Grading Overview

  • In-class Work: 15%
  • A Domain of Your Own: 5%
  • Blogging: 25%
  • Writing Assignments: 55%
    • No Digital Day: 10%
    • Essay: 10%
    • Wiki: 10%
    • Dear (My) Data: 10%
    • Unessay: 15%

In-class Work (15%)

Assignment Overview

  • Includes written reflections, quizzes, and/or group work
  • Students will sometimes work individually and sometimes with classmates
  • Due during most class periods

The Nitty Gritty

This course relies on active, engaged participation in class activities and discussions. There will be few lectures. You should come to every class having read all of the required texts (or watched the required videos, played the required games, &c.) and prepared to discuss them with your colleagues. I plan to assess your reading and course engagement through writing exercises, reading quizzes, and group work. Assuming you all seem to be reading with engagement, I will usually ask for in-class writing or group exercises, but I reserve the right to quiz if reading seems to be slipping.

In-class writing

You should be prepared to write in any class session and have appropriate materials (e.g. paper, a table, a laptop) available to you. Not all in-class writing will be collected, but when it is such work will be graded on a five-point scale. I do not expect your responses to in-class writing exercises to reflect the same polish as papers. I do expect your writing exercises to reflect real thought about our course topics and readings. Entries will receive full credit if:

  • They refer to specific aspects of our assigned reading. The more specific you can be, the better. For instance, if you can quote or paraphrase from a course text to illustrate the point you hope to make, you should do so.
  • They draw connections between the day’s assigned reading and the broader themes of the course, recent topics of class discussion, or your personal research.
  • They demonstrate depth of thought about the topics on hand.
  • Writing that demonstrates a firm command of the day’s reading through summarizing its ideas will receive a 4/5 while writing that connects ideas across readings and ventures creative (or even risky) interpretations will receive 5/5. Lower marks are reserved for writing that does not demonstrate familiarity with the day’s readings, fails to address the prompt, and/or lacks clarity.

Individual and Group Work

In addition to discussion of course texts, our classes will frequently ask you to complete small projects and exercises that will help you apply course concepts, learn new software, and/or contextualize course materials. For group exercises, I will ask each group member to assume a specific task related to the project; I expect each group member to contribute in significant ways to their team’s effort. The outcome of group work will be various and thus will be assessed in diverse ways.

Reading quizzes

I would prefer not to resort to reading quizzes, which test basic comprehension rather than synthesis and analysis. However, if it becomes clear that significant portions of the class are not completing the readings (which will be obvious by the resultant lulls in conversation) then I will turn to quizzes to motivate closer attention to the readings. Reading quizzes are intended to reward careful reading, not to test your recall of obscure facts from our texts. If you read the assigned texts attentively—if you read the assigned texts attentively—you should do well on the quizzes. Each quiz will have six questions; if you correctly answer five of them you will receive full credit, while all six garners extra credit.

The ground with the word Internet and an arrow written in chalk

“Internet” by The-Samizdat

A Domain of Your Own (5%)

Assignment Overview

  • Requires students to secure a domain and server space, install web software, and customize their sites
  • Students will work individually, though they can help each other if they encounter rough patches
  • Due in two stages: steps 1-5 by Friday, September 15 and steps 6-8 by Friday, September 28
  • Must be completed in order to finish many other assignments, particularly the blog

This assignment was adapted (barely) from the sterling model developed by Brian Croxall.

Rationale

So: the internet. It’s kind of a thing, and it doesn’t appear to be going away. It is the new media of our historical moment. There are many things that are important about the internet, but most importantly for our class: the internet is a space where writing happens. A ton of it, actually. For at least this one very important reason, learning how to make use of the internet is important for students working in humanities fields, especially in the context of a writing-intensive class. You of course know how to use the internet for finding information, but you will now get some experience creating information: about yourself and your investigation of technology, literature, and new media. I have four primary goals in asking you to build your own website:

  1. Becoming facile with web publication (including managing a domain, deploying content management systems, and using HTML and CSS) is a good first step toward gaining skills you could use in your college career, co-ops, and beyond.
  2. Having your own website provides you a platform to begin doing and sharing that work with others in the academic and professional communities.
  3. Having your own website will enable you to complete [your blogging assignment for this class while beginning while building a portfolio of work for use after and outside this class.
  4. Finally, I believe it’s important to have a voice on the web that’s yours, not your content you contribute freely to a commercial platform (though those platforms have their place). By the end of the semester you may agree with me about this or disagree, but I would like you to experiment with having a domain of your own, at least for a little while.

