Unit 1: Writing Objects of Knowledge

July 1: Course introduction

Topics

  • What are our disciplinary backgrounds?
  • What exactly are “disciplines,” and how does writing both reflect and construct them?
  • How do we locate and talk about the aspects of writing that vary with discipline?

In Class

  • Neal Lerner, “Writing is a Way of Enacting Disciplinarity,” in Linda Adler-Kassner & Elizabeth Wardle, Naming What We Know: Threshold Concepts in Writing Studies

July 2: Genre as Data / Data as Genre

Topics

  • What does “good writing” look like in our fields?
  • What writing do we consider “scientific” or “technical?” How do we know?
  • Where does data-driven writing appear, what does it look like, and how is it valued and authorized?
  • What do we mean by “discourse,” or a “discourse community?”
  • How does genre structure the data we collect and represent?

Readings

  • Catherine Schryer, “The Lab vs. The Clinic: Sites of Competing Genres,” in Aviva Freedman and Peter Medway, Genre and the New Rhetoric

Please bring in an example of what you consider “good writing” in your field or intended profession.

In class

  • Damore Google Memo: “Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber”

July 3: Authorities of Delimitation

Topics

  • What is Focauldian archaeology?
  • How are categories of technical knowledge named and organized?
  • Who controls vocabularies? Who decides those schemes and what counts?

Readings

  • Geoffrey C. Bowker and Susan Leigh Star, “To Classify is Human,” from Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences

July 4

Independence Day; no class

July 8: Objects and Objectivity

Topics

  • What objects of knowledge can data capture?
  • How is data an object of study itself?
  • What’s the relationship between “objects” and “objectivity?”

Readings

  • Kristine L. Blair, “Technofeminist Storiographies,” in Jonathan Alexander and Jacqueline Rhodes, The Routledge Handbook of Digital Writing and Rhetoric
  • Lisa Gitelman and Virginia Jackson, “Introduction,” from Raw Data is an Oxymoron

In Class

  • Robert Irish, “Constructing Engineering Argument,” from Writing in Engineering: A Brief Guide

Due: first ideas for Discourse Analysis assignment

July 9: Objectivity, cont.

Topics

  • How do we transform our perceptions into data?
  • What associations do we have with mechanical technologies and their ability to help us represent the world?

Drafting

Readings

  • Lorraine Daston and Peter Gallison, “Prologue: Objectivity Shock”, and half of “Trained Judgment” (pp. 309-346) from Objectivity

July 10: Objectivity, cont.

  • How do we transform our perceptions into data?
  • What associations do we have with mechanical technologies and their ability to help us represent the world?

Readings

  • Lorraine Daston and Peter Gallison, second half of “Trained Judgment” (pp. 346-361), from Objectivity

July 11: Peer Review

Topics

  • What do our processes for writing look like? Are they solitary or social?
  • Why do we peer review? What are your misgivings, if any?
  • How do we provide useful feedback to one another?

Readings

  • Melinda Baldwin, “Scientific Autonomy, Public Accountability, and the Rise of ‘Peer Review’ in the Cold War United States,” Isis: A Journal of the History of Science Society

In Class

  • Richard Straub, “Responding–Really Responding–to Other Students’ Writing,” in Wendy Bishop, The subject is writing: essays by teachers and students

Due: working draft of Discourse Analysis assignment

Unit 2: Writing Networks

July 15: Writing recycles and transforms

Topics

  • Does writing convey existing knowledge? Create knowledge? Put existing knowledge in our own terms?
  • What are strategies we use for reworking our own writing? Others’ writing?

Readings

  • Cary Moskovitz, “Self-Plagiarism, Text Recycling, and Science Education,” in BioScience
  • Joe Harris, “Coming to Terms,” from Rewriting: How to Do Things with Texts

In Class

  • Start conducting research for Literature Review assignment

Due: Discourse Analysis (with peer review)

July 16: Social networks of scholars

Topics

  • How do we refer to existing research in the scientific disciplines and technical professions?
  • How do networks of citation construct knowledge and create fields?

Readings

  • Ann M. Penrose and Steven B. Katz, “Reviewing Prior Research,” from Writing in the Sciences: Exploring Conventions of Scientific Discourse

In class

  • Identifying literature review conventions

July 17: Social networks of scholars, cont.

Topics

  • How do writers in the technical professions refer to one another’s work?
  • How has a “so-called data explosion” changed how we point to and repurpose academic research?

Readings

  • Blaise Cronin, “Genres Galore,” from “Scholars and Scripts, Spoors and Scores,” in Blaise Cronin and Cassidy R. Sugimoto, Beyond Bibliometrics: Harnessing Multidimensional Indicators of Scholarly Impact

In Class

  • Robert Irish, “Managing Sources,” in Writing in Engineering: A Brief Guide

July 18: Writing as a technology

Topics

  • How do we think about writing as a technology for social communication?

Readings

  • Dennis Baron, “From pencils to pixels: the stages of literacy technology,” in Gail Hawisher and Cynthia Selfe, Passions, Pedagogies and 21st Century Technologies

Due July 19 by 11:59PM: Annotated Bibliography for Literature Review assignment

July 22: Digital reuse and remix

Topics

  • How do digital media and technologies influence how the writing we engage with or how we anticipate others engaging with us?

