english 6560: digital culture—theory, & practice

[full syllabus in PDF]
instructor: Dr. Amelia Chesley (pronouns: she/her)
office: Kyser Hall, 316K

in-person office hours: Tues + Thurs 9–11am
virtual office hours: Weds 9–11am + Thurs 4–6pm

office phone: 318.357.5574
email: chesleya@nsula.edu

course description + objectives

This course explores past, present, and emerging practices and trends in digital culture. We will consider a range of digital tools, platforms, and cultures, closely examining how such tools and practices influence how we create, share, and preserve texts and other cultural artifacts. You will have opportunities to engage with historical and contemporary theories of digital culture, and you’ll practice creating your own digital artifacts in a range of media.

This course will provide opportunities for you to:

• further understand the historical (and ongoing) development of media forms and practices.
• explore a range of theories about the relationships among technology, media, culture, identity, and politics
• develop your own approaches to and arguments concerning other scholars’ theories, old and new technologies, emerging media, and other representations of digital culture through regular writing and discussion.
• analyze and interrogate prominent aspects and elements of digital infrastructures and cultural artifacts.
• engage with key and emerging scholarship on how digitality impacts the ways ourselves, our communities, and our knowledges can be digitally represented and circulated
• experiment with digital tools and platforms for creating, accessing, circulating, and interacting with a range of media and content.

required course materials

To participate in this course, you will need regular and reliable access to the internet, including our course Moodle site (https://my.nsula.edu/course/view.php?id=8219), the course hcommons blog site (https://engl6560.hcommons-staging.org/), and WebEx.

We will not be using a standard textbook. All readings and other materials for the course will be linked to or provided in PDF form via Moodle.

We will be meeting fortnightly in small groups over the 16 weeks of this semester to discuss the readings and projects of the course. These synchronous virtual meetings will provide valuable time for us to learn more directly from each other’s experiences, personalities, and perspectives, and will supplement our more limited, asynchronous, written conversations about the course.

assignments + grades

The work of this course is divided into three major projects, a series of virtual conference meetings (most in small groups, some individually), and regular reading and writing opportunities.