This course investigates social media, virtual worlds, transmedia, digital art and NFTs, and other new media technologies through critical reflection on the ways these technologies are shaping and reshaping our personal and professional lives. We will draw on communication and media studies as well as rhetorical theory and research to help us understand and analyze these contexts. You will engage with new media via projects that invite you to participate in existing contexts, create new ones, and display and create knowledge through speeches, writing, and communication design.
No prerequisites. Limited enrollment.
Instructor: Grushina.
Distributive: ART
Offered: 23S: 2A
Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy (1888-1973), German social philosopher who explored the shaping effects of language on our lives, had a well-known motto, "I respond, although I may be changed." Some translations render "although" as "therefore." Made long before the emergence of the digital world, this statement reflects our relationship with the physical world and is perhaps even more apropos of the relationship we face with new media in particular. We respond: participate, create, engage; although, and therefore, we are changed. The main objective of the course is to foster a more engaged and critical awareness of how major new media texts and technologies shape and reshape our lives. An important related objective is to help you become a better speaker and writer. A final objective is to help you become a better informed and engaged citizen of the digital world.
To accomplish these objectives, I will help you do the following throughout the term:
