108D W20 Morton

ENGL 108D “Digital Lives” Winter 2020

University of Waterloo T/TH 1-2:20PM 

Instructor: Dr. Eve Morton (Deshane) 

Office: PAS 2216 

Office Hours: Wed 4-6; by appointment. 

Classroom: ML 246 

Email: edeshane@uwaterloo.ca* 

If contacting by email, include a relevant subject and a short, clear request. Expect a reply by the end of the next business day (weekends are not business days). Please also understand that under extreme circumstances, such as end of and beginning of term, there might be as long as 48 hours (more if the day the email is sent is the weekend) before I send a reply to your message. Please do not hesitate to send a follow-up email after these conditions have been met. I do my absolute best to get back to everyone who writes me within a reasonable time frame; alas, I am one person and kindly ask for your patience. 

*I’m in the middle of a name change to Eve Morton, so there might be some overlap between the names on LEARN and via email. I will update everyone the moment I can with a stable email address; if something is truly amiss, please reach out to the department for clarification. 

Course Description 

This course examines how digital communication technologies construct and constrain the formation of online identities, social spaces, and the communities which inhabit these spaces. We will explore the technical, cultural, and social forces that make digital lives familiar and unfamiliar, traditional and subversive, along with the spaces and tools which can be seen as positive or negative, utopic or dystopian. Throughout the course, we will develop strategies and methods for studying media and digital platforms, online materials, and popular representations of “digital life” along with understanding the histories of how these technologies, cultures, and ideas came to be. 

We will consistently engage with the following questions through a variety of in-class work, personal exploration, and group applied projects: What do we mean by “digital lives”? How are “digital lives” different from biological conceptions of “life”? How do we derive and make meaning in these lives, and how has the techno-culture shaped both negative and positive elements of the “self” and communities in which this self belongs? In seeking a broader definition of “lives” we will examine the rendering of both human and nonhuman lives in digital environments and the seemingly ubiquitous digitization of everyday experiences in the real (i.e., physical) world. 

The course will include a variety of readings on cybercultures, new media, and digital communication, and students will also be offered the opportunity to apply their theoretical knowledge through the development of original creative projects. 

Learning Objectives

By the end of this course, students will be able to demonstrate some of the following skills: 

  • Analyze and interpret practices of self-presentation and the socio-cultural implications of participatory cultures in digital communication. 
  • Understand and contextualize various inventions of new media alongside the older forms in addition to understanding and contextualizing the specific groups who use these forms. 
  • Speak and write confidently and knowledgeably about digital media, civic life online, and the rendering of human and nonhuman forms of life in digital environments. 
  • Conduct effective research and analysis in the style of academic writing and through the development of creative, speculative, or applied projects. 

Required Texts 

  • Ubik by Philip K. Dick 
  • Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman 
  • OK Computer by Radiohead (1997) 
  • Spiritual Machines by Our Lady Peace (2000) 
  • Waking Life by Richard Linklater (2000) 
  • Joker by Todd Phillips (2019) 
  • Various other readings and YouTube clips available on LEARN or linked through the syllabus. 

Please see the week by week schedule for more information on when to complete these readings. Please note that any format of these texts is sufficient. If you would prefer to own the book, awesome. If you want the e-book, cool. All that I ask is that you read (or watch or listen) to the required text each week before class and reflect on it up to and during class times. 

Course Requirements and Assessment

 Assessment 

Weighting 

Participation + Attendance 

20% 

Analog Notebook 

15%  
#AboutMe Essay  10% 

New Media Presentation 

20% 

Section Leader 

10% 

Final Project (Short Story or Op-Ed) 

25% 

Total 

100% 

Please note: there is no exam for this class. 

Participation and Attendance

Coming to class matters. The lectures on Tuesdays are interactive and require classroom feedback to be fully effective; similarly, the discussion groups and presentations only work if there are people with which to discuss the material. Therefore, showing up means a great deal. In fact, as Woody Allen would say, it's 80% of success. Your participation grade then is about class attendance and the seriousness with which you take the class material, the readings, and your colleagues' input. You are not being graded on whether you are "wrong" or "right" in this respect; instead, I am looking at how you engage with the material in a respectful and serious manner, along with your attentiveness and conscientiousness in showing up. 

If you are not present for more than five classes without a documented reason as to why this is the case, you will fail this portion of the class. 

Analog Notebook 

Over the course of the term, you will keep a journal of your notes in the course, your answers to weekly discussion questions, answers to prompts in the class, and other observations or insights you might have. You will write in this journal by hand. 

