A Bigger Place to Play:
Text, Knowledge, and Pedagogy
in the Electronic Age

release version 1.2

Randy Bass, English, bassr@gusun.georgetown.edu

Spring 1997

Release Version for Bigger Place to Play -- 1996


Student Responsibilities | Reading Schedule

Student Responsibilities:

Evaluation will be based on engagement and participation in the course, and evaluation on the following assignments:

  • A hypertext of the "claims and contexts" of hypertext. In groups of three. Built in StorySpace. (weeks 3-6)
  • One "site analysis" of a World Wide Web site on culture/history, written in HTML on the Web and based on our lexicon of analytic terms. Done individually. (Weeks 7-10)
  • List of Site Analyses or jump directly to a student's analysis:

  • A final project in electronic or combination print/electronic format (weeks 13-15)

Reading Schedule:

I. Overview of Topics, Issues, Technologies (weeks 1-2)

    T, 1/14: Opening Session: "Resisting the Myths of the Electronic Frontier" Where: Reiss 282

    T, 1/21: "What Are we Talking About When We're Talking About Electronic Texts?" Where: Reiss 282

    T, 1/28: Making Meaning in Hypertext and Electronic Texts (I) Where: New North 311

      Reading: Landow, Hypertext (at least chaps. 1-4)

II. Rhetoric of Hypertext, cont.

    T, 2/4: Making Meaning in Hypertext (II) Where: New North 311

      Reading: Landow, Hypertext (finish); Lanham, The Electronic Word (chaps. 1-2). Landow, ed. Hyper/Text/Theory (chaps 2, 3).

    T, 2/11: Making Meaning in Hypertext (III) Where: Reiss 282

      Draft group critiques of hypertext projects. Reading: Landow, ed. Hyper/Text/Theory (chaps 5, 6, and 11).

III. Topics: Text, Knowledge, Pedagogy

    T, 2/18: Electronic Texts, Databases, Archives Where: New North 311

      Reading: Lynette Hunter, "Fact-Information-Data-Knowledge: Databases as a Way of Organizing Knowledge." Literary & Linguistic Computing Oxford University Press. 5.1 (1990): 49;

      Projects: Hypertexts on Hypertext due in class. You'll be in six groups of three people. Group presentation of hypertexts in class. Group turns in a paper write-up that includes a one page cover sheet summarizing the approach and individual one page write-ups on conclusions and questions raised about the claims and contexts of hypertext, having worked on a hypertext about hypertext.

    T, 2/25: Narrative, Inquiry, and Cultural Archives Where: New North 311

    T, 3/4: Narrative, Inquiry, and Cultural Archives (II) Where: Reiss 282

      Reading: Henrietta Shirk, "Cognitive Architecture in Hypermedia Instruction"; Glen Hoptman, "The Virtual Museum and Related Epistemological Concerns" (handouts); Stone, War of Desire and Technology (Intro, 1, 6, 7); See also related links for electronic fieldwork.

    T, 3/11: Procrastination, Margaritas, Sleep (Spring break)

    T, 3/18: Blurred Boundaries of The Interface: Narrative, Archive, and Knowledge

    T, 3/25: Electronic Texts, Knowledge, and Pedagogy

      Reading: Lanham, (chaps 4, 7, 8); Clifford Stoll, Silicon Snake Oil (handout)

    T, 4/1: Postmodernity and the Subject

      Reading: Poster, Second Media Age, chaps 1 &2; Stone, War of Desire and Technology; Jameson, "The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism";

    T, 4/8: Postmodernity and the Subject:

      Reading: Deleuze and Guattari, "Introduction" (Rhizome); Hyper/Text/Theory (chaps 8 and 9).

    T, 4/15: MOO Night (led by Eric Hofmann)

    T, 4/22: Class: Synthesis

    T, 4/29: Critique of Projects

    T, 5/6: Critique of Projets (make up class)

    FINAL PROJECTS DUE: Thursday, May 13.