The Digital Humanist
A Composition course focused on the relationship between the digital and the human
This course will examine what it means to be a human, and a humanist, in the digital age. By approaching a range of texts and conceptions of what it means to interact textually and culturally, we will explore the interplay between the physical and digital landscapes we encounter daily.
By offering an introduction into writing across different types of media, we will engage with how we position our own identities differently in digital and physical space, we will lay the groundwork for discussions of how we receive, interpret, and produce both digital and traditional texts. As this is a Composition course, writing will be our primary emphasis, but we will pay particular attention to the ways in which compositions take shape in a variety of ways across media.
How does our unique personality, background, and perspective influence the way we consume digital media? What do we do with that media? How do our choices in searches and the way we present ourselves online constitute rhetorical choices? How do these choices in turn influence our future? What use is a traditional text in the digital age? When are the tools provided by a digital text preferable, and when are they unnecessary? How have reading and writing in a digital environment changed the way we see ourselves?
We will consider these questions and others as we explore Digital Humanities with a focus on writing clear, interesting, precise, evocative essays that can be adapted to both traditional and digital formats.
The class will consist of three units that will build on a variety of ideas of texts. Much of your work will be submitted on a website of your own design, which we will construct during the first weeks of class.
By offering an introduction into writing across different types of media, we will engage with how we position our own identities differently in digital and physical space, we will lay the groundwork for discussions of how we receive, interpret, and produce both digital and traditional texts. As this is a Composition course, writing will be our primary emphasis, but we will pay particular attention to the ways in which compositions take shape in a variety of ways across media.
How does our unique personality, background, and perspective influence the way we consume digital media? What do we do with that media? How do our choices in searches and the way we present ourselves online constitute rhetorical choices? How do these choices in turn influence our future? What use is a traditional text in the digital age? When are the tools provided by a digital text preferable, and when are they unnecessary? How have reading and writing in a digital environment changed the way we see ourselves?
We will consider these questions and others as we explore Digital Humanities with a focus on writing clear, interesting, precise, evocative essays that can be adapted to both traditional and digital formats.
The class will consist of three units that will build on a variety of ideas of texts. Much of your work will be submitted on a website of your own design, which we will construct during the first weeks of class.
Course Goals
ENGL 101 introduces students to basic forms and conventions of college writing, provides the opportunity for frequent practice in writing and revising, and helps students explore various stages of the writing process from planning to proofreading. It also introduces the fundamentals of research.
In ENGL 101 students should learn to:
In ENGL 101 students should learn to:
- Analyze a rhetorical situation based on content, audience, purpose, genre—and respond appropriately;
- Focus a thesis and support it with well-selected evidence—integrating other voices and perspectives;
- Organize an essay by means of well-developed and coherent paragraphs;
- Produce mature, coherent, persuasive prose that follows the conventions of academic writing;
- Assess the relevance and validity of sources, and use those sources ethically.
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In our opening unit, we will focus on a style of writing with which you're already familiar--argument-- and how to develop those skills to better suit a college environment. We will begin to develop analytical skills to support our arguments.
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Unit 2 will help you develop analytical skills. You will use both narrative and close reading to analyze different narratives to show how they communicate.
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The third unit introduces research writing, and will focus on a contemporary issue of interest to you relating to technology and digital culture.
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