Journals

Why?
In the logs, you should be recording your ideas, impressions and reactions during, and just after, each reading session. The journal entries, on the other hand, give you a chance to reflect more systematically on the literary construct (call it a book, call it a hypertext) you are exploring.

When?
The dues dates for journal entries are marked on the class schedule, but I have usually asked for two a week. I see the journals in the same way as I see the logs, as informal discovery writings which might help you to develop your own interpretations of the texts we read.

I'll be asking you to keep the first series of journals in Word. Again, I shall be looking more for the originality of your ideas, and your willingness to risk theorizing about the medium, than for correct spelling, grammar and punctuation.

However, in the second part of the semester, when the journals move to your own web page, I shall be asking you to pay closer attention to presentation after you have finalized your content. For me, the posting of creative material to a web page counts as publishing.

A book full of spelling mistakes and irregular grammar undermines its author's credibility. The same holds true for a web page. (So please send me any errors you notice on the pages!)

How?
Each journal entry should develop one or two themes drawn from your logs. As I'll be reading logs as well as journal entries, please don't just summarize the logs in your journal. Find an aspect of the text (image, vocabulary, text block, navigational options) that recurs in your logs, for example, and stretch your analysis over other segments of your reading. I'm also interested in your comparisons between our texts and other texts you have read (analytic comparisons, not summaries, please).

If you are practicing at the same time another art form (writing, music, graphic design, multimedia, coding, etc.), examine connections or contrasts between your reading/thinking re the texts and the personal work you undertake. Does one illuminate the other, or cause you to view the other differently?

Finally, hypertext theory is constantly evolving. Build your own interpretation of what constitutes hypertext. How does it work? What happens to traditional ideas of the reader or writer in the encounter with hypertexts? What is the text in a hypertext? Can one even isolate it a an independent, coherent object? And so on.

What Next?
Write a critical hypertext, using your journals as raw material.

Risky,
speculative,
unconventional thought
is the greatest luxury university life offers us. Indulge yourself!

 

the syllabus     the texts     the journals    
the assignments     the presentations
hypertext bookshelf      hypertext writing

Lesley Smith, September 1999