Technology and Humanities

Course Goals:

This course is designed for non-English majors. The focus of this course is becoming aware of the impact that Information Society has on our lives. As an Interactive Media Studies Course, it teaches students how to do research on and publish on the Internet: they will learn how search engines work as well as Dreamweaver, working with images, etc. – skills for making a Web page. As an English course, it teaches good argumentation (that is, how to write well for the Internet). As a Humanities course, it teaches methods for thinking critically about Interactive Media – for questioning the various effects, good and bad, of information culture even as it reaches down into the very recesses of our being to shape our self-understanding. Further, the course links critical thinking to the kind of creative thinking that should ideally be brought to bear on new technological developments. The goal of English 171 is to teach students how to observe and understand the profound effects produced by any new technology on the very processes of thinking, knowing, and acting. It teaches a method for questioning the impact on self and society of any technology that students will encounter in their future studies and their lives after school, even those not specifically addressed by the course itself and those future technologies that are currently unimaginable.

Required Texts

George Lakoff & Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (Univ. of Chicago Press 0226468011)
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (1831 Edition)
Horace Walpole, Castle of Otranto, ed. Lewis (Oxford 0192834401)
Shelley Jackson, Patchwork Girl (a CD-Rom) (Eastgate Systems 1884511236)
Patrick Lynch & Sarah Horton, Web Style Guide (Yale Univ. Press 0300088981)
Lester Faigley & Jack Selzer, Good Reasons (Longman 0321105311)
Patricia T. O’Conner, Woe is I (Riverhead Books 1573226254)

NB: Some further texts will be made available electronically, on Blackboard.

Work Required:

Students should actively participate in class. If you are too shy to speak up in class, add your comments on others' assignments and/or class discussions to the Discussion Board.

This course is writing intensive, but we will also, as much as possible, try to make ours a paperless classroom. Students will complete writing assignments, ranging in length from 2 to 8 paragraphs, before every class meeting, posting them to the Discussion Board in Blackboard. The assignments can be revised for a better grade. After receiving your paragraphs with my comments added as a Word attachment in an email that I will send to you, you may rewrite it and email it back to me. All revisions are due one week after you have received my comments on the first version. Students will also make a Web site for the class. Drafts of text to appear on the site will be due periodically throughout the semester so that I can help you edit and revise. The final Web site is due no later than the date and time of the Final Exam.

Grades:

To get an A in Class Participation, you must make at least one thoughtful comment per class meeting. Again, if you are too shy to speak up, add your thoughts about class discussion to the Discussion Board.

I will grade each written assignment on what you are able to achieve with your writing, both stylistically and conceptually. That is, to receive an A, each assignment will reveal that its writer is really trying to think about a question or problem, using writing as a tool to do so. Language is a precision instrument: you can think better if you define your terms -- not according to any dictionary definition, but in accordance with the way you perceive the word to be operating in the texts you are analyzing. It may take the whole assignment to come to the definition of a term: you might write ten paragraphs about what Hobart and Schiffman mean by "oral culture," each one addressing a different aspect of what it means to live in a world without writing. By the end of your essay, then, not at the beginning, you will finally have defined "orality," and you can summarize your thoughts by way of conclusion. You can also think better if you use strong verbs, minimize nominalizations, clarify references (avoid "This shows" and "That means"! Who is "he"? "they"? "it"?), and make visible the connections (sometimes logical ones) between one idea and another (see Joseph Williams on writing well). In commenting on your written assignments, I will a) refer to Williams's Style and O'Connor's Woe, and b) ask questions in the margins. If you decide to revise your assignment, you should do so by answering those questions in the body of your next version. If I say, "What makes you think that people in Oral Cultures do not have any Information?" I really want to know where you got that idea! I may in fact agree with you, but my question indicates that your claim has not been effectively made in the writing itself. In your revised paper, you should quote a passage from the text showing Hobart and Schiffman's claim that there is no such thing as Information without a written alphabet, and then fully explain that passage. My questions and comments are designed to help you revise effectively. All revisions are due one week after you receive my comments. You may revise as many times as you like, until we are out of time (and even then . . .).

