Thursday – 01/18: Extending Rhetoric: Language and Technology

Readings

• Burke (1950/1969). Traditional principles of rhetoric. Chapter 2 in A rhetoric of motives (pp. 49-65). University of California Press.
• Haas, C. (1996). Chapters 1 & 2 in Writing technology: Studies on the materiality of literacy (pp. 1-47). New York, NY: Routledge.
• Clark, D. (2010). Shaped and Shaping Tools: The rhetorical nature of technical communication technologies. Spilka, Ed., Digital literacy for Technical communication, (pp. 85-102). New York, NY: Routledge.

Due

• Use-annotations in Google Drive

Thursday – 01/25: Language & Material Infrastructure

Readings

• Lamp, K. (2011). ‘A city of brick’: Visual rhetoric in Roman rhetorical theory and practice. Philosophy and Rhetoric, 44, pp. 171-193.
• Mattern, S. (2017). Code + clay … Data + dirt: Five-thousand years of urban media. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, Chp. 4, Speaking stones, (pp. 114-135).
• Gillespie, T. (2017, August 25). Is “platform” the right metaphor for the technology companies that dominate digital media? Nieman Lab. Retrieved January 22, 2018, from http://www.niemanlab.org/2017/08/is-platform-the-right-metaphor-for-the-technology-companies-that-dominate-digital-media/.
• Watch the video at Kim, K., Jackson, B., Karamouzas, I., Adeagbo, I., Guy, S. J., Graff, R., and Keefe, D. F. (2015). Bema: A multimodal interface for expert experiential analysis of political assemblies at the pnyx in Ancient Greece. University of Minnesota: Interactive Visualization Lab. Retrieved 22 Jan. 2018 from, http://ivlab.cs.umn.edu/generated/pub-Kim-2015-Bema.php.

Due

• Use-annotations in Google Drive. No need to annotate the video about the Pynx simulation research, but it will help us frame the importance of speaking stones, so to speak.

Thursday – 02/01: Data Infrastructure

Readings

• Frith, J. (2017). Big data, technical communication, and the smart city. Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 31, pp. 168-187.
• Lum, K., & Isaac, W. (2016). To predict and serve? Significance, 13(5), 14-19.
• Johnson, S. (2018, Jan. 16). Beyond the Bitcoin Bubble. The New York Times. Retrieved 17 Jan. 2018 from https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/16/magazine/beyond-the-bitcoin-bubble.html.
• Tufekci, Z. (2014). Engineering the public: Big data, surveillance and computational politics. First Monday, 19(7). Retrieved 2 Dec. 2017 from http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/4901.
• --. (2018, Jan. 16). It’s the (Democracy-poisoning) Golden Age of free speech. WIRED.com. Retrieved 17 Jan. 2018 from https://www.wired.com/story/free-speech-issue-tech-turmoil-new-censorship/.

Due

• Use-annotations in Google Drive

Thursday – 02/08: Activism

Readings

• Freelon, Deen and McIlwain, Charlton D. and Clark, Meredith D, Beyond the Hashtags: #Ferguson, #Blacklivesmatter, and the Online Struggle for Offline Justice (February 29, 2016). Center for Media & Social Impact, American University, Forthcoming. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2747066.
• Poe-Alexander, K. and Hahner, L. A. (2017). The intimate screen: Revisualizing understandings of down syndrome through digital activism on Instagram. In D. M. Walls & S. Vie, (Eds.) Social Writing/Social Media: Publics, Presentations, and Pedagogies (pp. 225-244). Perspectives on Writing. Fort Collins, CO: The WAC Clearinghouse and UP of Colorado. Retrieved Jan. 6, 2018 from https://wac.colostate.edu/books/social/.

Due

• Use-annotations in Google Drive

Thursday – 02/15: Rhetoric and embodied practices + Gender & Programming Values

Readings

• Chapters from Hawhee, D. (2004). Bodily arts: Rhetoric and athletics in ancient Greece. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Introduction, pp. 15-22; Chapter 3 - Kairotic bodies, pp. 65-85.
• Dadas, C. (2017). Hashtag activism: The promise and risk of “attention.” In D. M. Walls & S. Vie, (Eds.) Social Writing/Social Media: Publics, Presentations, and Pedagogies (pp. 17-36). Perspectives on Writing. Fort Collins, CO: The WAC Clearinghouse and UP of Colorado. Retrieved Jan. 6, 2018 from https://wac.colostate.edu/books/social/.
• Bivens, R. (27 Jan. 2016). Programming violence under a progressive surface: Facebook's software misgenders users. The Society Pages. Retrieved 06 Feb. 2016 from https://thesocietypages.org/cyborgology/2016/01/27/programming-violence-under-a-progressive-surface-facebooks-software-misgenders-users/.
• wilkie & Bieda, L. (2012). Reuleaux selectors. wilkie writes a thing [personal blog]. Retrieved 06 Feb. 2016 from https://wilkie.how/posts/reuleaux-selectors. (PDF also available on Drive.) Be sure to check out their prototype here: https://wilkie.github.io/reuleaux-selectors/.

Due

• Use-annotations in Google Drive

Thursday – 02/22: Visuals, Language, and Simulations in the Sciences

Readings

• Chapters 1-2 (pp. 1-18), & 4 (pp. 39-66) from Roundtree, A. K. (2013). Computer simulation, rhetoric, and the scientific imagination. New York, NY: Lexington Books.
• Wickman, C. (2013). Observing inscriptions at work: Visualization and text production in experimental physics research. Technical Communication Quarterly, 22, pp. 150-171.