The Nitty Gritty

  1. Purchase a domain from www.reclaimhosting.com and send me an email letting me know your domain name. You are not required to use your own name in the domain; there are certainly arguments to be made for anonymity. If you think you might turn this domain into a professional site in the future, however, consider domain names that will convey the right image. Note: if you already use another host, or if you prefer to start using another one for this assignment, let me know. I won’t require you to use Reclaim Hosting to complete this assignment successfully. I strongly recommend Reclaim because they grew from the Domain of One’s Own iniative from the University of Mary Washington, they support academic users phenomenally, they offer the cheapest hosting and domain service I know for students, and their customer support is phenomenal.
  2. Install WordPress on your domain.
  3. Choose a new theme to install on your site and activate it.
  4. Install Akismet as a plugin. Get an API key and activate it.
  5. Post first blog entry for the blogging assignment by Friday, September 15 at 5pm. Email me your domain, the name of the theme you installed, and, a screenshot of Akismet active on your site by this deadline.
  6. Create an “About” page. On that page write a brief paragraph or two about yourself that includes the following information: a brief paragraph about yourself. You might discuss what you’re studying (generally) in school and what your educational or career goals are, or you might choose to describe some other aspect of yourself. You do not have to name yourself here, either—personae are allowed.
  7. Create one other static page about something. It could be where you post an assignment you do for class. It could be about a hobby.
  8. Find one thing that you wish your website could do. Find a plugin to do it. Install that plugin by Friday, September 28. Email me with links to your two pages and the name of the plugin you installed.

An Alternative

Maybe you’ve built a website before. Maybe Wordpress is old hat for you. There are lots of other ways to build a website. Recently flat HTML platforms like Jekyll have been getting lots of buzz: they load quick and don’t have all the overhead of a database-driven platform like Wordpress. Once the system is set up they’re remarkably easy to use, but the setup is more complicated than WP. If you’d like to challenge yourself in this assignment, consider building a Jekyll site, perhaps hosted through Github. If you’d like to go this route, come chat with me and we’ll lay out the options and necessities.

A keyboard with the word BLOG spelled out on the keys

“Blogging” by Daryl Lau

Blogging (25%)

Assignment Overview

  • Students will work throughout the semester developing ideas in writing
  • 10 weekly posts are due through the semester, each week’s by Friday at 5pm

Rationale

Throughout the term, we will engage with the ideas of the course through public writing on your blogs, which I will aggregate on this course blog. I ask you to blog for a number of reasons:

  • All writing—even academic writing—is being reshaped by online modes of publication. Many academics maintain personal research blogs in which they try out their ideas and get feedback before developing articles or even books. Outside of academia, public, online writing plays an increasing and essential role in many fields. I believe its essential for modern college students to develop skill crafting an online writing persona and I want to foster that development.
  • In a related point, blogs give you the opportunity to experiment with your writing, composing arguments that integrate links, quotations, images, video, and other online media as evidence.
  • Blogging allows for a broader spectrum of participation in the class. Even shy students can contribute to a course blog.
  • Blog posts give you the chance to learn from each other. You’ll read your colleague’s writing and, hopefully, learn from it or be challenged by it.
  • Public blogging allows us to connect to larger communities outside of our classroom. Who knows? Perhaps the author of an article you blog about will respond directly…

You should not treat blog posts like a secondary assignment. Indeed, I consider your blog post the central assignment of the semester. Instead, think of your blog posts as an evolving research paper. They have the same importance and weight and seriousness.