The purpose of this assignment is to 1) offer an alternative to students who have trouble with oral participation 2) offer a supplement to the participation grade, especially in the case of absences due to illnesses or circumstances and 3) to get you to think critically about your participation in a digital world by deliberately reflecting on this participation from an outside perspective/medium. You will write by hand to achieve this distance, and this is paramount to the assignment. If this journal is not written by hand, and there is no documented reason as to why it is not, then you will fail this assignment. 

There will be several prompts during the course term to write in your journal. There will also be weekly discussion questions that I will be looking for when I grade the journal at the end of term. Other than these mandatory inclusions, the rest of the journal is up to you. You may draw pictures; you may paste in outside material; you may write in point-form for notes in the class; you may write about an insight you had about Facebook or Snapchat after our discussions in-class. It is an open form past these few mandatory points. 

Please note that the journal is the main place where I will not penalize for spelling/grammatical errors. Rather, I will be grading by seriousness and completeness; note that a bare minimum effort in all of these aspects will result in a bare minimum grade, while immense attention to detail could result in a 5% bonus. Choose wisely and carefully how much effort you will put into this aspect of your grade overall, knowing that it will most likely be the foundation to all other assignments. 

You will hand-in your journals in-class on the last day of this class: April 2nd 2020. I will return them during the exam person. Note that if you require material for your final project that is in your journal, it is your responsibility to take photos/scan the appropriate pages before you hand it in to me. 

#AboutMe Essay

This is a personal narrative assignment that will 1) allow me to get to know you personally 2) engage in a critical assessment of your relationship with a media object in a conscious way and 3) start to develop your skills as a writer. 

There will be prompts in class to help you select the best topic/narrative form along with lessons on how to frame your specific thesis statement and story; in general, your essay should answer a specific question along the lines: how has a specific form of technology/new media changed your life in a significant way? For instance, I could say that my relationship with my father was significantly altered by the development of the cell phone, and then go on to explain how that has come to be in the rest of the essay. There is no need to cite outside material for this essay, as it is mostly based around personal-narrative where you are the expert at hand. However, if you do cite outside material (and citing films, books, and TV shows are citations), you must provide references for it in MLA format at the end of the paper. Word count is approximately 800-1000 words. Due February 4th 2020 via LEARN. 

New Media Presentation

In a group of two or three, you will select a (preferably narrative) text and provide an analysis of it from a cultural, material, and historical perspective while using a piece of new media technology as your main presentation vehicle. In effect, I want you to pick something you love (or love to hate) and tell me all about why this is the case through something like a YouTube vlog, a humorous/informative podcast, or a series of text and images on something like Instagram or Tumblr, or something I haven't thought of yet. Your analysis must have a summary of the narrative in question, along with supporting detail of the who/what/where/when/why/and how the narrative was made. 

For instance, if you were to select the television show Hannibal, you must tell me its overall narrative summary in a cogent manner, along with informing me that it is an adaptation on a prior source text written by Thomas Harris in the 1980s and 1990s, and it is not the first adaptation of this material; in fact, its overall production was limited due to previous companies owning the copyright. With these factual details out of the way--the material and historical perspectives now cleared up--you and your partners must then come up with a cultural interpretation of your narrative, and back it up with textual evidence or other analyses. To maintain this Hannibal example, you and your partners might then create a series of photos/screenshots with text and post them on something like Instagram which then further your overall assessment of the show as a significant aesthetic development which reshapes the typical male gaze of cinema to be a queer male gaze. The presentation itself should be approximately 5-7 minutes; if you are using photos to tell the story, then time how long it takes for someone to get through the entirety of the piece. Since this is a non-traditional form of presentation, if you are unsure about your length requirements, please talk to me. 

Your presentation will take a non-traditional form (YouTube, Snapchat, etc) but you must still cite all the materials you use in MLA format; you must then also hand in a script/text assessment via LEARN in addition to presenting your materials on our class Symposium day. In addition, you should submit to LEARN a non-

graded component which documents your role in the group project, along with everyone else’s role. (This is to make sure the division of labour has been fair and that no one has been neglected or given too much to handle). 

You may select any narrative text you like, but you must have it approved by me before Family Day 2020. When you get your narrative object approved, be sure to also include what format your presentation might take (YouTube video, podcast, etc). This format might change, but the text should not without my approval. 

Section Leader

Every Thursday class (baring the first and the last class, in which I will facilitate this role) there will be a series of questions and discussion items that will take up the first half of the class's time in small group work. The designated Section Leader will post the questions/discussion items to LEARN no later than Wednesday night at 9PM. It is highly recommended that all students read and respond to these questions and discussion points in their journals the night--or morning--before class, so that the discussions can occur in an easy and convivial manner, and to make the section leader's job that much easier the day-of in class. The section leader will help to facilitate some discussion in class in their small group, but the bulk of their grade comes from this act of posting of the material in a timely manner and in accordance to the discussion question parameters. 

