Courses satisfy one of the following areas:
A. Integrate digital media as tools for research and dissemination in traditional scholarship
B. Examine cultural, social, ethical, or theoretical implications of new media technologies
C. Apply digital technologies to practical applications involving problem-based learning
D. Develop knowledge and skills in new media and multimedia composition
Digital Studies Program Offerings (209):
50:209:210
MULTIMEDIA THINKING
Multimedia thinking is a way of making arguments and telling stories using digital media production tools. Multimedia thinking cultivates a transmedia perspective and involves the convergence of text, graphics, audio, and video, and the distribution of these assets over various media. Media may include video and sound, text, animation, still images, audio, or any form of non-physical media. Ideas are presented in a variety of formats including videos, comics, electronic literature, sound installations, remixes, mash-ups or video games. The course will begin with a theoretical and critical examination of media to prepare for their own digital media creations.
50:209:301
VIDEO GAME DESIGN
This class serves as an introduction to video game production with a focus on game design and mechanics. The course breaks down the fundamentals of game design as an art form, providing students with a vocabulary and critical understanding to enable students to start designing their own games. The class will disassemble games and look at their fundamental building blocks: the mechanics, procedures, and systems that shape the player’s experience and emotions. The class combines several assignments to give a broad, realistic sense of what it takes to make a video game: studying existing games, designing your own games, making your own video game.
50:209:302
SPECIAL TOPICS IN DIGITAL STUDIES: CYBER HATE AND ONLINE HARASSMENT
This course explores the role of principles like freedom of expression and universal access to information as founding principles of the internet. The valuing of these principles has been integral to the development of political and social activism online. These principles have also served as a primary defense for trolling, revenge porn, and cybermobs engaging in harassment. This class will explore the historical development of these values online and their relationship to the rising problem of online harassment. Furthermore, we will consider rules, policies, and legislation created by countries and corporations attempting to curb these behaviors. Ultimately, the class will ask: how can we create rules and infrastructures that both honor core values of the internet and create safe spaces for all web users?
50:209:303
SPECIAL TOPICS IN DIGITAL STUDIES: UND3RGR0UND L0V3R5 – ELECTRONIC LITERATURE AND PERFORMANCE
Electronic Literature and Performance is a workshop-based course that meets the Digital Studies elective criteria for developing knowledge and skills in new media and multimedia composition. In this course students will explore the intersection between digital literature and digital performance. Some questions we will consider over the course of the semester are: in what ways is digital literature performative? How can digital texts serve as scripts for IRL and URL performances? In an era where we are frequently online, what new venues and possibilities for performance have opened up in digital spaces? How are writers and performers using these spaces in creative ways, to reach an audience without having to go through gatekeepers? Considering the strong lineage of body-based performance art, what happens to the body (or our digital avatar’s bodies) in the “immaterial” digital realm? What happens to language? When the body of the text and the body of the performer merge digitally, what radical (politically and aesthetically) works emerge?
50:209:305 INTERNSHIP IN DIGITAL STUDIES
50:209:401 DIGITAL STUDIES CAPSTONE
50:209:406 INDEPENDENT STUDY IN DIGITAL STUDIES II
Interdisciplinary Major Electives:
These courses can be counted towards the Digital Studies Major and Minor