The Nitty-Gritty

Each post must begin from our course readings and demonstrate your further engagement with those readings. In general, then, your blog posts should:

  1. There are approximately 14 weeks in our semester and you are responsible for writing 10 blog posts. You may not submit (for credit) more than one blog post per week, though you’re free to write more if you wish. I cannot emphasis more strongly that you should not wait to start writing posts. Let me repeat that: do not wait until week 3 or 4 to begin writing your blog assignments. I assign 10 posts to give you some flexibility during the semester. It is up to you to make that flexibility a boon rather than a bane.
  2. Blog posts for a given week are due by Friday at 5pm. Anything submitted later than this will count toward the next week, and I do not give credit for more than one post submitted per week.
  3. Each post must be 300-500 words long. This gives you enough space to make some keen observations or ask some pressing questions, but not enough space to write a full paper. Your blog posts should be concise. The point is not to write everything you might in one week, but instead to develop a set of ideas and questions over the course of many weeks.
  4. Each post must refer specifically to class reading, often through direct quotation. Your posts should continue and further develop conversations that began in class, demonstrating your evolving understanding of our class themes. I strongly encourage you to read, cite, and link to each other’s posts.
  5. I highly value posts that link our class to the wider world. I encourage you to use your blog posts to bring outside texts into conversation with our class: an article you found interesting or relevant, say, or something you uncovered while doing research.

Commenting on Posts

I cannot comment on every blog post, though I will occasionally interject when something in a post catches our attention. You should interpret such a comment as engagement, not (necessarily) sanction. Conversely, you should not interpret lack of comment as criticism.

Grading Blog Posts

Each week I will review and grade blog posts according to the following rubric, adapted by Creative Commons license (CC BY 3.0) from Mark Sample.

Exceptional. Satisfactory. Underdeveloped. Limited. No Credit.
The blog post is focused and coherently integrates examples with explanations or analysis. The entry demonstrates awareness of its own limitations or implications, and it considers multiple perspectives when appropriate. The entry reflects in-depth engagement with the topic. The blog post is reasonably focused, and explanations or analysis are mostly based on examples or other evidence. Fewer connections are made between ideas, and though new insights are offered, they are not fully developed. The entry reflects moderate engagement with the topic. The blog post is mostly description or summary, without consideration of alternative perspectives, and few connections are made between ideas. The entry reflects passing engagement with the topic. The blog post is unfocused, or simply rehashes previous comments, and displays no evidence of student engagement with the topic. The blog post is missing or consists of one or two disconnected sentences.

Writing Assignments (55% total)

No Digital Day (10%)

Amish buggy driving down the road among cars and snow

“Amish Buggy” by Ted Van Pelt

Assignment Overview

  • A short, personal reflection of 3-4 pages
  • Students work individually
  • Substantial planning required (see below)
  • Due anytime between semester’s beginning and Monday, November 13
  • Must start planning ASAP!

This assignment is lightly adapted from Prof. Amanda Gailey’s “No Digital Day” assignment for her “Being Human in a Digital Age” course at the University of Nebraska—Lincoln.

Rationale

Human beings have interacted with illuminated screens for a portion of the species’ existence that is so small it’s hard to calculate as a percentage. If humans have existed for 200,000 years, we’ve used screens for about 0.05% of that time. A stricter definition of “human,” requiring symbolic thought, etc., would make the species 50,000 years old, in which case screens have been familiar for about 0.2% of our existence. Should we feel so cognitively dependent on them now? What does your brain do without the distraction and convenience of the screen?

Sometime between the beginning of the semester and Wednesday, November 8, you will pick a single 24-hour period—which must include an entire waking day—in which you will dramatically reduce your use of screen-based technology and interactive media, according to guidelines below. This activity is meant to encourage you to think about a few things:

  • How cognitively dependent are you on screen technologies?
  • How frequently are you tempted to distract yourself with various digital technologies? What triggers prompt you to want to distract yourself? Without familiar devices, what do you do instead? What do you think about or do with your hands?
  • How much do these technologies aid you in your schoolwork?
  • How do you communicate differently with people when these technologies are not available to you?
  • What do you do for entertainment?

The Nitty-Gritty

Each student may choose from the following “No Digital” scenarios, depending on how austere you want to be. Since you’re doing this anyway, I recommend you go big.

To Prepare

  1. Think ahead when picking your 24-hour period. If you need to get syllabi or assignments off the web, do it ahead of time. If our class falls during your 24-hour period, make sure to print out any readings or other required online materials before the day begins.
  2. Consider writing a vacation response for your email and changing your voicemail so that you won’t worry that people are wondering why you haven’t written or called back.
  3. If there are people in your life who will worry about you if they don’t hear from you, let them know what you’re doing ahead of time.
  4. Get a watch (or at least scope out working clocks in your environment). Phones in 1992 did not have clocks in them.
  5. Be aware of how to reach people by phone. You’ll need a phone book or you’ll need to write numbers down ahead of time.

