This schedule is likely to change – always check the week before readings are due.
Follow the links and read or watch assigned material before class unless otherwise stated.
Unit 1: Popular media and visual culture
Week 1: September 1 2015
Introductions: Our media, ourselves
Confidential questionnaire: due Friday September 4
Friday September 4: Blog post 1 due.
If you join the class late, both these assignments will be due the Friday of the week when you attend your first class.
Week 2: September 8 2015
Building our toolkit (1): How we look and why it matters
Read or watch before class:
• John Berger’s “Ways of Seeing” Part One and Part Two (half an hour each)
• Stuart Hall, from “Encoding/Decoding” (read parts marked in green)
• bell hooks, from “The Oppositional Gaze”
• Roxane Gay, “Girls Girls Girls”
Friday September 11: Blog post 2 due
Week 3: September 15 2015
Building our toolkit (2): Frameworks for thinking about identity, power, and privilege
Read before class:
• Marilyn Frye, from “Oppression”
• Julia Serano, from “Dismantling Cissexual Privilege”
• Eli Clare, “The Mountain” (You can listen to the author reading it aloud at this link; author’s page here. (Brief mention of sexual abuse in part III.)
• Meghan A. Burke, “Colorblindness vs. Race-Consciousness” (cites this short YouTube video that you might find useful)
• Audre Lorde, “Race, Class, Sex, and Age: Women Redefining Difference”
Friday September 18: Blog post 3 due
In your blog post 3, let me know your partner and fandom for the research/remix assignment
Week 4: September 22 2015
Remixing media and identity: history and practice
Read before class (and watch embedded videos):
• Jonathan McIntosh, “A History of Subversive Remix Video Before YouTube”
• Francesca Coppa, “An Editing Room of One’s Own” and Francesca Coppa & Rebecca Tushnet, “How to Suppress Women’s Remix”
• Elisa Kreisinger, “Queer Video Remix and LGBTQ Online Communities”
• Soraya Nadia McDonald, “Meet Dylan Marron, the actor and playwright behind those ‘every single word spoken by a person of color’ YouTube videos”
Friday September 25: Blog post 4 due.
In your blog post 4, include an update on your fandom research progress. Find a way to connect your research to what we have discussed in/read for class.
Week 5: September 29 2015
Remixing our own media
Imagining, workshopping, and sharing results from the Research/Remix assignment
Friday October 2: Research/Remix report posted on blog
Friday October 2: Transformative Digital Humanities conference! If you attend, your Research/Remix report is due Sunday.
Unit 2: DIY media cultures
Week 6: October 7 2015
Zines 1: at the Women’s Studies Multimedia Studio/DCC Sound Studio
Read before class:
• Stephen Duncombe, from Notes from Underground: Zines and the Politics of Alternative Culture
• Olivia Laing, “Riot Grrrl: When teen sisters were doing it for themselves”
• Mimi Thi Nguyen, introduction to “Evolution of a Race Riot” (and as much of the rest of the zine as you have time to read)
Friday October 9: Blog post 5 due
Week 7: October 13 2015
Sharing results from the Perzine assignment and collaborating on a class zine. Bring 20 copies of your zine to class.
Friday October 16: Zine report posted on blog
Week 8: October 20 2015
Games 1: with Avery Dame
• anna anthropy, from Rise of the Videogame Zinesters: How Freaks, Normals, Amateurs, Artists, Dreamers, Drop-outs, Queers, Housewives, and People Like You Are Taking Back an Art Form.
• Extra Credits: The Role of the Player (YouTube version)
• Play: dys4ia and Lim (both games include rapidly flashing lights)
Friday October 23: Blog post 6 due
Week 9: October 27 2015
Games 2: with Avery Dame
• Extra Credits: No Gendered Mechanics
• Kahn, Juliet. No girl wins: three ways women unlearn their love of video games
• Hudson, Laura. Subversive games about waitresses and hairdressers
• anthropy, anna. What games must learn from children’s books
• Suggested reading: Planet Money #576: When Women Stopped Coding
Friday October 30: game design document posted on blog.
Unit 3: Design, Culture, and Identity
Week 10: November 3 2015
Read before class:
• Anne Balsamo, “Gendering the Technological Imagination” (Chapter One of the required text Designing Culture: we will focus on pages 27-33)
• Sumana Harihareswara “Pipeline” (watch video and read text); “Some Vids I Learned From”
Sumana Harihareswara visiting for the second half of class!
Friday November 6: blog post 7 due
Week 11: November 10 2015
Read before class:
• Anne Balsamo, Designing Culture: “The Praxis of Designing Culture” (13-17); “Experiments in the Future of Reading” (72-81; optional background 57-71) ; “Public Interactives” (95-102; 130-32)
Before this week’s class: go to a museum in DC and look at an exhibit there that fits Balsamo’s definition of a “public interactive.” Use the tools we’ve developed in class to explore the ways this exhibit represents and engages with identity and culture. Take pictures to share and bring to class.
Friday November 13: blog post 8 due
Week 12: November 17 2015
In-class workshop: designing for a “Museum of Media and Identity”
Friday November 20: post reflection on your group’s media and identity exhibit
Week 13: NO CLASS (Thanksgiving)
CAPSTONE PROPOSALS DUE MONDAY NOVEMBER 23
Week 14: December 1.
Class project workshop
Your final project for this class will be to use one of the techniques we’ve practiced in order to make a response to the themes we have discussed. I expect that most people will want to expand one of the mini-projects we created in class, developing a remix, a longer and more extensive zine, a game, or a public interactive. This class period will be devoted to sharing ideas, and there will be time to work on your project in class and get feedback and advice from your peers and instructor.
Week 15: December 8.
Class project showcase.
Friday December 11: Final project reflection due on blog.