Courses
happy in happy valley
Last spring I wrote here about feeling isolated in my academic pursuits, largely because I was taking two classes outside of English and wasn’t in as much contact with many of my English rhetoric colleagues as I would have liked. But this term: wow, things are going quite well. I’m in three seminars that seem [...]
Sony Reader reflective commentary
I’ve finished my reflective commentary on using the Sony Reader in my graduate seminar and on possible redesigns for the Reader. I thought I’d share my commentary here. It’s a bit long (11.5 pages), so I’m attaching it to this post as a PDF file if you are interested in reading it. Final Reflective Commentary [...]
Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere in 2 minutes
About a month ago or so, Rosa asked us to distill Jürgen Habermas’s Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere down to a two-minute “fairy tale.” I made a YouTube video, but I don’t think I posted it because I… well, violated copyright law. Eh. But now, there’s this cool website xtranormal that allows you to [...]
regulating bodies can’t keep up with new media
We know the list: RIAA can’t keep up with free file sharing; traditional journalism can’t keep up with blogging and other online communication tools; traditional knowledge-regulating bodies (Encyclopedia Brittanica) can’t keep up with Wikipedia; etc. etc. etc. But here’s something different: The NCAA can’t keep up with online tools either. It’s against NCAA rules to [...]
enthusiastic reporting on tech in the classroom: tablet PCs
Over at Onward State, they share a local news program about a project in which students at Penn State Harrisburg got to use tablet PCs from Hewlett Packard — similar to the research project we’re doing here with the Sony ebook Readers, only the tablet PCs are so much cooler! And check out the newscasters’ [...]
Young: The Texture of Memory (1993)
For our Public Memory and Rhetoric course we read James E. Young’s The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meaning, which was an enjoyable and intelligent investigation into the production and reception of various Holocaust memorials in Germany, Austria, Poland, Israel, and the United States. A few important takeaway thoughts: “[T]he ‘art of public memory’ [...]
defining “new media”
I’m reading Wyoscki et al’s Writing New Media, and Anne Wysocki offers a definition of “new media texts” that I find quite interesting: I think we should call “new media texts” those that have been made by composers who are aware of the range of materialities of texts and who then highlight the materiality: such [...]
guest blogging at the Blogora
Joe Sery and I have started guest blogging at the Blogora. Check out Joe’s first post on the 150th anniversary of Mill’s On Liberty. My first post, on remembering and forgetting 9/11 is up as well.
dance, commemoration, and remembrance of september 11
Some classmates and I are collecting YouTube videos incorporating dance and the remembrance of 9/11 for a pretty low-key presentation for our Public Memory course. In this first, one, the WAIT Team (Washington AIDS International Teens) choreographed and danced to honor the heroes of 9/11: In this video (which can’t be embedded), the “9-11-01″ dance [...]
Levinson’s Peculiar Conclusion and Our Civil Religion
In class last week, we discussed at length the peculiar conclusion to Sanford Levinson’s Written in Stone: Public Monuments in Changing Societies, in which Levinson writes that we should hope “that the consciousness of the polity, especially of its future generations will be regulated in the proper direction.” For Levinson, it is “our hope that [...]
