It’s been an exhausting week, starting with some personal drama and ending with the death of an old friend. In between, a few good things happened:

• I got funded for CCCC.
• Curriculum I proposed was passed at the department level. Not the new media course, which I am now revising after talking to a couple colleagues, but a course called Writing Theory and Practice which includes a Writing Center practicum.
• We had one good, cold, gray, wintry day. Finally. I am really craving some late autumn/early winter weather.
• I hatched what may be a brilliant plan to record a “This American Life”-style audio essay about Writing Center work and tutorials to help faculty better understand what happens in a tutorial.

Reader reviews of three chapters of the manuscript are in . . . Amy and I should have them in a few days, and then, I'm sure, some major revising will be in order.

“Truth walks toward us on the paths of our questions. . . . As soon as you think you have the answer, you have closed the path and may miss vital new information. Wait awhile in the stillness, and do not rush to conclusions, no matter how uncomfortable the unknowing.”

(from Jacqueline Winspear's Maisie Dobbs, my book group's November pick)

Here are the “This I Believe” audio essays my Comp 1 students recorded this semester:

• Amanda 
• Ashley 
• David 
• Heather 
• Jessica 
• Johanna
• Jon 
• Karen 
• Kiley 
• Melissa 
• Rachael 
• Rhiannon 
• Sarah 
• Stephanie 
• Tanya 
• Thomas 

Yes, it’s come to this. More RBOC.

• I like Obama’s change.gov Webiste. With more people engaged in the election and transition process (as evidenced by high voter turnout—although in Colorado, it looks like voter turnout wasn’t significantly higher than in 2004, which really surprised me), the Website makes sense.
• I just discovered bubbl.us, a free Web-based mindmapping program today. It’s not as nice as MatchWare’s MindMap, but it’s free and Web-based, two advantages over MindMap when it comes to having students use it.
• Next week is going to be ridiculous. I seem to have overbooked myself, with a colloquium presentation with a colleague on the CAMP project, a grant deadline, a set of exams that need to be graded and returned, book group (haven’t read the book yet), and a gathering of metro-area Writing Center directors that I am hosting.
• I am so disappointed in the anti-gay votes in California, Arizona, Arkansas, and Florida.

I worked on the syllabus for The Rhetoric of New Media course this weekend. It’s still pretty rough, but here is some of what I have:

Potential readings include

• Gane, Nicholas, and David Beer. New Media: The Key Concepts. Gordonsville, VA: Berg Publishers, 2008.
• Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: NYU P, 2008.
• Warnick, Barbara. Critical Literacy in a Digital Era: Technology, Rhetoric, and the Public Interest. Philadelphia: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2002.

 

Objectives I’ve written so far (I’ve overused “understand and articulate” and would appreciate any suggestions for better words):

• Understand and articulate ways new media are defined and framed.
• Analyze new media according to concepts of classical and contemporary rhetoric.
• Argue whether or not new media and old media are distinctly and significantly different.
• Compose and research in new media.
• Understand and articulate ways new media reinforce and challenge pre-existing social hierarchies and concepts of race, gender, age, and class.
• Understand and articulate ways new media reinforce and challenge concepts of embodiment, identity, and community.
• Understand and articulate ways new media reinforce and challenge concepts of place, space, and time.

 

The new media the course will focus on are user generated taxonomies, file sharing sites, social networking sites, blogs and microblogs, wikis, Websites, virtual worlds, and open source software.

If you are teaching or developing a course like this, I’d love to hear your ideas.

I’m writing a syllabus for an upper division class that is tentatively titled “The Rhetoric of Hypertext,” but as I said earlier, I am wondering now if it should be called “Digital Rhetorics” or “The Rhetoric of New Media.” Probably my fretting about the title is simply a way to put off writing the actual syllabus. Oh, well.

The department thought “The Rhetoric of Hypertext” was a “sexy” title. I personally think “new media” sounds sexier than “hypertext,” but maybe people were hearing “hypersex.” (Note to self: after developing this course, work on “The Rhetoric of Hypersex.”) “Hypertext” seems a little limiting to me, and I definitely want the course to cover podcasts, which I would consider to be digital rhetorics or new media, but not hypertext.

“Digital Rhetorics” might scare off English majors, which is who the class is targeted toward. English majors tend to break out into sweats when they hear the word “digital.” Although English geeks, like me, get kind of excited, and really, it’s the English geek subgroup of the English majors that will likely take the class. But a title like “The Rhetoric of New Media” will get the geeks and some non-geeks will probably register for it not realizing that New Media involves digital anything.

I think I’ve just talked myself into calling the course “The Rhetoric of New Media.”

This is really quite amusing.

Got back to work around noon, coming straight from Breckenridge and realizing too late that my office keys were at home, so had to have the cranky office guy (yes, you know who you are) open my office for me. Had a few appointments with students, wrote an exam study guide for my tutoring class, and am now—theoretically—working on a syllabus for a class tentatively titled “The Rhetoric of Hypertext,” but I am wondering now if it should be called “Digital Rhetorics” or “The Rhetoric of New Media.”

But really, what I’m thinking about is dinner. I am so hungry.

Last night after dinner, we came back to the condo and stood outside on the balcony and drank wine. The sky was inky and full of stars. We could hear the Blue River running by just beyond the trees and smell the pine trees all around us. It was warm enough that we were comfortable in sweatshirts. It will be hard to go back on Monday.