Each section leader is responsible for posting 1) three directed questions about the reading in which they signed up for 2) finding two passages / paragraphs from this reading in which to practice deep reading in class and 3) finding one supplementary item outside the course reading and the course material thus far but which illustrates a key theme and guiding the discussion on this supplementary item. 

Each person will sign up for their readings in the first weeks of class. There will be some doubling up, but each reading will have someone presenting it in some manner. Be sure to reach out to other section leaders on your exact class date to be sure you all cover different topics, themes, and material. 

Final Project

The last assignment is meant to act as a culmination of all discussed in the course, and so it is specifically tied to the main repeated themes of technology, digital life, and whether or not it casts society in a good or bad light. Therefore, I'd like for you to imagine the future of new media and technology and speculate on all that we have learned through a short story, where you make the world either a dystopia or a utopia. You will also accompany this short story with a brief write up explaining the two core themes you've demonstrated from the course in the story, and what you'd like readers to take away from your work. The story should be approximately 1,500-3,000 words; the author’s note should be approximately 500-800 words. 

Alternatively, if you do not wish to write a short story, you will write a well-researched Op-Ed piece that either praises the future of technology or disparages it. There are numerous examples of both of these issues from specific viewpoints that we have covered in the course (Postman and Kurzweil being fantastic examples), but I will also included a couple more examples on Learn. You will need at least three sources, one of which is an academic/peer-reviewed one, and your Op-Ed must be at least 2,500 words and come with an author's note which acts as a personal reflection as to why you believe this stance in this manner (~500 words on the author’s note). The final assignment is due on April 15th 2020 via LEARN. 

Course Outline Week 

Dates 

Topic 

Readings 

1 

Jan 7 / 9 

Hindsight 

Syllabus 

A Story: Prometheus and Epimetheus 

NOTE: No Class On Thursday January 9th 2020; regular seminars begin the next week. 

2 

Jan 14 / 16 

Mediums 

“The Medium is the Message” by Marshall McLuhan (only chapter 1) 

Phaedrus by Plato (highly recommended) 

3 

Jan 21/ 23 

Cyborg 

“A Cyborg Manifesto” by Donna Haraway 

4 

Jan 28 / 30 

Artificial 

“A Wager on the Turing Test” (1 &2) & “Are People Getting Smarter or are Computers Getting Dumber?” by Ray Kurzweil (available on pg 55-63 in The Kurzweil Reader) 

OK Computer by Radiohead (1997) 

Marty The Robot Article 

5 

Feb 4 / 6 

Community 

Note: We will have a guest lecture on Tuesday by R. Travis Morton 

#AboutMe Essay Due Feb 4 

Readings TBD 

+ 

“How One Tweet Can Ruin Your Life” by Ron Jonson (Video) 

6 

Feb 11 / 13 

Immersion 

Ubik by Philip K. Dick 

7 

Feb 18-21 

Break 

I suggest a meeting with your group over email to discuss your project in some way 

8 

Feb 25 / 27 

Amusement 

Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman (Preface, 1, 2, 7, 11) 

Star Wars Kid Article 

9 

March 3 / 5 

Symposium 

Presentations DUE IN CLASS both TUES and THURS 

No Readings; attend and ask questions about your colleagues’ projects! 

10 

March 10 / 12 

Immortality 

Waking Life (2001) Dir. Richard Linklater (Trailer) 

Spiritual Machines (2000) by Our Lady Peace 

The Untold Story of Ermahgerd Girl 

Late Work

I will accept work up to five days late, with a penalty of 5% per day; if you submit after the point when the class grades are released, you will not receive feedback, only a grade. After five days, the student receives a zero. If you know that you will not be able to meet a deadline due to medical or legitimate personal reasons (holidays don’t count), please discuss it with me in in person or with at least 48 hours notice. All late assignment reasons must be documented in some form; if we have met in person, and I have granted you an extension, it is your responsibility to follow-up via email and confirm this extension. 

Electronic Device Policy 

Students are encouraged to use laptops or tablets in class to take notes and to look up relevant information. If the use of your device disturbs other students, however, I will ask you to turn it off. Please make sure cellphones are on silent and stowed away, unless in case of emergency. 