A+	97-100	C	73-76
A	93-96	C-	70-72
A-	90-92	D+	67-69
B+	87-89	D	63-66
B	83-86	D-	60-62
B-	80-82	F	0-59
C+	77-79

20%	Class Participation
50%	Assignments
30%	Final Exam or Web Project

Attendance Policy:

Miami University Academic Regulations Section 701 states that "Every student is expected to attend every class session for which the student is duly registered." Attendance is especially important in classes that meet TR. However, things happen in life: missing three classes will not affect your grade (except, perhaps, for participation). Since three absences are allowed, there is no need to tell me why you have missed those classes, though of course you are welcome to do so.

All absences, whether medically necessary or not, count towards these three. That is, you cannot take three absences for other reasons and then give me a doctor's note for a fourth absence to have it excused: it would only be excused if you have a doctor's note for ALL FOUR absences. So please, save your absences for when you really need them.

Four to five absences will seriously affect your grade. If you have more than five absences, you will be dropped from the course. You will receive an 'F' (the registrar does it automatically if I drop you from the course) UNLESS you bring a drop slip to my office. I'm happy to give you a passing grade if you were passing the course at the time you stopped attending it. You are responsible for bringing me the drop slip, for making sure I will be in my office at the time you intend to come by, and for arranging to meet me in advance of the drop deadline (last day of classes).

Teacher Availability:

You may call, come by the office, email me, contact me online through AOL Instant Messenger (LauraMiam5) and Microsoft Instant Messaging (find me by my email address), or come to visit me in the MOO. I don't always have time to answer email -- if you send me an email to which I did not respond, please check with me after class to make certain I received it.

Schedule of Readings and Assignments:
each reading must be done BY the date listed on the syllabus, and each assignment is due on the date listed, before class meets.