Readings

In Class

  • Peer Review

Due: working draft of Literature Review

July 23: Coding as writing / writing as coding

Topics

  • How are digital and data-driven technologies influencing our processes for writing?
  • Is it useful to think about writing and coding as similar practices?

Readings

  • Annette Vee, “Introduction”, from Coding Literacy: How Computer Programming is Changing Writing

In Class

  • Vikram Chandra, “The Beauty of Code,” in the Paris Review

  • Abstract activity and drafting

July 24: Peer-review and writing day

Greg is away at a conference, but there is still class!

July 25

Greg is away at a conference; class cancelled

Unit 3: Writing Networked Ecologies

July 29: Data in our lives

Topics

  • When and how are aspects our lives quantified in data in our contemporary moment?
  • How and why do algorithmic analytics reproduce structural inequality?

Readings

In class

Due: Literature Review Assignment (with peer review)

July 30: Writing platforms

Topics

  • How do technical platforms constrain rhetoric?
  • How do technical platforms constrain our roles, structuring our lives and our work?
  • From what platform might engineers work toward justice?

Readings

In Class

July 31: Algorithmic power

Topics

  • How is rhetoric moderated in digital spaces?
  • How does power direct circulation in digital ecologies?
  • Who benefits? Whose voices are heard or not? Who is affected?

Readings

  • Dustin Edwards, “Circulation Gatekeepers: Unbundling the Platform Politics of YouTube’s Content ID,” Computers & Composition

In class

  • Brian Ott, “The Age of Twitter: Donald J. Trump and the Politics of Debasement,” Critical Studies in Media Communication
  • Data & Society Explainers & Reports

Introduction to tech issues assignment

Some books for further reading, if this topic piques your interest

  • Safiya E. Noble, Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism
  • Tarleton Gillespie, Custodians of the Internet: Platforms, Content Moderation, and the Hidden Decisions That Shape Social Media
  • Sarah T. Roberts Behind the Screen: Content Moderation in the Shadows of Social Media

Aug 1: Circulation ecologies

Topics

  • What differences emerge when we think of writing as a “network” vs. an “ecology?”

Readings

  • none!

In Class

In-class drafting of Tech Issues assignment Due: working draft of Tech Issues Memo assignment

Aug 5: Algorithmic ethics & resistance

Topics

  • How might we anticipate or resist algorithmic mediation?
  • How do we negotiate agency over our and others’ data?
  • When things go wrong, who do we hold accountable?

Readings

  • John Gallagher, “Writing for Algorithmic Audiences,” Computers & Composition
  • Jessica Reyman, “The Rhetorical Agency of Algorithms”, in Aaron Hess and Amber Davisson, Theorizing Digital Rhetoric

In Class

Unit 4: Writing Data

Aug 6: Data systems

Topics

  • What forms can and do data take?
  • How do we collect and model complex, multiply-mediated data?
  • What is our subjective role as people who generate and communicate data?
  • How do we communicate failure of engineerered systems?

Readings

In class

  • Nancy G. Leveson & Clark S. Turner, “An Investigation of the Therac-25 Accidents,” in Computer
  • Brooke Gladstone, “Uncomfortably Numb,” from On The Media (podcast)

Due: Tech Issues Memo assignment (with peer review)

Aug 7: Data rhetoric

Topics

  • How do data argue?
  • What rhetorical choices do we make in data’s collection, transformation, and presentation?
  • How do context and rhetorical choices affect data and what audiences conclude from them?

Readings

In Class

Aug 8: Data lab day

Topics

  • What are some methods we can use to present and visualize data?
  • How can we leverage our existing knowledges to create using different tools and platforms?

Readings

  • Sword, et al, “Seven Ways of Looking at a Data Set,” in Qualitative Inquiry

In Class

Please bring your laptops to class. If you don’t have one available or you do and can’t bring it for whatever reason, please see me at least a week prior to class, and we can arrange something.

  • Due: first ideas for Writing Data and Data Visualization assignments*

Aug 12: Intervening with data

Topics

  • What is Rapid Response Research? Rapid prototyping?
  • What publics can benefit from our work with data, and how? Are there dangers?

Readings

In Class

Some further reading, if this topic piques your interest

  • Moya Bailey and Reina Gossett, “Analog Girls in Digital Worlds: Dismantling Binaries for Digital Humanists Who Research Social Media,” in The Routledge Companion to Media Studies and Digital Humanities
  • Marisa Elena Duarte, Network Soverignty: Building the Internet Across Indian Country
  • Zeynep Tufekci, Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest

Aug 13: What is data visualization?

Topics

  • What kind of visualization have we encountered and produced in our work?
  • What are some common tenets of “good” data visualization?

Readings

  • Robert Irish, “Strategies for Reporting with Visuals,” from Writing in Engineering: A Brief Guide

In class

  • Georgia Lupi and Stefanie Povasec, Dear Data project

Aug 14: Potentials for data visualization

Topics

  • What are some ways we can be transparent with our rhetorical choices and constraints when visualizing data?
  • How might we push the rhetorical limits for visualizing data?

Readings

In Class

Aug 15: Wrap Up

  • Informal peer review of Working Drafts
  • Course Review
  • Course Evaluations

Due: Writing Data

Aug 19 (Finals Week Meeting)

From a Distance Due: Data Visualization & Reflection assignment