Open a Class Discussion with a Presentation that Includes a Performance, Thought-Experiment, or Research Briefing

English 236 is designed to operate as a kind of research "think tank" on the culture of information.

Characteristically, the instructor will begin a class with a 10-15 minute framing statement articulating the main topic or context for the class. Occasionally, these framing statements will be longer when there is historical material to review.

Students will then open class discussion. Each student will be assigned one class in which to initiate discussion in a concrete way. Think about the reading materials and find some one rich node that can be brought to light by mining a particular assemblage of passages, illustrations, or paradigms (materials may also be drawn from outside the course). Since everything in teaching depends on properly putting an exemplum into play, students should try to start or finish their presentaton by "staging" their issue in some way. For example:

• Perform a situation or scenario that introduces the problem (e.g., perform the part of Andy Goldsworthy creating his art and figure out how he could also carry a camera or where he would put it; perform the state of "distraction" as Benjamin conceives it)
• Construct a "thought experiment" (create an unlikely scenario or surprising juxtaposition of materials; e.g., "Let's imagine a world in which there is no need to work; what would we do with our computers?", "Let's say that information access really will be equal; how would that change things?", or "Here's Socrates talking, and here's a rap artist. . . ."). Use the experiment to unfold your issue.
• Finish the presentation by extending your topic into an idea for a hypothetical dissertation, conference, program, center, start-up company, or other initiative.

The presentation as a whole should bring things to a head by posing—implicitly or explicitly—an open-ended dilemma/question capable of starting discussion.

(To assist in their presentations, students may wish to put up ad hoc Web pages with quotations, links, etc. Students may also in advance of class use the class e-mail list to ask others to pay special attention to particular passages or issues in the readings.)

In the discussion following a student presentation, the instructor will at times interpolate prepared material or lines of thought. Or again, the instructor will manufacture variously seamless or abrupt ways to jump from the student's node to a different node. Since there is no necessary or predictable link between the student's opener and either the instructor's prefatory framing statement or subsequent, interpolated material, classes will inevitably include elements of contingency and instability if not downright discontinuity. This is a risk, but also a gain. It is appropriate in a graduate seminar (as opposed to the more controlled situation of an undergraduate course) to negotiate between the instructor's and students' agendas in ways that can generate unforeseen and weirdly beautiful moments of resonance.

Online Project

The Basic Idea: Students will break into teams of two to three students each. Each team will conceive, research, and produce a Web page (improvising on the basis of pre-designed Transcriptions HTML templates as well as using an automated database that can be fed content through a Web browser). The page will one of the Transcriptions Web site's topics pages or, alternatively, part of a sub-branch of such topic pages called "Artists of Information." (Students may also propose solo projects if there is a compelling reason—e.g., if the topic is closely related to their dissertation or some other ongoing research interest.)

Topics Page Option: In general, Transcriptions topics pages support research and teaching in the area of literature and information culture. Each topic page presents a narrative overview of its topic, a database of timeline events, a database of annotated links, suggested discussion issues, a bibliography, and links to related courses and other topic pages. The goal is to offer critically astute, carefully selected, and annotated guides to aspects of the relation between literature and information. The following are some of the topic pages that have been proposed or are under development for Transcriptions:

• Weaving Webs: Native American Literature, Oral Tradition, Internet (Chris Schedler)
• Hypertheatre (Caroline Brehm)
• Masquerade and the Web (Diana Solomon)
• Censorship and Free Speech in Media (Bill Warner)
• The Culture of Computer Gaming (Eric Feay)
• Postmodernism (Alan Liu with his undergraduate course on this topic)

Artist of Information Option: "Artists of Information" topic pages focus on some writer, artist, musician, philosopher, director, theorist, architect, designer, engineer, or other figure (or movement)—whether past or present—whose art exists in implicit or explicit relation to the information media and technology of the time. The idea is to create a view of artists or intellectuals in their information environment (which artists variously collaborate with, contest, influence, are influenced by, etc.). This assignment will require research into the life and work of the chosen artist(s); and it will also require research into the information environment of the artist's time. The following are hypothetical examples:

• Ben Jonson, Inigo Jones, and the Technology of the Court Masque
• The Wordsworth Circle and Information Culture circa 1800
• Alice in Medialand: From Lewis Carroll's to Disney's Camera
• Hemingway and Media
• Pynchon and Information
• Faulkner and the Entertainment Industry
• War and the Art of Information
• How Information Works in a Hitchcock Film
• Maya Lin, the Vietnam War Memorial, and Monuments of Information
• Neal Stephenson and the Art of Code
• Paul Rand, Designer for IBM
• Contemporary Women's Hypertext Fiction Writers (e.g., Deena Larsen, Shelley Jackson, M.D. Coverley)

Components of Project: The following are the core elements of the Transcriptions topics page you will be producing. You can see the template for such a Web here or here. You will have FTP directory permissions for your site, so you will be able to upload and revise your Web pages directly. (Assistance will be offered for those who are learning Web authoring for the first time.)

