Category Archive

I can hardly believe that we’re down to our final week of Rhetoric in Digital Environments. This semester has flown by for me, and it’s been an incredible pleasure to work with all of you during the past few months. Based on the first set of presentations we saw today, I can tell that your Research Projects have really come … Read More

Even if you didn’t stick to the “green team” and “red team” model in class today, I hope you received (and gave!) some valuable feedback during our final peer critique session of the semester. From this point on, your sole focus in this course should be finishing your Research Project. If there’s anything I can do to help you along … Read More

We’re rapidly approaching the home stretch of the semester, and I want to make sure you’re able to focus all of your energy for this class on your Research Project, so I’ve decided to eliminate our final day of reading discussion on Tuesday. Instead, I’ll hold individual conferences with those of you who would like to meet (I hope that’s … Read More

Our conversations in class this week were excellent — thank you to Andrew and Kevin for their discussion prompts, and to all of you for engaging with the chapters we’ve read. Next week, we’ll conclude our discussion about “future trajectories” in the digital humanities, and we’ll spend a day experimenting with different tools for analyzing research data. Here’s a quick … Read More

Our course calendar originally called for a Research Project workshop during Week 11, but several of you are still waiting on IRB approval, so I’ve decided to postpone that workshop until Week 12. Instead, we’ll dedicate both days next week to reading discussions: On Tuesday, we’ll review pages 152–98 of Rhetoric and the Digital Humanities, with Andrew serving as our … Read More

I’ve been impressed with our first six Book Review presentations, and I’m looking forward to the last three. Once we put that assignment behind us, we’ll be able to focus more squarely on the Research Project for the remainder of the semester. As I’ve said a few times in class, this is a big project, so it’s important to pace … Read More

Our plans for next week are very simple, so this update will be short and sweet. Your Book Reviews are due on Tuesday, so please make sure that a copy of your review is located in your shared Google Drive folder (in Google Docs format) before you come to class. For the following three class periods, we’ll enjoy hearing your … Read More

I loved our discussions on digital pedagogy this week, and I wish we had more time to dedicate to that topic. Given that several of you are conducting pedagogical research for the final project, perhaps we’ll be able to keep that conversation alive during the second half of the semester. As we head into spring break (with plenty of snow … Read More

I enjoyed hearing your ideas for the Research Project in class today, and I hope listening to one another’s ideas helped you think through your own project. During the coming week, you should continue to refine those ideas, drafting a memorandum of understanding for the project as you do so. I’ve created a rough template with some guiding questions that … Read More

I’m not sure I said this loudly and clearly enough in class today, so I’ll say it again here: excellent work on your Hashtag Analysis presentations! Each of you made me consider some new aspect of hashtags as rhetorical devices, and I can’t wait to read your essays this weekend. Now that our first major assignment is behind us, we … Read More

Your conversations during our peer critique session today made me more excited than ever to see your finished projects! You’re in the home stretch now, so be sure to review the assignment guidelines as you put the finishing touches on your essay. If you’re looking for inspiration, I recommend reading Andy Baio’s excellent “72 Hours of #Gamergate.” If you have … Read More

I think Week 3 helped us make several big leaps forward on the Hashtag Analysis project, and I hope you feel like your individual projects are beginning to take shape. At this point, you should have a stable data set (stop collecting new tweets!) and be digging into your data using a variety of tools and methods. To reiterate what … Read More

We’ve been racing through our class sessions this week, with far too much to cover and not enough time in which to cover it. Now that I’ve introduced our first two assignments and we know where we’re headed for the coming weeks, I’ll try to slow things down during Week 3. Here’s the plan for each day: On Tuesday, we’ll … Read More

Our first two class sessions have be so invigorating for me. I was on research leave last semester, and I’ve really missed being in the classroom — especially when I’m surrounded by smart grad students. (Spoiler alert: that’s you.) As we discovered today, it’s likely that we will always have more to discuss than time in which to discuss it, … Read More

Welcome to English 6344: Rhetoric in Digital Environments. This website will function as the online headquarters for our class this semester. Each week, I will post an update to the website with details about coming week, deadline reminders, links to helpful resources, etc… I will use Virginia Tech’s Scholar site to record your grades, but otherwise, everything related to this … Read More