Dr. Harrington’s Blog

I have never before changed a reading assignment in between class readings, but when I saw the announcement that comic creator and historian Scott McCloud will be speaking on campus during our class time next week, I couldn’t resist. Class will begin as usual at 6:00 in CA 237, and we’ll spend the first hour talking about writing out of school: browse the readings by Hourihan, the pieces about writing online (teens and myspace, and a cautionary tale about law students and MySpace), and look at the executive summary of the Pew Internet Project’s study of bloggers (all readings linked from the readings page on the course website).

How to manage the reading for next week

The readings page on the course site lists  7 different readings or sites.  Most of the reading is short and written for a popular audience. Think of them as in three sets:

• Scott McCloud: you have a link to Porphyria’s Lover, his first online comic (from the Browning poem, btw), to his “I Can’t Stop Thinking!” columns, and to his website.  Via his website you can learn more about his books, or see his online comics, or read his family’s blog about the book tour they’re currently on.  Follow your interests here, but read enough to
  • see examples of McCloud’s comic art style
  • see some of his thinking about what computers make possible for comics (that’s in his “I Can’t Stop Thinking!” columns)
  • smile or chuckle.  He’s fun!
• Blogging.  Meg Hourihan’s article is short and smart.  She’s a blogger explaining why bloggers write and how blogging works as a genre.  If you read blogs, or write a blog yourself, think about how her analysis makes sense of what you know.  The Pew Internet Project report on Bloggers is a longer document, but you can focus on the executive summary to get a statistical picture of American bloggers as a group.  As you look at these two pieces, get a sense of the energy and excitement pouring into out of school writing.  This is part of the phenomenon Yancey was talking about in her piece: look at all the writing people are doing without any help from English teachers or school.  What does this mean for us, for writing, for culture?
• MySpace and privacy: these are two articles raising issues that we’ll come back to after break.  I’ve left them on the syllabus because some of you might want to explore issues about MySpace in your final project.  These are two short news articles (one a report, the other an opinion column) making observations about who uses MySpace, why, and what some consequences might be.  (Negative consequences of MySpace get attention in the media: I’m wondering what some positive consequences might be, too.)

Take notes according to your personal styles.

Some leading questions to help focus your blogging and thinking:

Hourihan and the Pew Internet Project study look at the social networks created by bloggers. What kinds of social networks do you participate in out of school? Hourihan talks about blogging as a “native format.” Do you consider yourself a “native” writer on a blog or any other new technology? What are the writing styles/elements that are native to the web? And how do those styles contrast with what you see valued at school?

What motivates people to write outside of school? How does motivation to write get encouraged by different writing technologies? (what does blogging to to encourage people to write, for example? What kinds of writing seems to be encouraged or valued on the blogs you may read, for example?)

What kinds of graphics do you read regularly? (signs, comics, graphic novels, illustrated magazines, newspapers…?) What is the relationship between words, graphics and ideas in what you like to read? what words and graphics have you written with?

We’ll use the first hour of class to discuss questions flowing from your own blogging and your ideas about the final project, and then we’ll switch gears and see McCloud together.