Course Schedule

Week 0

• Availability Poll
• Tech Assessment and Preferences Survey
• Please review this site, especially the course policies and grade breakdown.
• Virtual “Muddy Cards”

Week 1: Algorithmic Metaphor (June 29 - July 3)

Course Introductions

• Post: Welcome to ENGL 3380! Please Introduce Yourself.

What’s the “project” of this course?

• Discussion Board Post Guidelines
• A note on reading
• Annette Kolodny, “Dancing Through the Minefield: Some Observations on the Theory, Practice, and Politics of Feminist Literary Criticism,” Feminist Studies, 1980
• Post: Dancing Through the Minefield Response

How do we know algorithms? What rhetoric surrounds them?

• Taina Bucher, “The Multiplicity of Algorithms,” in If…Then: Algorithmic Power and Politics
• “Coding,” Vox’s Explained series on Netflix
• Post: What is an algorithm, anyway?

Week 2: Algorithmic Identity and Surveillance (July 6 - July 10)

• Week 2 Orienting Notes

How do algorithms know us? What rhetoric do they enact?

• Estee Beck, “The Invisible Digital Identity: Assemblages in Digital Networks,” Computers and Composition (2015)
• John Cheney-Lippold, “Introduction,” from We Are Data: Algorithms and the Making of our Digital Selves (2017)
• Post: Ghostery

Is surveillance new? How 'bout to you?

• Guidelines for Project 1: Watching the Watchers
• Jacqueline Wernimont, “Every Step You Take,” from Numbered Lives: Life and Death in Quantum Media (2018)
• Jesse Stommel, “Love and Other Data Assets,” blog (2020)
• Post: Data Capture

Accessing SOME of your Data

• Xavier Adam, “An Illustrated Introduction to APIs,” medium (2019)
• David Murphy, “What’s in Your Instagram Data Dump and How to Get It,” lifehacker (2018)

Week 3: Algorithmic Literacy and Logics (July 13 - July 17)

• Week 3 Orienting Notes

When are we algorithmic?

• Gaby David and Carolina Cambre, “Screened Intimacies: Tinder and the Swipe Logic,” Social Media and Society (2016)
• excerpts from Emerson et al., Writing Ethnographic Field Notes (1995)
• Post: While statements
• Post: Demetricator

How do we “write” with code?

• Xavier Adam, “API Whispering 101,” medium (2019)
• excerpts from Annette Vee, “Sociomaterialities of Coding,” Coding Literacy: How Computer Programming is Changing Writing (2017)
• API Tutorial
• Post: API Data Dump

Week 4: Algorithmic Bias and Mediation (July 20 - July 24)

Can Algorithms be racist?

• Roman Mars, “The Age of the Algorithm” (interview with Cathy O’Neil), 99% Invisible (2017)
• Ruha Benjamin, “Default Discrimination: Is the Glitch Systemic?,” from Race After Technology (2019)
• Janelle Shane, “The danger of AI is weirder than you think,” TED (2019)
• Post: Algorithmic bias

How do algorithms control the “flow” of information in networks? What’s our role in these systems?

• Dustin Edwards, “Circulation Gatekeepers: Unbundling the Platform Politics of YouTube’s Content ID,” Computers and Composition (2017)
• Sidney Dobrin, “The Spaces Between,” in Laurie Gries and Colin Gifford Brooke (eds.), Circulation, Writing, and Rhetoric (2018)
• Sarah Myers West, “Censored, suspended, shadowbanned: User interpretations of content moderation on social media platforms” (2018)
• Post: Digital Ecologies

Week 5 Algorithmic Agency, Ethics, and Accountability (July 27 - July 31)

• Guidelines for Project 2: Ethnographic Integrative Memo

Who do algorithms leave accountable?

• Jessica Reyman, “The Rhetorical Agency of Algorithms,” in Aaron Hess and Amber Davisson (eds.), Theorizing Digital Rhetoric (2017)
• Ryan P. Shepherd, “Gaming Reddit’s Algorithm: r/the_donald, Amplification, and the Rhetoric of Sorting”,” Computers and Composition (2020)
• Jena Barachas-Lichtenstein, Tweet Thread on headlines (2020)
• Post: What’s happening here? (Screenshot of a Trump tweet, 2020)

Bad actors

• Week 5 Orienting Notes
• Adrian Chen, “The Agency,” The New York Times Magazine (2015)
• Jonathan Bradshaw, “Rhetorical Exhaustion & The Ethics of Amplification,” Computers and Composition (2020)
• Jeremy David Johnson, “Ethics, Agency, and Power: Toward an Algorithmic Rhetoric,” in Aaron Hess and Amber Davisson (eds.), Theorizing Digital Rhetoric (2017)
• Post: Agency

Week 6: Algorithmic Remix and Resistance (August 3 - August 7)

• Looking ahead to our Collaborative Project

How do we write with Algorithms in mind?

• John Gallagher, “Writing for Algorithmic Audiences,” Computers and Composition (2017)
• Parker Molloy, “QAnon followers melt down after K-Pop fans take over their hashtags,” Media Matters (2020)
• Kate Starbird, “How a Crisis Researcher Makes Sense of Covid-19 Misinformation,” medium (2020)
• Elizabeth Losh, “#Noise,” from hashtag (2020)

Hashtag Activism

• Week 6 Orienting Notes
• Sarah J. Jackson et al., “Conclusion: #HashtagActivism: Here to Stay,” from Hashtag Activism: Networks of Race and Gender Justice
• Catherine D’Ignazio and Lauren Klein, “On Rational, Scientific, Objective Viewpoints from Mythical, Imaginary, Impossible Standpoints,” from Data Feminism (2020)
• Post: Data Activism

Week 7: Starting to Wrap Up (August 10 - August 14)

• Post: Deciding on our final project together
• Post: Final project chat
• Manifesto Drafting Space (Google Doc)

Course Evaluations

• ENGL Department
• TRACE