Privacy, Publicity,
& the Text Message

☜ Home Assignments Practica

Assignments


The goal of these assignments and grading rubrics are, above all, to remain accountable to one another and to set you up for success in the class. For me, this means posting clear and reasonable expectations. For you, this means staying connected as best you can and communicating what’s working and what isn’t. Please note that everything below can change if we need it to. For more detail on this, please read the COVID caveat.


Comprehension

Final Project [details]

A range of formats are possible for your final project, from essays to datasets, from visualizations to research reports for community organizations. Collaborative projects are an option. I will provide a list of possible project ideas and am open to any ideas you bring to the table. Worth 25% of your final grade.

Response Questions

In lieu of a midterm, you will be given two comprehension questions every week. Some questions will simply gauge what resonated with you in the week’s readings in order to shape our synchronous Zoom conversation. Other questions will encourage you to build on the concepts we’ve discussed over multiple sessions.

Each week, I will share these questions in a dedicated #response-questions channel on the class Slack. Everyone should post their response directly in that channel. Ten weeks of response questions are worth 20% of your final grade.

Participation

Checking In

I understand that it won’t be possible for everyone to participate in our synchronous Zoom meetings. Zoom attendance isn’t required, but it will be the place where most course content is delivered. If you are participating on Zoom, please try to keep your camera on.

If you cannot attend the scheduled class times on Zoom, I will share all slides and discussion notes after class and you can instead participate in conversations on the class Slack. But your asynchronous participation will need to extend beyond regular activities in the #practica and #response-questions channels.

Above all, it is important that you choose at beginning of class which engagement method (synchronous or asynchronous) is best for you, and whether I should expect that you will or won’t be on Zoom most weeks. Checking in counts for 20% of your final grade.

Practica [list]

Weekly practica provide an opportunity to apply concepts from our readings through experiments in humanities computing, old media, and daily practice. Each of you will conduct these practica asynchronously, but we will devote half an hour at the end of our synchronous Zoom sessions to planning and discussing them. You can then report on your results in the Slack #practica channel throughout the week. Practica are worth 20% of your grade.

Letter Writing [details]

Every other week, you will write a letter and mail it to a classmate. Stamps and envelopes will be provided. We’ll contextualize your correspondence during our sessions on the epistolary novel, the postal system, and the republic of letters. There’s no need to share the letter with me or document it in any way. This component is done on the honor system and counts toward 15% of your final grade.

Grading Breakdown

Assignment Freq %
COMPREHENSION
Final Project once 25
Response Questions bi-weekly 20
PARTICIPATION
Checking In weekly 20
Practica weekly 20
Letter Writing bi-weekly 15