Email, Office Hours, and Other Contact Policy

I want you to succeed, first and foremost. If you need help, assistance, or clarification on any matter, please ask during class, before/after class, or email me to book an appointment and we can talk. I do not have regular office hours because I find it exceptionally difficult for myself to work on-campus. That being said, I am often on-campus before and after class, and baring extreme circumstances, and with enough notice (48 hours) I am more than willing to meet you in my office or any place else on-campus to discuss matters. Please also note that when I am on campus, I am also most likely wearing headphones and may not see you/hear you right away. If you would like to say hi, go ahead—but you might have to be persistent. If you also don’t want to say hi, that is 100% okay, too! I would also like to stress that while I am more than willing to speak with you if we run into one another on campus (or elsewhere, as I also live in Waterloo!), if you ask for something in relation to the class itself, it must be followed-up via email. I can be forgetful when caught in the middle of something else—so just be sure that if we discussed something important, you follow-up with me via email for both of our sakes’. I cannot stress enough that patience and specificity is required for all kinds of communication, be it formal or informal, digital or otherwise. 

Information on Plagiarism Detection 

I expect your essays to cite all material that is not your original work. Plagiarized work will be penalized. I do not use traditional plagiarism software; if you are concerned about privacy issues associated with any kind of plagiarism detection software, please reach out to me and we will discuss alternative arrangements. 

Writing Help at the UW Writing Centre

The Writing Centre works across all faculties to help students clarify their ideas, develop their voices, and communicate in the style appropriate to their disciplines. Writing Centre staff offer one-on-one support in planning assignments, using and documenting research, organizing papers and reports, designing presentations and e-portfolios, and revising for clarity and coherence. You can make multiple appointments throughout the term, or drop in at the Library for quick questions or feedback. To book a 50-minute appointment and to see drop-in hours, visit http://www.uwaterloo.ca/writing-centre. Group appointments for team-based projects, presentations, and papers are also available. 

Academic Integrity 

In order to maintain a culture of academic integrity, members of the University of Waterloo community are expected to promote honesty, trust, fairness, respect and responsibility. See the UWaterloo Academic Integritity webpage and the Arts Academic Integrity webpage for more information. 

Discipline 

A student is expected to know what constitutes academic integrity, to avoid committing academic offences, and to take responsibility for his/her actions. A student who is unsure whether an action constitutes an offence, or who needs help in learning how to avoid offences (e.g., plagiarism, cheating) or about “rules” for group work/collaboration should seek guidance from the course professor, academic advisor, or the Undergraduate Associate Dean. When misconduct has been found to have occurred, disciplinary penalties will be imposed under Policy 71 – Student Discipline. For information on categories of offenses and types of penalties, students should refer to Policy 71 - Student Discipline. For typical penalties check Guidelines for the Assessment of Penalties (https://uwaterloo.ca/secretariat-general-counsel/policies-procedures-guidelines/guidelines/guidelines-assessment-penalties). 

Grievance 

A student who believes that a decision affecting some aspect of his/her university life has been unfair or unreasonable may have grounds for initiating a grievance. Read Policy 70 - Student Petitions and Grievances, Section 4 (https://uwaterloo.ca/secretariat-general-counsel/policies-procedures-guidelines/policy-70). When in doubt, please be certain to contact the department’s administrative assistant who will provide further assistance. 

Appeals 

A decision made or penalty imposed under Policy 70, Student Petitions and Grievances (other than a petition) or Policy 71, Student Discipline may be appealed if there is a ground. A student who believes he/she has a ground for an appeal should refer to Policy 72, Student Appeals (https://uwaterloo.ca/secretariat-general-counsel/policies-procedures-guidelines/policy-72). 

Note for Students with Disabilities 

The AccessAbility Services office, located on the first floor of the Needles Hall extension (NH 1401), collaborates with all academic departments to arrange appropriate accommodations for students with disabilities without compromising the academic integrity of the curriculum. If you require academic accommodations to lessen the impact of your disability, please register with the AS office at the beginning of each academic term. 

Special Note on Mental Health and Wellbeing

If you encounter any issue pertaining to mental health and wellbeing, please feel free to contact me via email to discuss the issue. You may also contact me in person during regular office hours, or arrange an appointment to discuss the matter privately. You can be assured that all discussions are strictly confidential, and your privacy will be fully protected. 

If you require professional counselling and psychological services, or other forms of mental health programs, please visit the UWaterloo Counselling Services office in Needles Hall North, 2 nd Floor, or visit their website: https://uwaterloo.ca/campus-wellness/counselling-services. You can also contact Counselling Services by phone at: 519-888-4567 ext. 32655 

Special Note on Basic Needs

Access to the basic needs of life is a crucial aspect of overall wellbeing for any person. Proper nourishment is vital for good physical, cognitive, and mental functioning. If you encounter any trouble accessing such basic needs as food and clean water, please visit the FEDS Office’s Student Food Bank website: https://uwaterloo.ca/feds/feds-services/feds-student-food-bank. You can also visit the FEDS Office at the basement of the Student Life Centre (SLC), or contact the office by phone at: 519-888-4568 ext. 84042, or by email at: recept@feds.ca