Graduate Courses 2016-2017

In this course, we’ll examine the rhetorical precedents for cultural, structural, and genocidal violence. Taking up the question of by what means citizens are called to participate (by omission or commission) in the construction and subsequent repression, oppression, or annihilation of a collective Other, we will examine primary historical artifacts including texts, images, and films designed to incite violence. We will look also at works composed or made in service of resistance, protest, and, finally, of witness and remembrance. Alongside these primary texts, we will examine the variety of ways in which violence and, in particular, the language of violence has been theorized by scholars within and beyond the field of rhetorical studies.

The Canadian Digital Media Network (CDMN) has proclaimed Waterloo Region as the "tech capital of Canada," based largely on economic activity generated by Blackberry, a culture of tech startups, and tech-oriented research and education based at local universities. Whether or not this claim is accurate, it points to a glaring irony: Waterloo Region is also the "Old Order Mennonite capital of Canada," and the tech hub of Kitchener/Waterloo is surrounded by communities that rigorously limit the use of technology in their homes. Why would an individual--or a whole community for that matter-- abstain from the use of advanced technologies? This question, which is central to this course, is posed not just in the context of Old Order Mennonites, but applies equally to contemporary trends in "unplugging," from Digital Detox retreats in California to the recent movement by French unions to ban e-mail communication for tech workers after 6:00 p.m. For some, the growing ubiquity of digital media represents a great achievement in human history, or even a turning point in human evolution. But there exists a persistent desire to unplug from our wired world, especially in response to information overload, the spectre of surveillance, or even as a form of resistance to what might be called the relentless tyranny of social media.

In this course, students will seek to understand why and how digital abstinence is observed in the Western World. We will begin by evaluating the attempts of various individuals and communities to observe digital abstinence, and we will tally their successes and failures. We will conduct our own experiments in digital abstinence, and ultimate create digital projects that (perhaps ironically) engage with digital abstinence for the sake of promoting the concepts of ritual, mindfulness, privacy, contemplation, community, and presence, among others.

This course offers an introduction to science studies and literature, with a particular focus on how “the experiment” becomes a structuring principle of the arts and sciences in the enlightenment’s wake. Originally connoting direct, first-hand experience, the “experimental” comes to signal, among other things, methods for producing objective or replicable knowledge; the domain of feeling or introspection, with echoes in the literature of sentiment and sensibility; or a trial or test with an uncertain outcome (and, by extension, attempts to try new, untested things, from poetic innovation to revolutionary politics). We will begin with a brief introduction to the emergence of an experimental culture of science, via writings by Spratt, Bacon, Descartes, and Locke. We will then examine how literary writers engage, adapt, and influence the idea of the experimental, above all in poems and novels that push the formal and conceptual limits of their genres. In addition to primary readings by writers including Edward Young, Horace Walpole, Anna Barbauld, the Wordsworths, and the Shelleys, we will read widely in the history and philosophy of science and recent critical approaches to experimental literature.

In 1998, Joe Lockhard estimated that as little as 10% of nineteenth-century African American literary production had been located. In the almost twenty years following Lockhard’s claim, our understanding of nineteenth-century African American literature has shifted significantly as once forgotten texts have been identified, republished, and engaged. Whereas previously male-authored slave narratives, abolitionist writing, and late-century realist texts were presented as definitive, we now have access to a more diverse roster of authors and writings, including newspaper journalism, magazines, novels, and more. At the same time, such recoveries have not been without controversy or confusion, as is evident in the cases of Hannah Crafts and James Williams. This course looks at canonical writings as well as recuperated ones with an eye to considering how amorphous the African American canon has been, and what role print culture, availability, and political movements might have played in the recuperations which continue to reshape it.

In this course we will learn to see cities and urban space more generally as structures filled with meaning. The premise of the course is that cities are not merely built environments organizing our economic and social lives, but also systems of signs, which compose a meaningful world for the urban dweller. Meaningful, but not unambiguous: there are many different kinds of people in cities, who live in different places and interpret the city in different ways. Much of our attention will be directed towards conflicting interpretations of elements of the city, and to struggles over the shape and meaning of city space. As will become clear through the course, these struggles are conducted not only through writing on the city, but also via battles over the fates of neighbourhoods, over the shaping and decorating of the urban environment, over the development and use of space, and even over how one walks (or drives, or rides a bicycle). Ideally, we would spend a great deal of time actually wandering through cities, given that our concern will be not only with texts on urban existence but with everyday acts of interpreting the city. Unfortunately, a hands-on approach would prove unwieldy and perhaps expensive, so in the main we will content ourselves with different kinds of writing on the modern city: essays, novels, texts by architects, sociologists, and urban theorists. Much of the most significant writing on cities concerns places we may not have ever visited, such as Paris, Rome, New York, Berlin or Los Angeles. It's hard to think about interpreting a city we experience only through writing, so the fiction on the course focuses on a city experience only through writing, so the fiction on the course focuses on a city relatively close to home: Toronto. By examining writing on Canada's largest city (we'll watch a film on Winnipeg as well, so it isn't just Toronto) we'll ensure a point of reference beyond the fiction.

Introducing students to key concepts of method in digital media analysis and digital design, the course primarily takes workshop format. Students examine methods and apply design strategies to the conception, design, and production of a research paper or digital project. The course engages several forms of research methods including textual analysis, ethnography, design charrette, games, and peer review. Students read texts and address objects from different disciplinary orientations such as Actor Network Theory, ethnography, experimental interface/HCI, and Internet of Things, as well as work with professional media-design tools. The goal of the course is to ground students in methodological approaches to digital media studies, critical theory, and designed objects. The course does not require any background in media theory or design. Strongly recommended for XDM students.

Using methods of auto-ethnography and autocritography, students will become participant observers and create code meshed, translingual and vernacular productions. The last unit is specifically pedagogical and is designed to assist seminar participants in the design and implementation of code meshing, translingualism, and vernacular productions as approaches to teaching writing in real settings, such as classrooms and work places.

This course will survey qualitative methods in professional communication and user experience (UX) research. We will consider many examples and read broadly on topics related to research design such as interviewing methods and also online research ethics. In addition to becoming familiar with standard qualitative methods in professional communication and UX research, students will also explore innovative approaches to studying digital media environments. We will consider issues of reliable data, data collection from online sources, managing online data collection, data security, and ethical issues about collecting, aggregating, and sharing any data that may contain personal information. Importantly, we will learn to use this data we collect to produce knowledge with an ethical orientation. Building up to the major project, students will complete small assignments contributing to the research process, resulting in a research proposal as the final assignment. All class work can be tailored to students’ specific research program or interests at either the master or doctoral level.

This course studies J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings from the standpoint of adaptation theory, exploring in detail the three-part film adaptation by Peter Jackson and at least two game adaptations, one of which will be Turbine's The Lord of the Rings Online.