgress) the ordering impositions of literate practices.  This shift allows us, from the very start, to create a different kind of relationship to the apparatus in question and/or its operative media.  That is, we turn toward the "middle voice" in electrate writing, and, from the outset, shift our mindset from the subject/object divide. 

Further, the ordering impositions and meaning-making practices available in electronic cultures not only introduce other ways of writing, but other ways of thinking.  If, as Jim Berlin argued so many years ago, that to teach writing/rhetoric is to teach a way of making sense of the world, then to teach digital writing/rhetoric is to teach yet other ways for making sense of the world.  Often multiple ways. Multimediated ways.  And it is, in the same moment, an act of introducing a radical awareness of that multiplicity—those competing ways of "making sense".  This multiplicity, to borrow from Jeff Rice, may be rhetoric itself. 

Thus, this course will focus on working in a variety of digital media and engaging a variety of digital modes of representation, but it will do so with Ulmer's work as its paradigmatic guide.  Meaning, among other things, students will explore the challenges and rewards of producing a "mystory," an electrate genre of writing invented by Ulmer.

By the end of the course students will have learned how

-       to communicate/create rhetorically in a variety of digital communication technologies;

-       to analyze, interpret, and invent (with) images, sounds, texts, and their integrations;

-       to critically/creatively navigate medium/message dynamics;

-       to consider the role of experience design in the multimedia paradigm;

-       to approach intellectual property right regulations (and plagiarism) as well as understand how these issues manifest in murky areas of digital environs;

-       to express themselves and their ideas through multivocality, approaching digital rhetorical discourse in terms of choice and mediums (utilizing oral, textual, visual, and multimedia methods of communication [and their integrations]).

Course Projects:

This course will be built around Ulmer's "mystory."  As such, it has a "substantial digital production component" in conjunction with carrying the writing flag (each being crucial to understanding and extending the potentialities of the course).  Students can expect, then, to engage in both alphabetic text and digital media production, often in conjunction.

Course Grading:

10% Participation in class discussion, social media activities, and presentation(s)

20% Weekly blog on readings (650 words minimum). 1 in 3 should be video blogs (vlogs). 

            (Includes 10% for "champion" posts and 10% for "respondent" posts)

15% Process Document (record of weekly activity + weekly in-progress reflections)

30% Multimedia Mystory

25% Group Project: (Making) Mystorical Places/Spaces

            Deliverables: Project (in final, electronic format), Project Rationale, and Evaluation

Course Texts:

Ulmer, Internet Invention

Possible additional selected essays/chapters from:

Holmevik, Inter/vention

Johnson, Where Good Ideas Come From

Jarrett, Drifting on a Read

Rice, The Rhetoric of Cool

Ulmer, Miami Virtue

In the wake of the video game explosion in the early 1990s, scholars began to investigate the pedagogical, epistemological, and even cultural implications of "games."  Not surprisingly, games have been exceedingly fruitful for these discussions: from understanding how games offer immersive learning models (cf., James Paul Gee) to how games, based in critical theories of play, have proliferated the histories of humanity (cf., Johan Huizinga). Beyond those considerations, games offer access to a wide range of conversations, from narrative theory (narratology) to attention economies (as Richard Lanham has constructed them).  Add to this the fact that the gaming industry had greater sales last year than the cinema industry, and we see not only a cultural shift occurring but also a need for us to critically and creatively consider the rhetorical possibilities emerging with games.

As such, this course will focus on gaming rhetorics: beginning from the rhetorical considerations of ludology (theories of play), which has grounds/history in classical rhetoric, to conversations on social media and games (i.e,. Facebook games, WOW, PSP, PS3 Online, etc.), to serious games (games designed to make critical/cultural commentary, to engage in civic/social issues). Along the way, students will be ask not only to read works on games, but to play games, and to use those experiences as bases for research, as evidence and support (in ethnographical fashion) for ideas explored/developed in the course and in their work.

Additionally, given the "new media" realm in which video games finds themselves, our work in this course will also engage "writing" formats beyond traditional, print writing.  We will use a three-headed approach—knowing (theoretical knowledge), doing (practical/productive knowledge), and making (productive knowledge)—with emphasis placed on making for it is making, not knowing, that takes center stage in digital culture.  Thus, students will be asked to make projects that use actual game footage/images (i.e., machinima) and/or that apply gaming theories/concepts introduced in the course.

