Course Description:
Me, You, Us: Digital Narratives
Hyper-accessible, asynchronous, anonymous, social, and confessional: the nature of web—and the emergence of new media forms and applications for it—has created a unique and evolving environment for storytelling. We will survey a range of new narrative forms, such as digital comics, collective storytelling sites, blogs and vlogs, “Lifecasting,” fan fiction, twitter and cell phone “novels,” and transmedia storytelling. We will examine how authenticity, documentary, authorship, voyeurism, sousveillance, and exhibitionism come into play in these new forms. We will experiment with strategies for constructing non-linear narratives, collecting user-generated content, and creating participatory storytelling projects. We will consider works such as Post Secret, Miranda July and Herrell Fletcher’s Learning to Love You More site, Jonathan Harris’ We Feel Fine and The Whale Hunt. We will read texts by Henry Jenkins, Marshall MacLuhan, Clay Shirky, and Scott McCloud. Students will learn basic web design (HTML and CSS) and programming skills and image processing software (Adobe Photoshop) to create visual, interactive, narrative art projects for the web.
Course Requirements
Weekly assignments, readings, and student presentations. One final project (3-4 weeks).
Technologies We’ll Cover
You’ll learn to use HTML and CSS, WordPress framework for blogging (and optionally php plugins for WordPress), Photoshop, Illustrator, and sound recording and editing software (Audacity, Soundbooth).
Grading Breakdown
Class participation 30%
Homework: 45%
Final project: 25%
Attendance, Lateness, Attention, and Social Media Policy
Attendance to every class is required. If you have more than 2 absences, you will FAIL the class. Repeated lateness will accumulate into an absence. Late assignments will not be accepted. Please don’t text, chat, tweet, use facebook or email during class time. Do this during the breaks. Phones off and in bags. Please pay attention while your classmates are presenting their work; learning to listen carefully and talk intelligently about other people’s work will make YOUR work better, I promise.
Week 1/September 7. Story & Narrative
Content: Course Introduction. What is story, what is narrative? In-class exercises.
Tech: the internet– absolute basics; html and css
Assignment: autobiography and faux autobiography.
Readings: Tell Me A Story: Narrative and Intelligence, Roger Shank, Excerpt “Chapter 2: Where Stories Come From and Why We Tell Them”
Telling Tails, tim o’brien: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2009/08/telling-tails/7533/
SmithMag 6-word Stories. Read 55-Word story guidelines (handout) and online examples on LiveJournal. Read online entries at 400Words.com.
Week 2/Sept 14. Constraints and Collaboration
Content: Read stories, discuss process. Twitter as a form, twitter novels. Structure and constraints. Oulipo.
Student Presentation: Penguin wikinovel
Tech: WordPress Blogging
Assignment: collaborative class Twitter novel, create a WordPress blog, write a response to twitter novel project and post to blog
Reading: The Machine Stops, EM Forster
Plus handout, TBA
Week 3/ Sept 21. Surveillance/Sousveillance: Authenticity, Privacy, Performance
Content: Review Twitter novel process and product
Watch film: We Live In Public. Look at/discuss online autobiographical/sousveillence projects.
Student Presentation: justintv
Tech: mod your theme with CSS
Assignment: Sousveille yourself, make a story. Post documentation to web.
Reading: John Berger, “Stories” handout; Understanding Comics, Scott McCloud
Reading handout TBA
Week 4/Sept 28. Words And Pictures: Sourcing Stories, Appropriating Content
Content: Discuss documentation of sousveillence and process.
Fotonovela as form, flickr and flickr groups, specific photo-sharing story sites.
Student Presentation: Flickr groups
Tech: Photoshop crash course
Assignment: Flickr project
Readings: Jimmy Corrigan, The Smartest Kid on Earth, Chris Ware, Comics Architecture, Multidimensionality, and Time: Chris Ware’s Jimmy Corrigan, The Smartest Kid on Earth, Thomas Breedlove; Infinite Canvas, Scott McCloud
Week5/Oct 5. Words and Pictures 2: Sequential Art and Narrative Spaces
Content: Look at/discuss Jason (Shhh), Chris Ware (Jimmy Corrigan), Jesse Reklaw (Slow Wave), David Rees (GYWO), Lynda Barry (what it is), Arthur Jones (Post-it Note Stories)
In-class exercise from What it is
Student Presentation: Scott McCloud, The Right Number
Tech: lllustrator crash course
Assignment: create your own 8-frame comic, experiment with structure. Post to blog.
Reading: Why Heather Can Write: Media Literacy and the Harry Potter Wars, from Convergence Culture, Henry Jenkins
Week 6/ Oct 12. Fan Fiction
Content: Review comic assignment. Look at/discuss fan fiction sites.
Student Presentation: Fan Fiction.net community interactions
Assignment: Choose an existing mass-media narrative that you’re engaged with and create some fan fiction about it (one page). Post to blog.
Reading: Tell Me A Story: Narrative and Intelligence, Roger Shank, Excerpt “Chapter 3: Understanding Other People’s Stories”; watch Jonathan Harris’s TED talk on Collecting Stories, Listening assignment TBA
Week 7/Oct 19. Retellings: Collaboration, Authorship, Editing
Content: Review Fan fiction assignment. Watch film: Off the Charts: The Song-Poem Story. Also: songs to wear pants to, etsy.com commisons.
Tech: audio recording, audacity, interviewing techniques. Guest (?)
Assignment: Record three stories from different tellers one one theme. Edit them down.
Readings: TBA.
Week 8/Oct 26. No Class. Plan Day.
Week 9/ Nov 2. Collective Story Sites: Designing Communities
Content: Learning to Love You More, Found Magazine, Saddest Thing I Own, Cassettes from My Ex, facebook notes, twitter.
Student Presentation: PostSecret
Tech: wordpress plugins/php 101
Assignment: propose a mode of collection for a content type; define your audience; create a moodboard; develop one or two example stories to seed your potential project
Listen to : This American Life Episode #110 Mapping, Reading: Denis Woods TBA
Week 10/ Nov 9. Story and Landscape
Content: location-based storytelling, ARGS and mapping stories.
In-class exercise: observation in place.
Student Presentation: ARG of your choice
Tech: Google Collaborative Maps
Assignment: Make a story-map, or integrate a story into an environment. Post to blog
Reading: Mythologies, Roland Barthes. Meme reading TBA
Week 11/ Nov 18. Final Project Workshop Day
–Thanksgiving Break–
Week 12/ Nov 30. Memes and Myths
Content: organic narratives/participatory narratives, memes as stories. Review final project proposals, tag-team critiques.
Student Presentation: Meme lifestory/timeline
Assignment: make your own meme and set it free; work on final project
Reading: no reading this week! focus on final.
Week 13/Dec 7 (Last Day!). Final project presentations