Authoring 2.0: Writing Digital Culture (ENGL 5380-001)

As scholars in an English Department, we think we know what authorship is. In this course, we will be rethinking the basic tenets of texts and authors as they exist and are evolving in a digital age. This means that we need to explore and redefine what reading, writing, viewing, and their related tools, platforms, and skills (including books, screens, literacies, markup, content, data, etc.) are in the present moment. This course will be transdisciplinary and should be of interest to anyone who works or wants to work in the fields of reading, writing, publishing, multimedia, critical thinking and creative production. Key authorship topics that we will explore and experiment in will include creativity and copyright, downloading and uploading, remixing, the globalization of information, identity, commodifiction, tactical media, markup, spatialization, visualization and augmentation. The political issues we will grapple with will include identity formation in a global age, citizenship, ethics, intellectual property rights, consumerism, disobedience, and consumerism. From the interactivity of the 70s to the participatory culture of the social media revolution to the mobilization of occupiers via mobile media, we will explore how citizens write and write themselves into culture in a digital age.

We will also undertake hands-on explorations of software, social media, markup and publishing models. All software will be freely available on computers in Lab, or, for the most part, online or for download.

Textbooks: 

• Dilger, Bradley & Jeff Rice, Eds. From A to <A>: Keywords of Markup. Minneapolis: 
University of Minnesota Press, 2010. 978-0-8166-6609-6
• Lunenfeld, Peter. The Secret War Between Downloading and Uploading. Cambridge and London: MIT Press, 2011. 978-0-262-01547-9. 
• Karaganis, Joe, Ed. Structures of Participation. New York: Social Science Research Council, 2007. (http://www.ssrc.org/workspace/images/crm/new_publication_3/%7B6a130b0a-234a-de11-afac-001cc477ec70%7D.pdf), 
• Poster, Mark. Information Please: Culture and Politics in the Age of Digital Machines. Durham and London: Duke, 2006. 978-0-8223-3839-0. 
• Raley, Rita. Tactical Media. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009. 978-0-8166-5151-1

(Source: Course website)