By the end of this course students will have learned

-       to navigate, identify, and critically engage norms, rules, guides for a social media gaming environment or gaming community;

-       to extend theories of play to include rhetorical and cultural considerations;

-       to analyze, articulate, and critically respond to issues related to game content, game experiences, game communities;

-       to develop rhetorical discourse through multiple methods/modes of communication: oral, textual, visual, and multimedia;

-       to work collaboratively to solve problems in gaming environments;

-       to write/produce/make as a collaborative;

-       to engage qualitative research methodologies.

Course Projects:

One critical component of the course will be students' level of involvement, which includes both traditional classroom participation and actively participating in a gaming environment.  As such, participation will play significant role in this course assessment, perhaps more so than in other courses. (Specific guidelines for how the assessment of this involvement/participation will be provided in class, but part of the grade will include self-reporting.)  Beyond involvement, this course includes both a "substantial writing component" and a "substantial production component" as students will be asked to complete traditional writing assignments as well as to produce discourse in varying types of media, with both subjected to process-based approaches (drafting, peer review, revision, and the like).

Course Grading:

10% (2) Critical Response Papers (3pg each) – (10% in total, 5% each)

40% Selection Projects (each PL is comprised of a series of assignments)

Students choose one of the following project lines (PL):

Character PL

Image PL

Presentation PL

Video PL

Research PL

25% Serious Games Game-Building Group Project

25% Involvement/Participation

            15% Daily In-Class Activities

            10% Discussion/Gaming Involvement

Course "Texts":

Gee, What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy

Bogust, Persuasive Games

Blizzard Entertainment - Worlds of Warcraft (computer game and online account)

Selected essays, articles, chapters (provided by instructor)

Moulthrop, "After the Last Generation: Rethinking Scholarship in the Days of Serious Play"

Eskilenin, "The Gaming Situation"

Huizinga, Homo Ludens – Selections include "Nature and Significance of Play as a Cultural Phenomenon," "Play and Contest as Civilizing Functions," "Playing and Knowing," and "Play-Forms in Philosophy"

Possible additional selections from:

Lyotard, Just Gaming

Aarseth, Cybertext

Flanagan, Critical Play: Radical Game Design

Pearce et al, Communities of Play

Sicart, The Ethics of Computer Games

Baudrillard, Simulations

Possible gaming platforms to include for consideration: Nintendo Wii, Play Station 3, Xbox, PSP

(Our emphasis, however, will be on the rhetorical/cultural elements of games in these platforms as well as the social media aspects emerging with each console's online community)

In this course, we will explore how the changing multimedia landscape is opening the possibilities for rhetorical communication and how those changes impact critical scholarship.

Particularly, we will focus on how the changes associated with the emerging digital culture, changes intricately linked with digital communication technologies, radically alter how we come to and come to understand rhetorical discourse.  From this perspective, we will consider the production/creation, distribution/dissemination, and assessment/evaluation of multimedia, and critically/creatively examine potential methodologies, heuristics, and heuretics for examining these areas.

With our focus being on digital communication technologies and rhetorical discourse, we will approach the course in terms of knowing (theoretical knowledge), doing (practical/pedagogical knowledge), and making (productive knowledge)—placing an emphasis on making.  This emphasis is paramount as making not only opens a variety of ways to engage different types, kinds, processes, and practices of rhetorical communication, but also is one of the key advantages of working in digital culture where making, not knowing, takes center stage.  As such, students will be required to complete several digital productions. 

By the end of the course students will have learned how to

-       communicate/create rhetorically in a variety of digital communication technologies;

-       analyze, interpret, and invent (with) images, sounds, texts, and their integrations;

-       critically/creatively navigate medium/message dynamics;

-       consider the role of experience design in the multimedia paradigm;

-       approach intellectual property right regulations (and plagiarism) as well as understand how these issues manifest in murky areas of digital environs;

-       express themselves and their ideas through multivocality, approaching digital rhetorical discourse in terms of choice and mediums (utilizing oral, textual, visual, and multimedia methods of communication [and their integrations]).

