ENGL6344: Syllabus

Course Description

ENGL6344: Rhetoric in Digital Environments (3 credits)
Study of the uses of digital media in research, information development and sharing, and advocacy regarding public issues.

Expanded Description

Setting out broadly and together with questions such as, “What are digital rhetorics now?” and “What, as rhetoric and writing readers, writers, teachers, researchers, and learners might we do with digital rhetorics?” In ENGL6344, we will inquire into a set of rhetorical concepts, language patterns, and conditions commonly associated with digital environments: hypertext, database-vs-story, avatar/identity, artificial intelligences, attention structures, and dataism. The course is designed to be expansively but manageably kaleidoscopic, seeing/seeking many directions and possibilities at once among the intersecting through lines shared across these concepts; given this, as your own historical, critical, practical, and theoretical interests emerge, you will develop a stepped project to be shaped through shorter then longer episodes, from 100-word reactions, to 2-3 blog carnivals, and, ultimately, to a substantive project. Longer readings will include (in part or whole) Jenny Odell’s How to Do Nothing (2019), Byung-Chul Han’s Non-things (2022), Adam Banks’ Digital Griots (2011), Steven Mailloux’s Disciplinary Identities (2006), in addition to shorter selections from Angela Haas, Dànielle Devoss and Jim Ridolfo, Jim Brown, Collin Brooke, Lev Manovich, N. Katherine Hayles, Jorge Luis Borges, Nathaniel Rivers, and University of Michigan’s Gayle Morris Sweetland Digital Rhetoric Collaborative (https://www.digitalrhetoriccollaborative.org/). No prior experience with practices or studies related to digital rhetorics is required.

Course Goals for ENGL6344

Course goals for ENGL6344 include but are not limited to the following:

1. Identify together the promises and pitfalls of digital rhetorics as they shape, substantiate, and interact with research, teaching, and practices constitutive of Rhetoric and Composition/Writing Studies. [Critical Disciplinary Inquiry and Knowledge-Making]
2. Set in relation contemporary research conducted by academic and public scholars, first by locating and learning about those relations, then by extending their work through in-class dialogue and writing of our own. [Making Connections Among Key Ideas and Extending Them Through Discussion and Writing]
3. Compose a series of research-related texts as a distributed, recursive process that adapts to rhetorical contingencies, that responds to distinct audiences and genres, and that requires planning, review, and revision, leading to circulation. [Graduate-level Writing as a Distributed, Rhetorical Process]
4. Gain fluency with an expanded practical vocabulary for rhetoric in digital environments, with sustained consideration of attention, artificiality, and dataism, in particular. [Collating and Coalescing Terms]
5. Additional goals will be established together as the semester gets underway. [Shared, Emergent Goals TBD]

Course Texts and Materials

Han, Byung-Chul. Non-things: Upheaval in the Lifeworld. Trans. David Steuer. Medford, MA: Polity, 2022. ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-5170-5. (required)

Odell, Jenny. How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy. New York: Melville House, 2019. ISBN-13: 978-161219-855-2. (required)

Additional readings are provided as PDFs organized and stored in Canvas. You should download PDFs for reading on the screen or, if you prefer, for printing and reading. The course schedule/calendar includes in parentheses after each assigned reading a time estimate meant to assist you with calibrating your time spent reading for the course. Plan to spend as much as 30 USD on printing and photocopying over the course of the semester, if you prefer printed copies of the PDFs.

Grading

Grading will adhere to a grading contract, which you will find in your Google Folder for the class. The menu of graded items is as follows:
90s (weekly writing): 30
Blog Carnivals x3: 60
Reflection: 10

With the goal of ensuring transparency and clear communication, alongside the grading contract, projects will be reviewed and commented upon in a manner intended to be open, encouraging and constructive, and inquiry-oriented. A record of graded items will be continuously updated on the labor-based contract in your Google Folder. I will provide responses to your work following deadlines and at any other time you request input from me.

Additional ungraded, or credit/no credit items include the following:
September conference to discuss your work
Notes/annotation snapshot (due no later than October 15)
In-class writing, activities, and heuristics

Turning in Work

Shared Folder in Google Drive
All work will be turned in via designated folders in Google Drive. You will receive an email message from me early in the semester that shares with you access to a folder for your work. When you submit work, double-check to make sure the file format is Google Docs (that is, please do not submit PDFs, unconverted Word docs, or Pages files, or any other file formats unless the instructions call for it or it meets some other rhetorical purpose you have identified for the piece). Feedback, responses, and reader notes will be returned in this same location. For some projects this semester, we will also be posting work semi-publicly to a blog. Specific instructions for these assignments are posted on the projects page.

