Meeting Time and Place: PORTER 245 Wed 12:30-3:30 PM
Office: Porter College, Room 212
Phone: 459-2408
Office Hours: Tues 2:30-4:30 PM (or by appt.)
Email: semurray@ucsc.edu (Email is the best way to reach me.)
All readings are listed below by week, and can be found in your course reader.
Course readers are available at: The Literary Guillotine, 204 Locust St.
Santa Cruz, CA 95060, Phone: (831) 457-1195 (October 1)
Journaling Assignments (30% of Final Grade) Students are required to keep a response journal to the reading materials. You must submit a response of 500 words (equivalent of one single-spaced page) which illustrates your understanding of the readings, your questions, and challenges of the material. Be sure to cover ideas or perspectives that particularly strike your interest, or that you particularly oppose. These journal notes are not required to be as “finished” as a polished essay, but you must submit these weekly in electronic form, paragraph format, and spell-checked. Post these to the course wiki at least 24 hours before class time. Please post them in an organized fashion so that I may easily navigate the information. Notes will be assessed based upon your ability to draw out and address the key points in the selected material, and your thoughtful contemplation.
Discussion Leading (20% of Final Grade) Throughout the semester, students will be asked to lead discussions on various topics. The schedule for these discussions will be made during class, and everyone will have an opportunity to participate. Use the journaling assignment during the week you lead discussion as an opportunity to set forth a series of questions about the texts. Draw parallels between them, and consider artists who might be responding to these ideas. I also encourage students to bring in outside materials on artists, filmmakers, or thinkers whose works come to mind in regard to the readings.
Class Attendance/Participation (20% of Final Grade) During class we will be viewing and discussing an array of visual material. It is absolutely essential that you attend all sessions. An attendance sheet will be passed out at the beginning of class, so be there to sign in. Also, be sure to let me know in advance if you know you will be unable to attend one of these sessions for medical reasons, due to religious holiday observance, etc. Students who anticipate being absent from class due to religious observance should inform the instructor by the second class meeting of the term. If you are absent from class, you are responsible for contacting a classmate for the information you missed. Three unexcused absences will result in failure of the course.
Final Paper (30% of Final Grade) Students will be required to write a final paper of 12-15 pages on a subject of their choosing that relates to the material presented in class. Students will be asked to write a one-paragraph summary of research intentions and meet with the professor to obtain topic approval. Remember that although these are research papers, you may use them as investigations of themes in your own work.
Late Papers and Extensions All writing assignments must be turned in on time. All final papers must be submitted in hardcopy form. Late Final Papers will receive a half-grade deduction for every day that they are late. Extensions will be granted in case of medical emergency. If you are confused about an assignment, or having difficulty completing the course, contact me right away.
—102.012: Plagiarism is defined as the use of intellectual material produced by another
person without acknowledging its source. This includes, but is not limited to: A. Copying from the writings or works of others into one's academic assignment without attribution, or submitting such works as if it were one's own; B. Using the views, opinions, or insights of another without acknowledgment; or C. Paraphrasing the characteristic or original phraseology, metaphor, or other literary device of another without proper attribution.
Finally, I ask that you refrain from audio- or video-recording this seminar, selling class notes or recordings to any notetaking services.
(Please note that the readings are due on the day that they are listed.)
Syllabus Overview and Expectations.
Please purchase your course reader at Literary Guillotine and begin reading.
Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in The Age of Mechanical Reproduction” in Illuminations, edited by Hannah Arendt (NY: Shocken, 1968), 217-242.
Espen Aarseth, “We All Want to Change the World: The Ideology of Innovation in Digital Media” in Gunnar Liestol et. al, Digital Media Revisited (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003), 415-439.
Michel Foucault, “Panopticism” from Discipline and Punish (NY: Vintage Books, 1995), 195-228. Originally published in French in 1977.
Victor Burgin, “Jenni’s Room: Exhibitionism and Solitude” ” in CTRL SPACE: Rhetorics of Surveillance from Bentham to Big Brother (Karlsruhe: ZKM, 2002), 228-235.
Slavoj Zizek, “Big Brother, or, The Triumph of the Gaze Over the Eye” in CTRL SPACE: Rhetorics of Surveillance from Bentham to Big Brother (Karlsruhe: ZKM, 2002), 224-7.
Donna Haraway, “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century” in Socialist Review, 80 (1985): 65-107
Sarah Kember, Cyberfeminism and Artificial Life (London and NY: Routledge, 2003), 53-82.
Steve Tomasula, "Genetic Art and the Aesthetics of Biology" in Leonardo, Vol. 35, No. 2 (2002), 137-144.
David Joselit, Carol Becker, Critical Art Ensemble, N. Katherine Hayles, Ernest Larsen, Sherry Millner and Marek Wieczorek, "Biocollage" in Art Journal, Vol. 59, No. 3 (Autumn, 2000), 44-63.
Lisa Lynch, "Culturing the Pleebland: The Idea of the Public in Genetic Art" in Literature and Medicine, No. 1 (Spring 2007): 180-206.
N. Katherine Hayles, “The Condition of Virtuality” from Peter Lunenfeld, ed., The Digital Dialectic: New Essays on New Media (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999), 69-94.
Brian Massumi, Parables for the Virtual (Durham and London: Duke U. Press, 2002), 1-21.
Hans Jonas, "Toward a Philosophy of Technology" in Robert C. Scharff and Val Dusek, eds., Philosophy of Technology: The Technological Condition (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2003), 191-204. Originally published in Hastings Center Report 9/1 (1979): 34-43.
Jean-Francois Lyotard, “Can Thought Go On Without a Body?” in The Inhuman (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988), 8-23.
Henri Bergson, Matter and Memory, trans. N.M. Paul and W.S. Palmer (NY: Zone Books, 1991). Translated from the 5th Edition published in French in 1908. Excerpt of 3 pgs.
Mark B N. Hansen, “Introduction” and “The Affective Topology of New Media Art” in New Philosophy for New Media (Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2004), 1-11, 197-232.
Atau Tanaka, "Interaction, Experience, and the Future of Music" from Computer Supported Cooperative Work (Vol. 35 ), pages 267-288, Springer. 2006. accessed online from 
http://www.csl.sony.fr/staff/member/?username=atau on September 12, 2008
Dominic Robson, "Play!: Sound Toys for Non-Musicians" in Computer Music Journal, Vol. 26, No. 3, New Performance Interfaces (Autumn, 2002), 50-61.
Optional:
Atau Tanaka, "Musical Performance Practice on Sensor-based Instruments" from Wanderley, M. M. and Battier, M., eds., Trends in Gestural Control of Music, Science et musique, 389-405, IRCAM - Centre Pompidou. 2000. Edition electronique - on CD-ROM, accessed online from http://www.csl.sony.fr/staff/member/?username=atau on September 12, 2008)
Olu Oguibe, “Part III: Brave ‘New World’” from The Culture Game (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004), 149-158 and 169-177.Excerpts.
Anna Munster, "Digitality: An Ethico-Aesthetic Paradigm for Information" from Materializing New Media: Embodiment in Information Aesthetics (Lebanon, NH: University Press of New England and Dartmouth Press, 2006), 150-177.
(If you’d like the paper returned to you, then enclose self-addressed envelope with enough postage.)
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