Course Projects:

This course has a "substantial digital production component" as well as a "substantial writing component," as each is crucial to understanding and extending the potentialities of the other.  As such, each digital production, in addition to any text-based writing in the production itself, will also include meta-discourse and other text-based writing (i.e., essays, papers, etc.)—at minimum, a design reflection and/or design rationale (following common industry practices).

Additionally, students will have an opportunity to design and produce a special themed issue of The Journal for Undergraduate Multimedia Projects (TheJUMP).  This will allow them to immediately apply the knowledge and skills developing in class, to bring together our knowing, doing, making focus.

Course Grading:

Minor Assignments:

5%  Visual Rhetoric (static image) Creation & 1-2 pg Design Rationale

5%  Short Audio Production (e.g., re/mix or podcast) & 1-2 pg Medium Reflection

10% Micro-Video Production (e.g., YouTube) & 1-2 pg Audience Analysis

10% Multimedia Critical Response Paper

15% (3) Critical Response Papers (2-3pg each) – (15% in total, 5% each)

Major Assignments:

15% Research/Argument Paper (12-15 pgs)

25% Multimedia/Digital Scholarship Project (ebook or website platform)

(This assignment builds from the previous argument paper)

Class Project/Group Projects:

15% Design & Produce Issue of TheJUMP

- Class Project will be divided into Group Responsibilities

Course Texts:

Kress & Van Leeuwen, Multimodal Discourse: The Modes and Media of Contemporary Communication

Hayles, Electronic Literature: New Horizons for the Literary

- CD Insert: Hayles, Montfort, Rettberg, & Strickland Eds., Electronic Literature Collection

Brooke, Lingua Fracta: Towards a Rhetoric of New Media                 

Shedroff, Experience Design 1

Selected essays, chapters, articles, hypertexts, websites, ebooks, podcasts, and videos (provided)

In the wake of the video game explosion in the early 1990s, scholars began to investigate the pedagogical, epistemological, and even cultural implications of "games."  Not surprisingly, games have been exceedingly fruitful for these discussions: from understanding how games offer immersive learning models (cf., James Paul Gee) to how games, based in critical theories of play, have proliferated the histories of humanity (cf., Johan Huizinga). Beyond those considerations, games offer access to a wide range of conversations, from narrative theory (narratology) to attention economies (as Richard Lanham has constructed them).  Add to this the fact that the gaming industry had greater sales last year than the cinema industry, and we see not only a cultural shift occurring but also a need for us to critically and creatively consider the rhetorical possibilities emerging with games.

As such, this course will focus on gaming rhetorics: beginning from the rhetorical considerations of ludology (theories of play), which has grounds/history in classical rhetoric, to conversations on social media and games (i.e,. Facebook games, WOW, PSP, PS3 Online, etc.), to serious games (games designed to make critical/cultural commentary, to engage in civic/social issues). Along the way, students will be ask not only to read works on games, but to play games, and to use those experiences as bases for research, as evidence and support (in ethnographical fashion) for ideas explored/developed in the course and in their work.

Additionally, given the "new media" realm in which video games finds themselves, our work in this course will also engage "writing" formats beyond traditional, print writing.  We will use a three-headed approach—knowing (theoretical knowledge), doing (practical/productive knowledge), and making (productive knowledge)—with emphasis placed on making for it is making, not knowing, that takes center stage in digital culture.  Thus, students will be asked to make projects that use actual game footage/images (i.e., machinima) and/or that apply gaming theories/concepts introduced in the course.

By the end of this course students will have learned

-    to navigate, identify, and critically engage norms, rules, guides for a social media gaming environment or gaming community;

-    to extend theories of play to include rhetorical and cultural considerations;

-    to analyze, articulate, and critically respond to issues related to game content, game experiences, game communities;

-    to develop rhetorical discourse through multiple methods/modes of communication: oral, textual, visual, and multimedia;

-    to work collaboratively to solve problems in gaming environments;

-    to write/produce/make as a collaborative;

-    to engage qualitative research methodologies.

Course Projects:

One critical component of the course will be students' level of involvement, which includes both traditional classroom participation and actively participating in a gaming environment.  As such, participation will play significant role in this course assessment, perhaps more so than in other courses. (Specific guidelines for how the assessment of this involvement/participation will be provided in class, but part of the grade will include self-reporting.)  Beyond involvement, this course includes both a "substantial writing component" and a "substantial production component" as students will be asked to complete traditional writing assignments as well as to produce discourse in varying types of media, with both subjected to process-based approaches (drafting, peer review, revision, and the like).