On the Day

  1. Carry a notebook and pen with you. Whenever you feel tempted to check your email or social media, make a check mark in the book.
  2. Take notes on your thought process. What triggers you to seek distraction? What do you do instead?
  3. Take notes on other aspects of the day. In what ways were you inconvenienced? Did this assignment alter the way you interact with people you care about?

By November 13

Write a 3-4 page reflection about your No Digital Day. What did you learn about yourself? Would you do this again or for a longer period of time? In a final act of irony, post the reflection to your blog.

Option A: 1992

Just before the web became widely available. You probably would have had a phone at home, cable TV, and a word processor. If you choose this option, the following are not allowed:

  • Texting
  • Web browsing
  • Any use of your phone as something besides a phone—that is, you can dial a number and talk to someone, but that’s it. Realistically, you wouldn’t have carried a phone around with you, but you can do that as long as you only use it as a phone.
  • GPS
  • Streaming video
  • Streaming music, MP3s, etc.
  • Online video games, even through a console

Option B: 1922

Before most screen-based and communication technologies we use today were developed or in wide use. If you choose this option, the following are not allowed:

  • Any use of phones whatsoever, except for true emergencies (death, injury, natural disaster)
  • Any use of any web-based technology
  • Any use of any screen-based devices, television included

A Note on Honesty

Your job is to remain true to the spirit of this assignment. You aren’t expected to dress like a turn-of-the-century dandy or avoid refrigerators—the point is to eliminate the kinds of recent technological advances that arguably lead to cognitive dependence and an alteration of your thinking. Similarly, there are many ways you could violate the spirit of the assignment, such as having a friend look up information for you. I trust you to use your judgment about what violates the spirit of the assignment.

This assignment also depends on the honor system. I’m not interested in policing you to make sure you really did this. It’s an exercise in self-awareness and you’re really cheating yourself by cheating on the assignment. If you can’t go 24 hours without a few modern conveniences, is it time to admit your cognitive dependence?

Essay (10%)

[A handwritten essay

“Essay” by Pleuntje

Assignment Overview

  • An academic paper of 5-6 typed pages
  • Students will work individually
  • Drafts due for worshop Wednesday, September 20
  • Essay due Friday, September 22 by 5pm
  • Revisions will be encouraged

The Nitty-Gritty

We will begin the semester’s writing assignments with a typical academic essay of 5-6 pages. In the first weeks of class we will discuss the expectations for this paper, brainstorm essay topics, and outline the elements of effective academic argument. You should expect to:

  1. Make a specific, debatable claim;
  2. Defend that claim with reasons and evidence drawn from external sources;
  3. Acknowledge contrasting points of view and respond to them.

You may use whatever citation system you wish (MLA, APA, Chicago) but you must cite your sources and do so consistently.

We will workshop these papers together in class on Thursday, September 21st. Your essays will be due to me by Tuesday, September 26th, and you will have a chance to revise for a better grade after I review your essays.

What to Write About

You will develop your own essay topics, though they should be related to our theme in the first weeks of class: digital and analog modes of reading. From that broad mandate, however, you should choose a specific aspect of contemporary reading that you find interesting and coduct additional research into it. You might choose to write a literary analysis of 1-2 of the short stories we’ve read in class, for instance, or to take a side on a “real world” debate. Ideally, your paper will extend our class discussion into territory we did not cover in class itself.

Either way, your essay should not be descriptive, but instead critical. Your central claim (or thesis) must be debatable, meaning a reasonable person could in fact disagree with it. You will conduct research and defend your claim with evidence drawn from at least four distinct sources, three of which much come from your own research rather than materials we read as a class.

If you are struggling to come up with a topic or craft an argument, please come see me during office hours to discuss. Also, schedule an appointment with the writing center, where they are happy to help with writing at any stage in the process.