Due

• Use-annotations in Google Drive

Thursday – 03/01: Types of Autoethnographies

Readings

• Proposal project page.
• Ellis, C., Adams, T.E., & A.P. Bochner. (2011). Autoethnography: An overview. Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 12(1). Retrieved 14 Jan. 2016 from http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/1589/3095.
• Pace, S. (Apr. 2012). Writing the self into research: Using grounded theory analytic strategies in autoethnography. TEXT, 16(1). Retrieved 14 Jan. 2016 from http://www.textjournal.com.au/speciss/issue13/Pace.pdf.

Due

• Instead of the use-annotation, please revise your earlier ideas in lieu of the new readings about autoethnographies and the feedback that you received on Tuesday. Please write a wholly new document by responding to the following prompts:
  1. What type of autoethnography you will conduct and write up;
  2. How and why that type will serve your research problem best;
  3. What concepts you will synthesize to help you refine your problem and guide your data collection, production, and analysis; and
  4. Discuss what data you will indeed collect/produce.
  With each of these prompts, go back to our readings and make your case by drawing on past scholars to back up your decisions.

Thursday – 03/08: Spring Break - No Class

Thursday – 03/15: Proposals Due + Doc Reviews

Readings

• None.

Due

• Proposal due in Google Drive. Please share the full version in the class folder. Additionally, provide 2 comments that solicit guided feedback for all of us to consider in class. We will use the comments features to supply suggestions.

Thursday – 03/22: Upon Reflection: Revisiting Prior Works

Readings

• Reread 1-2 pieces central to your methodology. Specifically the readings from the first phase of the course.
• Excerpt on heuristics (pp. 119-130) from Young, Becker, & Pike. (1970). Rhetoric: Discovery and Change.

Due

• For this last use-annotation, please write a new summary of these works without relying on your old summary. Write your summary paragraph knowing exactly which aspects of the piece are most integral to your project. Then, in the second paragraph, provide a more detailed explanation about how this work has already proven important for understanding how to make choices about what artifacts to collect/create + how to understand them as part of rhetorical activity.
• At least 2 fieldnotes + at least 1-2 memos.

Other Information

• In class, we will review a particular playful method of self-interviewing. We will also discuss the Young, Becker, and Pike reading and how I would like us to apply it for next Tuesday.

Thursday – 03/29: (More) Research Articulation Work

Readings

• As needed project readings.

Due

• At least 2 fieldnotes + at least 1-2 memos.
• In class, we will conduct lightning review rounds. Accordingly, each of you will present your research problem & question(s), methodology, and current sense of rhetorical activity within this problem space. Here is the really difficult part: You must create 1 slide per prompt:
  
  1. What is your research problem, unit, and question(s),
  2. What is your rhetorical methodology?, and
  3. How do you (currently) see rhetoric operating within this problem?
  
  You each have 4 minutes to present. We will then take 2 minutes to prepare written questions and feedback to submit to your peer after each presentation. Your task is to provide a very broad, aggregate view. Let us ask questions that help you fill the gaps. Peers, be prepared to quickly jot down questions, generous support, feedback about their aims and direction. Please submit your slides to me before class by using the Email Collaborators function, so I can copy-paste them into a single Google Slides template for us to use in class.

Thursday – 04/05: Historicizing work, continued

Readings

• Reread your historicizing works as needed.

Due

• At least 2 fieldnotes + at least 1-2 memos. Use these memos to start considering how your historicizing work speaks to your unit and what assumptions you held/hold about that unit.
• Revise your list from Tuesday. How do the groups of scholarship differ / operate for you in your project? Bring a revised breakdown of your historicizing work for another round of review work.

Other Information

• In class, we will also take some time to reflect on our project progress, boundaries, concerns, etc.

Thursday – 04/12: Artifact Action -- Day 2

Readings

• As needed: artifacts, fieldwork, etc.

Due

• At least 2 fieldnotes + at least 1-2 memos OR 3-4 memos.
• Based on what you gleaned form last time, we will conduct another round with the same groups. Tell them how your ideas have progressed since last time, how that progress happened, and what your next steps will be because of it.
• Bring:
  • 2-3 artifacts (memos, images/things, etc.)
  • An outline of your claims about the rhetoric at work. The outline should be prefaced by your working concept and have major premises backed up by your evidence provided.
  • Include a question/problem that you are wrestling with. For example, do other data counter any working claims/ideas? If so, how so? How might it be addressed and call for new language regarding the rhetoric at work?

Thursday – 04/19: Learning from AE examples: On writing up your work

Readings

• In your peer groups, choose a set of 4 AEs to read for form from the Google Drive folder: 2 analytical, 2 evocative. As a group choose the 4 articles, and each person reads 2 -- one of each kind. In other words, each person is responsible for 2 articles.

Due

• Take notes about the varied forms and argumentative grooves of each piece. Essentially, reverse engineer these pieces: Reverse outline them, outline them, and jot notes about their similarities, differences, interesting moves, or moves that do not seem to work.

Other Information

• In class, your groups will map out analytical and evocative genres, writing up some guidelines to share with the rest of the class.

Thursday – 04/26: Workshop on Findings/Analysis

Readings

• As needed: artifacts, fieldwork, etc.

Due

• Draft up your findings and analysis (analytical); _____ (evocative). Draft it up in the same Google Doc as before. We will conduct peer reviews in class.