DATE	READINGS	ASSIGNMENTS
METAPHOR AS TECHNOLOGY
8/26 T	Course Introduction -- Syllabus
8/28 R	Lakoff and Johnson, Metaphors We Live By, pp. 3-13, 46-55, 61-68. William Blake, “A Poison Tree”	We will do this assignment together in class: Module 1, Assignment 2
9/2 T	EXCHANGE DAY -- no class	Module 1, Assignment 1: post to the Discussion Board even though we are not meeting.
9/4 R	Metaphors We Live By pp. 77-96, 106-125, 136, 139-155 excerpt from John Locke, “Of Ideas in General, and their Originality.” excerpt from Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams	Module 2, Assignment 1
9/9 T	excerpt from Metaphors We Live By, pp. 156-158. Nell Bernstein, "The War Off Drugs" Nell Bernstein, The Drug War's Littlest Victims	Module 3, Assignment 1 Module 3, Assignment 3
9/11 R	excerpt from, Joe Klein, "How to Build a Better Democrat" Philip E. Agre, "Imagining the Next War" Rabbi Moshe Waldoks, "Bomb them with Butter"	Module 3, Assignment 2
9/16 T	Meet in King Library: Understanding Printed Texts (William Wortman)	Library Assignment #1
9/18 R	Meet in KAMM, King Library 110: Searching the Internet / Searching Library Catalogues (William Wortman)	Library Assignment #2
9/23 T	excerpt from Cecilia Tichi, Shifting Gears Sense-dataum Theories, Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy and Oxford English Dictionary	Module 4, Assignment 2 Module 4, Assignment 3
9/25 R	Metaphors We Live By pp. 14-34, 159-237 excerpt from Thomas S. Kuhn, "What are Scientific Revolutions?"	Module 4, Assignment 1
9/30 T	Review of Metaphors We Live By .from Georges Cuvier, The Animal Kingdom (1884) Oxford English Dictionary: Impression Rachel Carson, "Bats Knew It First," Collier's 114.24 (Nov. 18, 1944) [available through e-reserves] Oxford English Dictionary: Sonar, Radar, Echolocation	Module 5, Assignment 1
10/2 R	excerpt from John Locke, “Of Perception," Of Retention” Oxford English Dictionary: Impression excerpt from Vannevar Bush, “As We May Think” Biography of Vannevar Bush	Module 5, Assignment 2 Choose the topic of your Web Site
TECHNOLOGY AND IDENTITY
10/7 T	David Hume, “Of Personal Identity” (1739) excerpt from Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (published 1959, Introduction, Chapter 1, Conclusion) (available on e-reserves) excerpt from Charles E. DeBose, “Codeswitching: Black English and Standard English in the African-American Linguistic Repetoire,” in Codeswitching, ed. Carol M. Eastman, Philadelphia: Multilingual Matters, 1992 (full text available through netLibrary, on line) (use your Miami ID and Password to log in)	Module 1, Assignment 1 Bibliography for your Web site
10/9 R	The Three Faces of Eve (Hollywood film starring Joanne Woodward, 1957) – to be shown in class
10/14 T	excerpt, from Ian Hacking, Rewriting the Soul: Multiple Personality and the Sciences of Memory "A true and most dreadful discourse of a woman possessed with the Devill . . . ." (published 1584) (available through Early English Books Online; click on search, then search by title)	Module 1, Assignment 2
10/16 R	The Wizard of Oz (to be shown in class)	Module 2, Assignment 1
PRACTICUM: Using Dreamweaver
10/21 T	Meet in KAMM, King Library 110: Introduction to Dreamweaver Lynch and Horton, Web Style Guide (pp. 1-36) Mary Shelley, Frankenstein	Web-Page Making Assignment Frankenstein Reading Notes Due
10/23 R	Meet in KAMM, King Library 110: Introduction to Dreamweaver: converting a Word to an HTML document Web Style Guide (pp. 37-54) Frankenstein (cont')	Web-Page Making Assignment Frankenstein Reading Notes Due
PRACTICUM: Writing for the Web
10/28 T	Faigley and Selzer, Good Reasons, ch. 2 and part of 3 (pp. 29-61) Web Style Guide (pp. 55-80) Frankenstein (cont')	Writing Exercises Frankenstein Reading Notes Due
10/30 R	Good Reasons, rest of ch. 3 and ch. 5 (pp. 62-102) Frankenstein (cont')	Writing Exercises Frankenstein Reading Notes Due
11/4 T	Good Reasons, ch 13 (pp. 255-266) Web Style Guide (pp. 81-114) Frankenstein (cont')	Writing and Design Exercises Frankenstein Reading Notes Due
11/6 R	excerpts from Edward Tufte, The Cognitive Style of Powerpoint (available on e-reserves) Good Reasons, ch. 14 (pp. 267-276) Web Style Guide (pp. 153-190) Frankenstein (cont')	Draft of Web Site Due Frankenstein Reading Notes Due
TECHNOLOGY AND IDENTITY (cont')
11/11 T	excerpts from L. Frank Baum, The Patchwork Girl of Oz Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, or a Modern Prometheus excerpt from Erving Goffman, Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity (available on e-reserves)	Module 3, Assignment 1
11/13 R	Creating a sense of self through metaphor: How the Human Mind Works Jorge Luis Borges, "The Garden of the Forking Paths" (from Everything and Nothing) (available on e-reserves) Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto	Module 4, Assignment 1 Reading notes for Otranto
11/18 T	Meet in KAMM, King Library 110 Shelley Jackson, Patchwork girl, or, A modern monster: a graveyard, a journal, a quilt, a story, & broken accents (available through Eastgate Systems) Otranto (cont')	Module 4, Assignment 2 Reading notes for Otranto
11/20 R	Meet in KAMM, King Library 110 Shelley Jackson, Patchwork girl, or, A modern monster: a graveyard, a journal, a quilt, a story, & broken accents (available through Eastgate Systems) David Chandler, "Personal Home Pages and the Construction of Identities on the Web" Otranto (cont') Log Onto the MOO, choose a character from Otranto to play, and describe your character.	Module 4, Assignment 3 Reading notes for Otranto
11/25 T	Meet in KAMM, King Library 110 Activities: Log onto Miami's MOO at http://moo.muohio.edu: Go to "Strawberry Hill" (by clicking on it the right-hand frame), then to "Castle of Otranto Gate" to begin exploring. Act out scenes from The Castle of Otranto. Readings: Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto excerpt from, Sherry Turkle, Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet ( "Aspects of the Self,' Ch. 7) (available on e-reserves) Elizabeth Reid, "Identity and the Cyborg Body"	Module 5, Assignment 1
11/27 R	THANKSGIVING -- no class
12/2 T	Meet in KAMM, King Library 110 to work on Web Site	Due: Final copy for Web pages plus Site Map
12/4 R	Meet in KAMM, King Library 110 to work on Web Site Course Evaluations	Due: Disk of audiovisuals
12/9 T	Meet in KAMM, King Library 110: PRESENTATIONS	Turn in Evaluation Forms of Student Web Sites to your peers by the end of class.
12/11 R	Meet in KAMM, King Library 110: PRESENTATIONS	Turn in Evaluation Forms of Student Web Sites to your peers by the end of class.
12/19 F	FINAL EXAM	Web Site Due before or by 9:30 a.m.