Course Grading:

20% (4) Critical Response Papers (3-5pg each) – (20% in total, 5% each)

15% Research/Argument Paper (12-15pgs)

15% Multimedia/Digital Scholarship Project (ebook or website platform)

    (This assignment builds from/extends the previous argument paper)

20% Involvement/Participation

    5% Weekly Self-Assessment Reports

    5% Multimedia Production Exercises

    10% Discussion/Gaming Involvement

30% Machinima Group Project:

15% Machinima Creation,

6%   4-5 pg Rhetorical Analysis,

4%   2-3pg Project Reflection,

2%   1 pg Group Evaluation,

3%   7-10 minute Class Presentation

Course "Texts":

Gee, What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy

Bogust, Persuasive Games

Wardrip-Fruin & Harrigan, First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Games

Blizzard Entertainment - Worlds of Warcraft (computer game and online account)

Selected essays, articles, chapters (provided by instructor)

Moulthrop, "After the Last Generation: Rethinking Scholarship in the Days of Serious Play"

Eskilenin, "The Gaming Situation"

Huizinga, Homo Ludens – Selections include "Nature and Significance of Play as a Cultural Phenomenon," "Play and Contest as Civilizing Functions," "Playing and Knowing," and "Play-Forms in Philosophy"

Possible additional selections from:

Lyotard, Just Gaming

Aarseth, Cybertext

Flanagan, Critical Play: Radical Game Design

Pearce et al, Communities of Play

Sicart, The Ethics of Computer Games

Baudrillard, Simulations

Possible gaming platforms to include for consideration: Nintendo Wii, Play Station 3, Xbox, PSP(Our emphasis, however, will be on the rhetorical/cultural elements of games in these platforms as well as the social media aspects emerging with each console's online community)

In the wake of the video game explosion in the early 1990s, scholars began to investigate the pedagogical, epistemological, and even cultural implications of "games."  Not surprisingly, games have been exceedingly fruitful for these discussions: from understanding how games offer immersive learning models (cf., James Paul Gee) to how games, based in critical theories of play, have proliferated the histories of humanity (cf., Johan Huizinga). Beyond those considerations, games offer access to a wide range of conversations, from narrative theory (narratology) to attention economies (as Richard Lanham has constructed them).  Add to this the fact that the gaming industry had greater sales last year than the cinema industry, and we see not only a cultural shift occurring but also a need for us to critically and creatively consider the rhetorical possibilities emerging with games.

As such, this course will focus on gaming rhetorics: beginning from the rhetorical considerations of ludology (theories of play), which has grounds/history in classical rhetoric, to conversations on social media and games (i.e,. Facebook games, WOW, PSP, PS3 Online, etc.), to serious games (games designed to make critical/cultural commentary, to engage in civic/social issues). Along the way, students will be ask not only to read works on games, but to play games, and to use those experiences as bases for research, as evidence and support (in ethnographical fashion) for ideas explored/developed in the course and in their work.

Additionally, given the "new media" realm in which video games finds themselves, our work in this course will also engage "writing" formats beyond traditional, print writing.  We will use a three-headed approach—knowing (theoretical knowledge), doing (practical/productive knowledge), and making (productive knowledge)—with emphasis placed on making for it is making, not knowing, that takes center stage in digital culture.  Thus, students will be asked to make projects that use actual game footage/images (i.e., machinima) and/or that apply gaming theories/concepts introduced in the course.

By the end of this course students will have learned

-   to navigate, identify, and critically engage norms, rules, guides for a social media gaming environment or gaming community;

-    to extend theories of play to include rhetorical and cultural considerations;

-    to analyze, articulate, and critically respond to issues related to game content, game experiences, game communities;

-    to develop rhetorical discourse through multiple methods/modes of communication: oral, textual, visual, and multimedia;

-    to work collaboratively to solve problems in gaming environments;

-    to write/produce/make as a collaborative;

-    to engage qualitative research methodologies.

