Course & Syllabus Guidelines
ENG 1131 — Writing Through Media
- Printable version (rtf)
Purpose
This course originated as an extension of “writing about literature” to entertainment and popular culture media (cinema, television, music, video games, pop literature, comics, magazines, zines, and the like). One difference from 1102 besides the object of study is the method of study: writing through media. Students not only analyze and interpret media works but also use “creative” forms and practices to explore the production of meaning. 1131 with its overview of pop media is distinguished from 1145 special topics and 2300 film analysis.
Goal
The goal of the course is to introduce students to the transition underway between literacy and post-literacy (electracy) in contemporary culture. This shift is approached through its rhetorical implications, with the students as makers (and not just consumers) of new media effects. Hence this course is best taught in a computer classroom, in the context of which its more “writerly“ assignments seem less experimental than they do in a conventional setting. At the same time, the course is adaptable to the conventional classroom.
Outcome
While there is no one best way to teach 1131, there are certain things that students should know as a result of taking the course.
- The basic modes of organizing information that underlie and make coherent the apparent diversity of popular media: narrative (enigma), argument (enthymeme), image (trope). The desired understanding of transition from one apparatus or technological paradigm to another is achieved by comparing the way each of these modes manifests itself in print and (tape).
- The first level of knowledge of these modes is the sort found in handbooks introducing the principles of story, argument, poem, photograph. Good sources include not only interpretive guides, but authoring guides. The ambiguity of “image” – referring to both word and picture – is made an explicit part of the course.
- The theoretical background for the method is based primarily on Roland Barthes, including his semiotic readings of images as well as of stories, his invention of the five codes of narrative, and his exploration of third meanings in photography. Since 1131 is a general education course, original theoretical texts should be assigned sparingly. Students should become familiar with the basic principles of semiotics (sign-signifier/signified etc), the five codes introduced in S/Z, and third meanings. In general, the point is to increase “functional electracy” by pairing visual culture with print culture.
- Aesthetic authoring: while 1131 draws upon the analytical skills of literacy, it also asks students to compose stories and tropes in both words and pictures.
- Web: basic experience with all the authoring tools available for web design.
Curriculum (suggestions, not requirements)
A useful template for achieving the outcomes described above divides the semester into 4 segments, one for each of the basic modes, with a final section for integration or experimentation. Each segment includes readings and examples of the mode in both text and tape versions, with web examples as hybrid supplements.
- Narrative: basic organizing element = enigma (viz Barthes’ Hermeneutic code). Compare a Holmes story in print and on tape. Note the abductive logic structuring both, then use this logic pedagogically for the remaining sections of the course, as the problem-solving strategy for the course projects and assignments. How does a picture tell a story (photography)?
- Argument: basic element = enthymeme (suppressed premise). Logic: deduction and induction. Print essay; tape documentary. How does a picture argue (photography)?
- Image: basic element = trope. Logic: “conduction” (juxtaposition, association). Poetry (prose poem); TV advertisement (music video). Picture as trope (photography)?
- Synthesis: in practice there are no pure examples of the 3 modes – they are nearly always found together, but with one dominant and the others subordinate. Citizen Kane displays an amazing balance among the three: a narrative told as a documentary with both modes inflected by image-structured cinematography.
Assignments
Readings include both works about the forms and examples of them. Principles may be demonstrated with simple examples as well as complex masterpieces. Any work the students are asked to produce should be supported with models or relays for emulation and extrapolation. Exercises may be gathered under and motivated by a semester-long project. A more analytical approach to the curriculum might be based on “adaptation” of a key example to the medium of the web, to explore how the web draws on certain features of both the page and the screen. A more aesthetic approach to web hybridity is to design the 4 projects so that they accumulate into an intellectual self-portrait.
