Assignments & Grading

Attendance and class participation (including field trips and peer evaluations) will constitute 30% of your grade. The remaining 70% will be determined according to your performance in each of the following assignments.

Reading Responses: Students must create their own blog for this course, which will act as a writing portfolio for reading responses. For each day on which a reading is assigned, students must create a posting of two or more paragraphs, one of which summarizes the theme and primary argument(s) of the author, and the other of which poses a discussion question. These responses must be posted online, prior to the commencement of the class session for which they were assigned. Students are encouraged to read and comment respectfully on each other’s blogs. 10% of grade (Note: Because these are graded on a satisfactory/unsatisfactory basis, poor performance on reading responses can result in the lowering of your grade by as much as one letter-grade. )

Diagnostic Essay: All students must turn-in a diagnostic essay at the beginning of the semester, for evaluation. While these will be ungraded, they are mandatory.

Oral Presentations: Twice during the semester, students will be required to give oral presentations of works in progress. These presentations will provide opportunities for feedback and the fleshing-out of ideas, while also providing context for some of our discussions of the relationship between orality & literacy. 10% of grade (5% each)

Essay #1: The critical essay (6-8 pages). This paper will require students to reflect critically on a work of digital or electronic art, offering a coherent thesis in relationship to the interpretation of the work. Formulation of this argument should be dependent upon the components or elements of the work, including a close-reading of the rhetorical relationship between word and image (or the visual and the verbal, etc), which will also entail contextualizing the relationship between form and content. While primary emphasis should be placed on the work itself, papers should also consider how the piece fits into the artist’s larger body of work and art historical precedents. 20% of grade

Prospectus for essay #2: This will be a 1-2 page paper proposal, outlining your topic, thesis, the main points you anticipate making in support of your thesis, and three potential research references, at least two of which must be from outside of the syllabus and not from the internet (though appropriate internet references are encouraged—we will discuss this). Ungraded, but mandatory.

Essay #2: Research paper (10-12 pages). Expanding on the model of critical writing initiated in the first paper, students will present a critical essay with a major research component. We will discuss topics as the due date approaches, but research components may include: in-depth research into an artist’s or collective’s body of work, a comparison of a “new” work with its self-proclaimed artistic precedent or the source of its appropriation; analysis of the historicization and/or vocabularization of particular practices and/or theories in new media art. 30% of grade

Students should keep original copies of all course work turned-in and all edited and graded assignments. Please consult the course schedule for due dates.