Rhetoric of New Media

 T/W/Th 10:00am-12:30pm, Dwinelle 79

This course seeks to demystify digital technology, in general, and, in particular, to investigate how the Internet as a site of cultural formation designs and configures human activity by controlling – or, steering – human perception, that is, what scholars Rankine, Loffreda, and Cap refer to as “the racial imaginary.” We will explore this concept of a “racial imaginary”, and other prominent new media theories, as a means to critique digital representations of identity, memory, and embodiment, among several genres of new media art, including Net.Art, electronic literature, and hacktivism. Students will develop responses by reading major theoretical works in new media and digital poetics, as well as surveying prominent digital humanities databases, including ELMCIP and ELO. During the six-week term, students will gain proficiency in describing and analyzing the formal components of new media “objects”, most notably, digital poems, and also in applying contemporary new media theories to the critique of said objects. Course projects include presentations, essays, and collaborative assignments.