Course Projects:

One critical component of the course will be students' level of involvement, which includes both traditional classroom participation and actively participating in a gaming environment.  As such, participation will play significant role in this course assessment, perhaps more so than in other courses. (Specific guidelines for how the assessment of this involvement/participation will be provided in class, but part of the grade will include self-reporting.)  Beyond involvement, this course includes both a "substantial writing component" and a "substantial production component" as students will be asked to complete traditional writing assignments as well as to produce discourse in varying types of media, with both subjected to process-based approaches (drafting, peer review, revision, and the like).

Course Grading:

20% (4) Critical Response Papers (3-5pg each) – (20% in total, 5% each)

15% Research/Argument Paper (12-15pgs)

15% Multimedia/Digital Scholarship Project (ebook or website platform)
    (This assignment builds from/extends the previous argument paper)

20% Involvement/Participation

       5% Weekly Self-Assessment Reports

       5% Multimedia Production Exercises

       10% Discussion/Gaming Involvement

30% Machinima Group Project:

15% Machinima Creation,

        6%   4-5 pg Rhetorical Analysis,

        4%   2-3pg Project Reflection,

        2%   1 pg Group Evaluation,

        3%   7-10 minute Class Presentation

Course "Texts":

Gee, What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy

Bogust, Persuasive Games

Wardrip-Fruin & Harrigan, First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Games

Blizzard Entertainment - Worlds of Warcraft (computer game and online account)

Selected essays, articles, chapters (provided by instructor)

- Moulthrop, "After the Last Generation: Rethinking Scholarship in the Days of Serious Play"

- Eskilenin, "The Gaming Situation"

- Huizinga, Homo Ludens – Selections include "Nature and Significance of Play as a Cultural Phenomenon," "Play and Contest as Civilizing Functions," "Playing and Knowing," and "Play-Forms in Philosophy"

Possible additional selections from:

- Lyotard, Just Gaming

- Aarseth, Cybertext

- Flanagan, Critical Play: Radical Game Design

- Pearce et al, Communities of Play

- Sicart, The Ethics of Computer Games

- Baudrillard, Simulations

Possible gaming platforms to include for consideration: Nintendo Wii, Play Station 3, Xbox, PSP
(Our emphasis, however, will be on the rhetorical/cultural elements of games in these platforms as well as the social media aspects emerging with each console's online community)

In this course, we will explore how the digital (as apparatus, as memory) opens up new spaces, places, and purposes for monumentality in our culture.  Following the work of Gregory L. Ulmer, we shall pursue the rhetorical, cultural, and socio-political possibilities of digital monumentality. On our way to developing a framework by which we might analyze, critique, and create digital monuments, and by which we might extend them (or have them extend us) onto the "real," we will explore many of the nuances of the classical rhetoric canon of Memory and how it might be changing given the digital turn.

This course will investigate the impact of technologies (and related exclusionary or ordering practices) on Memory, and on the archive more generally, and will situate these issues in relation to larger frames like the social spectacle (and societies of the spectacle), cultural identity formation, revisionist histories, and the other, to name a few.  But we will also attempt to move beyond the "archival walls" and consider the rhetoric(s) of memorials and monuments as rhetorical acts of remembrance, as rhetorical acts of commemoration.  We shall explore these "acts" in terms of both formed and formless values (Bataille's informe), and critically consider how they contribute to (self/social) identity-politics.  Particularly, we will pay heed to the various mediums of epideictic rhetoric (oral, written, sculptural, digital, etc.) as they relate to considerations and treatment of the abject—often an unacknowledged (and uncritically examined) sacrifice standing at the heart of both formed and formless values.

Thus, we will attempt to open the conversation to the gestures of honoring the dead, the interrelations between catastrophe and monumentality, the rhetorical acts and rhetorical creations associated with mourning, loss, and sacrifice (individual and collective), and the acts of bearing witness and giving testimony—focusing on how these all come to bear on our given moment, our given identities/subjectivities, our given principles and policies.   And it will be from these frames that we will create, invent, make digital monuments that draw attention to both real and virtual formed and formless values.

