Spring 2020 Courses

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):

INTRO TO DIGITAL STUDIES
50:209:101
TTH 11:10-12:30PM
Staff
Introduction to Digital Studies provides students with a space to tinker with digital tools and also to develop critical vocabularies for analyzing digital objects. The class begins by examining some of the historical roots of digital technologies and then moves on to some key terms in digital studies: networks, interfaces, code, digital narratives, and physical computing. The class examines the history and cultural significance of digital technology while also experimenting with how to write, design, and make with those same tools. Students in the class use Twine to create interactive stories, Audacity to create audio compositions, and Arduino circuit boards to build physical computing projects. No technological expertise is required.

MULTIMEDIA THINKING
50:209:210
TTH 9:35-10:55AM
Emmons
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.

VIDEOGAME DESIGN
50:209:301
Online
Rosinski
This class practices exploration and creation of systems of meaning and knowledge in fictional and real world con/texts through operationalization, or the building of a bridge between concepts and the world. The course breaks down the fundamentals of game design as art, as well as enactions of theory, resistance, and expression, providing us with a vocabulary and critical understanding to enable us to both analyze and compose. 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 and the cultural contexts they invoke. The class combines several assignments to give a sense of what it takes to make a tabletop game: studying existing games, designing your own games, making your own game.

SPECIAL TOPICS IN DS: DIGITAL BODIES
50:209:302
Online
Lawz
How do we bear witness to one another in the digital age? Is picking up the telephone for someone an act of seeing? Who will answer for you in your time of need? What does this all mean for our aliveness? In this course students will focus on how digital media and language art mediate the body. If a cellphone is an extension of the self, as proposed by the extended mind hypothesis, what does that make us? What is our role as instrument, as device, as object that relays information? What are our bodies saying about us that we might not know? A better question might be to ask: what can we learn from seeing each other as an extension of matter and media? In this course we will write creatively and produce digital language art that engages with these questions in hopes of producing new questions of our own.

INTERNSHIP IN DIGITAL STUDIES
50:209:305
Hours by Arrangement
Application of digital skills in a position as a digital lab or project assistant for the Rutgers-Camden Digital Studies Center. Individually designed and evaluated experience under supervision of intern adviser. Commitment of at least 30 hours per credit/100 hours for 3 Credits.
Emmons

DIGITAL STUDIES CAPSTONE
50:209:401
Hours By Arrangement
Brown and Emmons
Required of all students in the Digital Studies program, the capstone course involves working with a faculty advisor on a digital project designed and executed by the student. Students are also required to teach a 1-hour workshop based on a digital technology they have used or investigated in the course of the project.
Brown & Emmons

INDEPENDENT STUDY IN DIGITAL STUDIES II
50:209:406
Hours by Arrangement
An opportunity for advanced students to pursue their interests in digital humanities in a self-determined course of study under the direction of a faculty member.
Emmons

Interdisciplinary Major Electives:

These courses can be counted towards the Digital Studies Major and Minor