As the course guidelines state, each week students will rotate through two different roles on the class blog (with a third group having no blogging responsibilities that week). The two roles are essentially this: either posting a response to one or two of the critical readings for the week; or posting a response to a creative work of new media. In either case, the blog posts are due by 7pm the day before class meets. Here are more details for each of these two tasks:

Critical Response

Students with this role will post an approximately 300-400 word critical response to the week’s reading. There are a number of ways to do this. You can situate the reading among the other critical approaches we’ve encountered in class; you can write about an aspect of the day’s reading that you don’t understand, or something that jars you; you can formulate an insightful question or two about the reading and then attempt to answer your own questions; or you can respond to another student’s post, building upon it, disagreeing with it, or re-thinking it. In any case, strive for thoughtfulness and nuance.

Creative Response

Students with this role will post an approximately 300-400 word critical response to a creative or expressive work of new media. As with any kind of literary or media criticism, the goal isn’t to explain why you like or do not like something, but to reveal something new about the work. There’s no need to trash a work, nor to redeem it. Instead, try to figure out how it works and what it means (or might mean). As the semester progresses, I expect that all of us will become more proficient at intelligibly critiquing new media. You may connect your response to the critical readings and themes of the week, but you need not do so. When it comes to finding works to write about, I suggest browsing Volume One and Volume Two of the Electronic Literature Organization’s anthologies of digital work.

Groups

Group 1: Anderson, Brahmstedt, Cotton, Foley, Glass, M. Jones, Lewis, Otwell, Stevenson

Group 2: Barnes, Brown, Curry, George, Hackett, C. Jones, Mayer, Seay, Thorson

Group 3: Bonsall, Connor, Farias, Gilroy, Hayden, Hickling, O’Connor, Sparks, Washington