By the end of the course students will have learned how to:
-    communicate/create, with rhetorical purpose, in a variety of digital communication technologies;
-    do archival research in textual, image, video, audio formats (in both general and special collections)
-    critically analyze, interpret, and invent (with) images, sounds, texts, and their integrations;
-    critically/creatively explore the relationships between formed and formless values (and related policies that help establish those);
-    position lines of thought in relation to varying technological frames (working across distinctions of orality, literacy, secondary orality, digital literacy, electracy, and the like).
-    work in "found materials" (Miller, Rhythm Science) as a way for generating rhetorical discourse (i.e., a "writing"/remixing via cultural moments, cultural memories).

Course Projects:
This course has a substantial digital production component, and is designated as a Writing Flag as we will work through varying drafts and revisions of most of the course work.  Also, we will not only engage traditional "writing" (and its revisions) as method for focusing on course content, but each of the digital productions will also include its own "written" component (at minimum, a design reflection and/or design rationale—following common industry practices).

Minor Assignments:
5%  Visual Rhetoric (static image) Creation & 1-2 pg Design Rationale
5%  Short Audio Production (e.g., re/mix or podcast) & 1-2 pg Medium Reflection
5%  Micro-Video Production (e.g., YouTube) & 1-2 pg Audience Analysis
10% (2) Critical Response Papers (2-3pgs each) – (10% in total, 5% each)
10% Monument Analysis (5-7pgs)
15% Reading Responses (short responses to selected reading)

Major Assignment:
50% Electronic Monument:  
-    15% Digital Proposal
-    5% Material Periphery
-    15% Digital Testimonial
-    10% Rhetorical Analysis Paper
-    5% Project Reflection Paper

Course Texts:
Ulmer, Electronic Monuments
Derrida, Archive Fever
Debord, The Society of the Spectacle
Blanchot, The Writing of the Disaster
Selected essays, chapters, articles, hypertexts, websites, ebooks, podcasts, and videos (provided)
Possible Selections From:
  Bataille, "Abjection and Miserable Forms"
  Blanchot, The Writing of the Disaster
  Baudrillard, Simulations
  Foucault, Language, Counter-Memory, Practice
  -----.  The Archaeology of Knowledge
  -----. The Order of Things
  Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays.
  Serres, The Parasite
  Ulmer, "The Object of Post-Criticism" and "Abject Monumentality"

In this course, we will critically and creatively investigate rhetorical invention in relation to multimodal and multimedia communication—specifically, exploring the impacts of digital cultures and digital communicational technologies on the possibilities and potentialities of/for rhetorical invention.  We will focus on (1) how emerging digital ecologies have opened communicational possibilities beyond the singular limits of written (alphabetic) texts, and (2) how these changes in communicational technologies, specifically the media (and mediums) of digital communication, radically alter how we come to and come to understand rhetorical invention.  

With our focus being on digital communication technologies and rhetorical invention, we will approach the course in terms of knowing (theoretical knowledge), doing (practical/pedagogical knowledge), and making (productive knowledge)—placing an emphasis on making.  This emphasis is paramount as making not only opens a variety of ways to engage different types, kinds, processes, and practices of rhetorical invention, but also is one of the key advantages of working in digital culture—making, not knowing, takes center stage in digital ecologies.  As such, students will be required to complete several digital productions.  

By the end of the course students will have learned how to
-    communicate/create, with rhetorical purpose, in a variety of digital communication technologies;
-    engage and utilize a plethora of rhetorical invention approaches: from the classical topoi to new emerging sets of topoi;
-    critically analyze, interpret, and invent (with) images, sounds, texts, and their integrations;
-    critically/creatively respond to medium/message considerations, and the distinctions of orality, literacy, secondary orality, and digital literacy, and electracy.
-    approach intellectual property right regulations and plagiarism as well as understand how these issues manifest in murky areas of digital environs;
-    express themselves and their ideas through multivocality, and to learn to rhetorically invent and think in this polyvalence;
-    approach rhetoric in oral, textual, visual, and multimedia ways.

