Professor Jamie Skye Bianco

EngLit 2521; Seminar 36971
Fall 2010, University of Pittsburgh
Mondays, 6-8:50PM, 318 CL/G26 CL
Office Hours: posted and by appointment
Office: 1502a CL (enter through 1501)

Introduction to Digital Media Theory

This course provides a theoretical introduction to what are variously termed digital media, "new" media, computer-based communication, and digital writing.  Please note that this course is interdisciplinary and will inquire into the workings of digital media in a variety of specializations and sub-specializations, in and outside of the academy. The course is conceptual and theoretical by design, and while we will discuss and touch upon explicit pedagogical issues throughout the semester, this is not a course explicitly centered in secondary or post-secondary digital pedagogy. (I offer this in another course).

Considering computational dynamics, networked social modes, technics and embodiment, and machinic composition practices prior to and subsequent to the arrival of computers and the World Wide Webs, the course will engage students in current issues such as: affectivity; multimodality; mediation and materiality; perception and cognition; ontology and epistemology; object-orientation and speculative realism; discursive and non-discursive compositions; design; the historicity of media; distribution, proliferation and control; networked sociality; bio-technics, embodiment, and information aesthetics; digital writing; compositing and creative critical response.

Work for this course will include readings of print and digital objects and will also include responses in print, digital and perfomative (presentational) modes. Work in digital media studies (dm) and in the digital humanities (dh) means working in three productive strains: scholarship; making or creating media; and coding. We will practice all three. Furthermore, dm & dh projects more often than not involve working in collaborations -- diwo (do-it-with-others). We will also produce work collaboratively in study and project groups.

Students will be expected to participate in class discussions, present assigned materials in class, create weekly blog entries addressing our readings, draft a prospectus for a final multimodal project, and complete and present the final multimodal project.