Whatever broad historical and cultural view one takes of digital media, they raise important practical and theoretical problems, and offer significant opportunities, for scholarship and teaching in the humanities. The opportunities include development of new research tools, critical study of electronic discourse, and the creation of new textual forms and new modes of authorship. The problems range from technical matters such as determining sound editorial standards for electronic texts to broader critical issues such as reconstructing concepts of authorship, identity, community, and intellectual property--not to mention such basic literate practices as thinking, reading, and writing.

English 883C offers seminar participants an opportunity to explore digital media through the lenses of literacy, rhetoric, and cultural studies, with special--though not exclusive--emphasis on teaching in computer-supported and virtual environments.

Mapping the Emergent Structures of Electronic Literacies

The primary objective of this course is to develop a working theory of electronic literacy within a "problem space" defined by the history of technologies of writing and reading, the cultural contexts related to digital media, and the complex relationships among symbol systems, textual artifacts, modes of reading and writing, and the institutions and social relations that define literate culture. Concurrently with that collective theory-building, seminar participants will develop individual research projects, constructing theoretical frameworks and research methods for further work in the field. Thus, the course should provide students with the theoretical tools and research skills to explore further how digital media might inform their work as scholars and critics, teachers, readers, and writers.

Texts and Other Resources

This seminar will make use of various media in various ways. We will all read a set of required texts according to a fairly set schedule in order to give our work together a modicum of structure and focus :-), but students may also draw as needed on optional texts, library reserves, photocopied materials (articles, ads, and so on), hypertext fiction on our local network, web sites, email listservs, our very own CowTown MOO, and other resources.

The course texts are available at SBX (you may be able to find them elsewhere, but I placed my order for them only at SBX).

Required Texts:

Hawisher, Gail E., and Cynthia L. Selfe, eds. Passions, Pedagogies, and 21st CenturyTechnologies. Logan: Utah State UP, 1999.

Nardi, Bonnie A., and Vicki L. O'Day. Information Ecologies: Using Technology with Heart. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1999.

O'Donnell, James J. Avatars of the Word: From Papyrus to Cyberspace. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1998.

Warschauer, Mark. Electronic Literacies: Language, Culture, and Power in Online Education. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 1999.

Welch, Kathleen E. Electric Rhetoric: Classical Rhetoric, Oralism, and a New Literacy. Digital Communication. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1999.

Reserve Texts:

I will place a number of printed books on reserve in the Main Library. Click here for a list of books on reserve (under construction). In addition, I will place a number of photocopied articles on reserve in 421 Denney.

Electronic Literacy Links:

Click here for links to online resources for the study of digital literacy.

Other Materials and Resources:

To participate fully in the seminar, you must have an active email account. If you do not currently have an OSU e-mail account, we can activate your account from our classroom. In addition, you should have an account on the College of Humanities Web Server. If you don't have a Web account, please let me know right away, and I will see that you get one. Finally, I will arrange to have a character created for you on the College's CowTown MOO. You may also want to bring a floppy disk or Zip disk to class in order to transfer files from the classroom to your home or office computer..

Seminar Projects

Students will be asked to contribute regularly to in-class and on-line (email) discussion, to contribute to a web site on electronic literacy, and to conduct a seminar research project on some aspect of electronic literacy. Collaborative projects are welcome.

Though it would not exactly be retrograde to assign papers in a course on electronic literacy, the written work in this seminar will emphasize participation in e-mail and Web-based discussions, participation in MOO sessions, and hypertext authoring for the World Wide Web. Indeed, the current state of electronic literacy makes many of the familiar conventions for course assignments problematic. In an environment where the closest thing to a page is a screen, where words may be accompanied by music or images, and where what the reader sees lies above another text (e.g., HTML coding), how does one designate the "length" (breadth? depth? extent?) of assignments? If texts are by nature always in progress and easily updated, how do we handle deadlines and revision? In a form for which conventions and genres are evolving along with the technology, how does one assess the quality of design and delivery? If collaboratively written texts are linked to and integrated with other texts by other writers and disseminated via the World Wide Web, how do we ascribe authorship, ownership, and responsibility to the text? These issues are all important to the study of electronic literacy, and we will discuss them in class, designing our course work as we go.

Fortunately, we can still think of textual work in terms of rhetorical context and purpose, regardless of media. Whatever form your work takes, I ask that participants construct

• Responses to our readings and resources that you share with the class and a wider audience via a class listserv and our web site;
• Relations among your work and others' through critical engagement, citation, and links within and from our web site;
• Resources for the study of electronic literacy such as definitions of key terms and annotated bibliographies;
• Reflections concerning your own process of learning to write and read in a hypertext environment;
• Research projects concerning electronic literacy.

We will talk about logistics (deadlines, design criteria, and so on) in class. Meanwhile, if you would like some suggestions about the directions these projects might take, click on the linked words in the list above.

Schedule

The course is constructed around three nodes in a network of related topics:

• Orality, Literacy, and Digital Media in Historical Contexts
• Techology, Literacy, and Pedagogy in Cultural Contexts
• Information Ecologies

  Go to the detailed course schedule

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Course and Contact Information

English 883C: Studies in Literacy 5 Credit Hours Spring 2000 * TR 3:30-5:30 a.m. 308 Denney Hall Call #08033-2

Professor Lewis Ulman Office: 402 Denney Hall Office Hours: TR 1:30-3:30 p.m. and MTRF by appt. Phone: 614-292-22275 Fax: 614-292-4845 Mailbox in 421 Denney E-mail: ulman.1@osu.edu

Last Updated June 4, 2000 8:47 PM
H. Lewis Ulman