Course Grading
15% Research/Argument Paper (12-15 pgs)
25% Multimedia/Digital Scholarship Project (ebook or website platform)
25% Group Projects (Electronic Monument, 4-5 page Rhetorical Analysis, 2-3 page Project     
    Reflection, Class Presentation)
15% (3) Critical Response Papers (2-3pg each) – (15% in total, 5% each)
5%  Weekly Participation – online, scholarly conversation (blog, wiki, forum, etc.)
5%  Visual Rhetoric (static image) Creation & 1-2 pg Design Rationale
5%  Short Audio Production (e.g., podcast) & 1-2 pg Medium Reflection
5%  Micro-Video Production (e.g., YouTube) & 1-2 pg Audience Analysis
    
Course Texts
McLuhan, _Understanding Media_; Lanham, _The Economics of Attention_; Ulmer, _Electronic Monuments_ and _Teletheory_; Miller, _Rhythm Science_; Lars Von Trier & Jurgen Leth, _The Five Obstructions_ (film); selected essays hypertexts, websites, ebooks, podcasts, and videos; additional readings.

In this course, we will explore how the changing multimedia landscape is opening the possibilities for rhetorical communication and how those changes impact critical scholarship.
Particularly, we will focus on how the changes associated with the emerging digital culture, changes intricately linked with digital communication technologies, radically alter how we come to and come to understand rhetorical discourse.  From this perspective, we will consider the production/creation, distribution/dissemination, and assessment/evaluation of multimedia, and critically/creatively examine potential methodologies, heuristics, and heuretics for examining these areas.

With our focus being on digital communication technologies and rhetorical discourse, we will approach the course in terms of knowing (theoretical knowledge), doing (practical/pedagogical knowledge), and making (productive knowledge)—placing an emphasis on making.  This emphasis is paramount as making not only opens a variety of ways to engage different types, kinds, processes, and practices of rhetorical communication, but also is one of the key advantages of working in digital culture where making, not knowing, takes center stage.  As such, students will be required to complete several digital productions.  

By the end of the course students will have learned how to
-    communicate/create rhetorically in a variety of digital communication technologies;
-    analyze, interpret, and invent (with) images, sounds, texts, and their integrations;
-    critically/creatively navigate medium/message dynamics;
-    consider the role of experience design in the multimedia paradigm;
-    approach intellectual property right regulations (and plagiarism) as well as understand how these issues manifest in murky areas of digital environs;
-    express themselves and their ideas through multivocality, approaching digital rhetorical discourse in terms of choice and mediums (utilizing oral, textual, visual, and multimedia methods of communication [and their integrations]).

Course Projects:
This course has a "substantial digital production component" as well as a "substantial writing component," as each is crucial to understanding and extending the potentialities of the other.  As such, each digital production, in addition to any text-based writing in the production itself, will also include meta-discourse and other text-based writing (i.e., essays, papers, etc.)—at minimum, a design reflection and/or design rationale (following common industry practices).

Additionally, students will have an opportunity to design and produce a special themed issue of The Journal for Undergraduate Multimedia Projects (TheJUMP).  This will allow them to immediately apply the knowledge and skills developing in class, to bring together our knowing, doing, making focus.

Course Grading:
Minor Assignments:
5%  Visual Rhetoric (static image) Creation & 1-2 pg Design Rationale
5%  Short Audio Production (e.g., re/mix or podcast) & 1-2 pg Medium Reflection
10% Micro-Video Production (e.g., YouTube) & 1-2 pg Audience Analysis
10% Multimedia Critical Response Paper
15% (3) Critical Response Papers (2-3pg each) – (15% in total, 5% each)
Major Assignments:
15% Research/Argument Paper (12-15 pgs)
25% Multimedia/Digital Scholarship Project (ebook or website platform)
(This assignment builds from the previous argument paper)

Class Project/Group Projects:
15% Design & Produce Issue of TheJUMP
- Class Project will be divided into Group Responsibilities
    
Course Texts:
Kress & Van Leeuwen, Multimodal Discourse: The Modes and Media of Contemporary Communication
Hayles, Electronic Literature: New Horizons for the Literary
- CD Insert: Hayles, Montfort, Rettberg, & Strickland Eds., Electronic Literature Collection
Brooke, Lingua Fracta: Towards a Rhetoric of New Media    
Shedroff, Experience Design 1
Selected essays, chapters, articles, hypertexts, websites, ebooks, podcasts, and videos (provided)

In the wake of the video game explosion in the early 1990s, scholars began to investigate the pedagogical, epistemological, and even cultural implications of "games."  Not surprisingly, games have been exceedingly fruitful for these discussions: from understanding how games offer immersive learning models (cf., James Paul Gee) to how games, based in critical theories of play, have proliferated the histories of humanity (cf., Johan Huizinga). Beyond those considerations, games offer access to a wide range of conversations, from narrative theory (narratology) to attention economies (as Richard Lanham has constructed them).  Add to this the fact that the gaming industry had greater sales last year than the cinema industry, and we see not only a cultural shift occurring but also a need for us to critically and creatively consider the rhetorical possibilities emerging with games.

