Dr. Dean Taciuch

George Mason University

Summer 2021
English 377
Course Schedule


Week 1 (June 1 – 6): Pre-Digital Shenanigans
Wednesday June 2: Course Introduction.
Cut ups and word generators
Burroughs: "The Cut Up Method"
Burroughs Cut-Up poems (from Minutes to Go) via RealityStudio
John Cage at EPC
Jackson MacLow at EPC
Public Domain/Open Access resources: Public Domain Day 2021, Project Gutenberg, Internet Archive, Creative Commons

Async: Play with the text generators

Tools: Text Generators from SourceForge and UPenn
(Local install of the SourceForge generators).

Assignment: Create a cut up or generated text. You should use your own material, or works which are in the Public Domain or CC-licensed for Derivatives


Week 2 (June 7 – 13): Made Digital
Wednesday June 9: E-books
Project Gutenberg
Internet Archive
Calibre Demo

Async:Begin working on an ebook using the Calibre software (or other software if you are familiar with another tool, such as LibreOffice or Pages (MacOS only).

Tools: Creative Commons Choose a License and Creative Commons Search
Calibre (ebook editor and organizer)

Assignment: Review one work from Internet Archive or Project Gutenberg.


Week 3 (June 14 – 20): Workshop
Wednesday June 16: Demo and review ebooks

Async: Edit E-books

Assignment: Post E-book to BlackBoard as .epub file


Week 4 (June 21 – 27): Forking Paths

Wednesday June 23: HTML
Creating web content: pages, links, sites

Async: Create a webpage on Mason, Neocities, or another hosting service.

Tools: GMU Web Resources
W3CSchool
Neocities

Assignment: Create a personal webpage, with links to content.


Week 5 (June 28 – July 3): Born Digital
Wednesday June 30: Samples from Electronic Literature Collection.
Moulthrop: Hejirascope
Sample: House of Leaves of Grass
Async: Strickland: "Born Digital," Electronic Literature Collection, Vol 3 selections
Assignment: Review of one ELC3 work. Post to your webpage.


Week 6 (July 5 –11): Gamification
Wednesday July 7: Text-Based games
Crowther and Woods, Adventure (Colossal cave) online
Interactive Fiction in Sub-Q (choose a genre from the "Play" menu)
Games from IFDB (search for tag=Twine)

Async: Download and explore Twine.
Begin a Twine story

Tools: Twine

Assignment: Twine draft


Week 7 (July 12 – 18): Workshop
Wednesday July 14: Demo and workshop drafts of Twine stories

Async: Edit and revise Twine stories


Week 8 (July 19 –21): Portfolio
Wednesday July 21: Class demos of final portfolios

Async: Finish uploading final portfolios

Assignment: Final Portfolios



Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.


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Course Syllabus