1. Overview statement. The overview may be as simple as a linear narrative argument. It may ramify hypertextually (linking to your own or other's additional pages) It may even be highly creative. For example, the overview might include non-linear graphical or hypertext material—for example, a juxtaposition of quotations, the staging of a fictitious or real interview, etc.
2. Timeline of events. Material for a timeline of events relevant to your topic will be entered in the Transcription Project's Filemaker Pro database through a Web interface. Once the material is entered (by writing or cutting-and-pasting into a Web form through any browser), Filemaker will automatically generate Web pages for the Timeline that can be dynamically adapted to the user's search criteria. For an example of a Transcriptions timeline built by an undergraduate course in Spring 1999, see Postmodernism Timeline.
3. Linkbase of annotated links to online resources. These links will be entered in the Transcription Project's Filemaker Pro database through its Web interface; Filemaker then automatically generates the Web pages for the linkbase (see paragraph above). For an example of a Transcriptions linkbase built by an undergraduate course in Spring 1999, see Postmodernism Linkbase.
4. Bibliography of the most essential works and online sites consulted in creating the above Overview, Timeline, and Linkbase (this may in some cases be a brief subset of the Linkbase).
5. Critical Issues: suggested questions for discussion (including contextualizing statements). For an example of critical issues on a Transcriptions topics page, see Weaving Webs: Discussion Issues.

Distribution of Responsibilities:

• You are free to distribute the work on a team project as you like to take account of varying interests and skills. You can split the research areas or technical tasks, for example.
• It is highly recommended that you carve out defined areas of responsibility (especially if your team consists of more than two people). That way, everyone on your team will be responsible for something in particular—often a more productive situation than if everyone is responsible for anything and everything. At least one of your team must also exercise editorial control over your work (editing for consistency, quality, typos, etc.).
• An outline or organizational chart of the way you have distributed your tasks is due shortly after you submit a prospectus for your project (see below).

Schedule of Project Tasks:

1. Class 5, Workshop 1 for Online Projects: Break into teams and begin brainstorming about possible projects.
2. Class 8, Workshop 2 for Online Projects: You must in advance of this date post to the class e-mail list (engl236@humanitas.ucsb.edu) a prospectus of your intended project. The prospectus need be only a page or so. It should describe your idea and the areas of research you intend to pursue. If you are still up in the air about your project, you can post a couple of ideas and ask for feedback.
3. Class 9: By this class you must e-mail to the instructor a statement about how you have distributed responsibilities for a team project (see above). From this point on, every student must at the beginning of each week submit an online weekly project log form that records roughly what you did on the project the previous week. (This is to protect teams from bad situations in which one of its members never does anything at all and lets everyone else carry the burden.)
4. Class 12, Worshop 3 for Online Projects: This class will be devoted to a show-and-tell about what the class teams have been thinking and doing.
5. Classes 13-16: There must be online content on project sites by Class 13 (this is a firm deadline). During the period from Class 13 to Class 16, each team will be assigned one other team's project to critique. The medium for this critique will be a "threaded" Web discussion forum (enabled by the Transcriptions Exchange Server program). You post your comments through a Web browser, and others can respond or append to the thread of discussion you have started about a particular team project. For a guide to evaluating Web pages, see here.
6. Final Presentation of Class Projects (Meeting Date & Time TBA): Formal presentation of projects to the class and other interested members of the department—a sort of Emmys or MTV Awards show.

Individual Online Essay

An individually-written essay of about 3,600 words (approx. 12 pages in typescript) or a hypertext essay of equivalent weight. The essay should give a perspective on some issue relating to your project. Alternatively, you may propose an essay that strikes off in new directions unrelated to your project. The essay must make use of at least some of the readings in the course.

If the essay is part of your project, you can put it online in the project's Web site. If it is a standalone piece, then you can put it online in your personal Umail web space (or anywhere else). In the event that you are uncomfortable about making your argument/research public in advance of your dissertation or a journal publication, you can put online just part of the paper and submit the full version in hard copy to the instructor.

Requirements for Students Auditing the Course

Auditors should present a class opener, be part of a team project, or both (anything and everything short of writing the final essay). Special plea to auditors with Web-authoring experience: you could usefully serve as technical consultant to any team project that needs the help.