As such, this course will focus on gaming rhetorics: beginning from the rhetorical considerations of ludology (theories of play), which has grounds/history in classical rhetoric, to conversations on social media and games (i.e,. Facebook games, WOW, PSP, PS3 Online, etc.), to serious games (games designed to make critical/cultural commentary, to engage in civic/social issues). Along the way, students will be ask not only to read works on games, but to play games, and to use those experiences as bases for research, as evidence and support (in ethnographical fashion) for ideas explored/developed in the course and in their work.

Additionally, given the "new media" realm in which video games finds themselves, our work in this course will also engage "writing" formats beyond traditional, print writing.  We will use a three-headed approach—knowing (theoretical knowledge), doing (practical/productive knowledge), and making (productive knowledge)—with emphasis placed on making for it is making, not knowing, that takes center stage in digital culture.  Thus, students will be asked to make projects that use actual game footage/images (i.e., machinima) and/or that apply gaming theories/concepts introduced in the course.

By the end of this course students will have learned
-    to navigate, identify, and critically engage norms, rules, guides for a social media gaming environment or gaming community;
-    to extend theories of play to include rhetorical and cultural considerations;
-    to analyze, articulate, and critically respond to issues related to game content, game experiences, game communities;
-    to develop rhetorical discourse through multiple methods/modes of communication: oral, textual, visual, and multimedia;
-    to work collaboratively to solve problems in gaming environments;
-    to write/produce/make as a collaborative;
-    to engage qualitative research methodologies.

Course Projects:
One critical component of the course will be students' level of involvement, which includes both traditional classroom participation and actively participating in a gaming environment.  As such, participation will play significant role in this course assessment, perhaps more so than in other courses. (Specific guidelines for how the assessment of this involvement/participation will be provided in class, but part of the grade will include self-reporting.)  Beyond involvement, this course includes both a "substantial writing component" and a "substantial production component" as students will be asked to complete traditional writing assignments as well as to produce discourse in varying types of media, with both subjected to process-based approaches (drafting, peer review, revision, and the like).

Course Grading:
20% (4) Critical Response Papers (3-5pg each) – (20% in total, 5% each)
15% Research/Argument Paper (12-15pgs)
15% Multimedia/Digital Scholarship Project (ebook or website platform)
    (This assignment builds from/extends the previous argument paper)
20% Involvement/Participation
    5% Weekly Self-Assessment Reports
    5% Multimedia Production Exercises
    10% Discussion/Gaming Involvement
30% Machinima Group Project:
15% Machinima Creation,
6%   4-5 pg Rhetorical Analysis,
4%   2-3pg Project Reflection,
2%   1 pg Group Evaluation,
3%   7-10 minute Class Presentation

Course "Texts":
Gee, What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy
Bogust, Persuasive Games
Wardrip-Fruin & Harrigan, First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Games
Blizzard Entertainment - Worlds of Warcraft (computer game and online account)

Selected essays, articles, chapters (provided by instructor)
Moulthrop, "After the Last Generation: Rethinking Scholarship in the Days of Serious Play"
Eskilenin, "The Gaming Situation"
Huizinga, Homo Ludens – Selections include "Nature and Significance of Play as a Cultural Phenomenon," "Play and Contest as Civilizing Functions," "Playing and Knowing," and "Play-Forms in Philosophy"

Possible additional selections from:
Lyotard, Just Gaming
Aarseth, Cybertext
Flanagan, Critical Play: Radical Game Design
Pearce et al, Communities of Play
Sicart, The Ethics of Computer Games
Baudrillard, Simulations

Possible gaming platforms to include for consideration: Nintendo Wii, Play Station 3, Xbox, PSP
(Our emphasis, however, will be on the rhetorical/cultural elements of games in these platforms as well as the social media aspects emerging with each console's online community)