File Naming
Please adhere to the file naming conventions shown in the instructions provided in Canvas and your Google Folder.

Late Work
Unless otherwise specified or arranged in advance, all work must be submitted before the start of class on the due date to be considered on time and therefore eligible for full credit.

Course Policies

Attendance and Participation

ENGL6344 is a graduate-level seminar. Absences or lack of preparation for class will affect your colleagues' work as well as your own. The work you do in and in preparation for each class is as important as the polished assignment you turn in for any project. In addition, our syllabus and schedule are only a projection and may be subject to occasional changes and revisions as it seems appropriate, necessary, or just interesting. That is another reason why your attendance and engagement are valued so highly.

If you must miss a class, you are still responsible for all work assigned, including turning work in by stated deadlines. Class time cannot be reconstructed or made up, and your performance, your work, and your course grade will be impacted by absences.

We will meet this semester in Shanks 340. I encourage you to bring a laptop with you, if possible, for active note-keeping and for some in-class activities. As a rule of thumb, I ask that your in-class uses of mobile devices (e.g., cell phones) and laptop computers be focused on class-related activities. Obviously, you should silence your phones before coming to class. As long as everyone is respectfully attentive when someone is speaking, in-class technology use will not be a problem. In-class attentiveness, engagement, and preparedness (i.e., having read and prepared for each class) are a basic expectation.

Computer and Internet Usage

We will be interacting with online resources and other sites on the internet during the course. Please let me know if you have any concerns about fluency with using a browser such as Firefox, Chrome, or Safari. When using a computer, save your work frequently, always make backup copies, and plan your projects with extra time allowed for unexpected challenges.

Communication with Peers; Communication with the Instructor

While you can expect a considerable amount of leadership and direction to come from me, you should also make arrangements early in the semester to communicate with your peers. In other words, you are strongly encouraged to identify one or two (perhaps more) peers in the class with whom you can discuss how the class is going, consider readings and assignments, work through questions brought up in the class, and approach when you find something unclear. In short, my hope is that we all will prefer climate in which dialogue and interaction circulates between the instructor and students and also between and among students when questions come up. Finally, you should always be proactive about asking questions when you have them, either by raising questions during class or contacting me or one of your peers privately.

Email

To communicate by email we will usually use our vt.edu accounts, accessible via http://mail.google.com/a/vt.edu. I encourage you to check your vt.edu email at least once daily. You may call and leave a phone message, but you will at times find it more effective to use email to contact me about your work in the course. You can also set up an appointment to meet with me on campus, or to ask a question. With rare exceptions, I will respond to email inquiries within 48 hours.

Graduate Honor System

Students enrolled in this course are responsible for abiding by the Graduate Honor Code. A student who has doubts about how the Honor Code applies to any assignment is responsible for obtaining specific guidance from the course instructor before submitting the assignment for evaluation. Ignorance of the rules does not exclude any member of the University community from the requirements and expectations of the Honor Code.

Plagiarism occurs when a writer passes off another's words or ideas without acknowledging their source, whether intentionally or not. For example, turning in another's work as your own is plagiarism. If you plagiarize in this class, you will likely fail the assignment on which you are working and your case may be passed to the university for additional disciplinary action. Because of the design and nature of this course, it will take as much (or more) work for you to plagiarize in it than it will to actually complete the work of the class.

For additional information about the Graduate Honor Code, please visit: https://graduateschool.vt.edu/academics/expectations/graduate-honor-system.html

Services for Students with Disabilities (SSD)

Virginia Tech welcomes students with disabilities into the University’s educational programs. The University promotes efforts to provide equal access and a culture of inclusion without altering the essential elements of coursework. If you anticipate or experience academic barriers that may be due to disability, including but not limited to ADHD, chronic or temporary medical conditions, deaf or hard of hearing, learning disability, mental health, or vision impairment, please contact the Services for Students with Disabilities (SSD) office (540-231-3788, ssd@vt.edu, or visit www.ssd.vt.edu). If you have an SSD accommodation letter, please meet with me privately during office hours as early in the semester as possible to deliver your letter and discuss your accommodations. You must give me reasonable notice to implement your accommodations, which is generally 5 business days and 10 business days for final exams.

Writing Center

The Writing Center (Newman Library 2nd floor, Learning Commons; writingcenter@vt.edu, (540) 231-5436) offers free one-to-one consulting for both undergraduate and graduate students. Consulting formats include in-person, online-synchronous, and online-asynchronous. Students should bring a draft of what they’re working on and their assignment.

Contact Information