We’re All Wikipedians Now (10%)

[A 3D Wikipedia puzzle held in a person’s hands

“Wikipedia” by cea +

Assignment Overview

  • A new Wikipedia article or substantial improvements to an existing article
  • Students can work individually or collaboratively
  • Ideas well developed in advance of workshop October 18-19
  • Articles due Friday, October 27
  • Revisions possible

The Nitty-Gritty

In this assignment you will work either individually or in pairs to create a new Wikipedia article or upgrade a Wikipedia stub. Your article should at least reach start class (though B is a good reach goal). You should use the WikiProject Assessment guidelines to shape your process and you can refer to Wikipedia’s training page for students. You could use the page for the Boston Society of Vulcans as a model for what you should write to fulfil the assignment.

We will be working with Amanda Rust (Digital Humanities Librarian) and Brooke Williams (Research and Instruction Librarian) from the Snell Library to learn what those categories mean, and how you can write an artilce that meets these expectations. On October 18-19, both Amanda and Brooke will be leading class, helping you research and begin drafting your articles.

You will submit a link to your final article by Friday, October 27. If you are improving an existing article, you should also include a link to the article’s state immediately before you began your work.

Dear (My) Data (10%)

[A gif of Commander Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation

Assignment Overview

  • An online composition that incorporates data-driven evidence
  • Students will work individually
  • Ideas will begin in a workshop Monday, November 6
  • Drafts due Friday, November 17
  • Revisions expected

The Nitty-Gritty

This assignment will build on the readings in our “Data” unit—and particularly Giorgia Lupi and Stefanie Posavec’s Dear Data blog, book, and postcards—to help you interrogate the ways people use data to think about the world. Like Lupi and Posavec, you will choose an aspect of your daily life to record as data, and you will then design a visualization to help you identify patterns in the data and present those patterns to readers.

This project will require you to make a number of important decisions at each stage:

  1. First, you will need to identify some aspect of your life that you believe would be revealing in aggregate. You might record each time you say “thank you” through the week, but what would you hope to learn by doing so? You should choose some regularly recurring aspect of your daily life that you suspect would, if collected, offer new introspective, interpretive purchase for self understanding. Now, it’s possible that you will collect data that ultimately does not offer such purchase. This is always a possibility when researchers collect data. But you should choose something that might even be telling in its absence of interpretive power: e.g., “I thought recording each time I said ‘thank you’ would reveal something about my own gratitude and outlook toward other people, but instead…”
  2. Second, you will need to decide what specific aspects of your chosen phenemenon you will record, and determine how you will do so. For “thank you’s,” for instance, would you record the precise wording of each one? The words or actions that prompted you to say “thanks?” The responses of the people thanked? Would you seek to characterize your tone, or that of your interlocutors? Once you decide what you will record, you will need to determine how. Will binary recording (making a mark for each instance) be sufficient, or will you require text, or numbers? Will you carry around a notepad or use an app on your phone? How will you remember to record your chosen phenomenon, particularly if it’s very common in your daily life?
  3. Once you have recorded your data, you will need to decide how to represent it visually. You might do this analog, following the model of Lupi and Posavec, or you might use a digital platform. Either way, however, I would strongly encourage you to avoid out-of-the-box visualizations, such as the graphs in Excel. If you are engaged actively with the questions above, your data will likely be too individual and nuanced for such solutions. How can you convey the unique contours of your data in ways that are revealing for you and your readers? Can you balance clarity and complexity in your visual design, using the affordances of visual media to make your data more, rather than less, legible? Does your visualization do interpretive as well as aesthetic work?
  4. Finally, you will write up what you learned about yourself and your data in a 4-5 page analysis, which can be presented as a typical paper or published digitally. This piece should include your visualization(s), and potentially draft versions that you abandoned as well. You should use this written piece to reflect on how your data did (or did not) illuminate the aspect of your life you sought to better understand. You should analyze the choices you made throughout the process and consider how those choices served (or failed to serve) the interpretive ends you hoped they would meet. Finally, you should use this piece to consider how you might rethink your choices in a hypothetical future iteration of this project.

Planning Workshop

On November 6 we will use our class time to craft detailed plans for 1. the data you plan to collect, 2. the variables you will record, and 3. the method you’ll use to collect it. This plan should be submitted with your assignment.

Unessay (15%)

[An altered book project

“Buckle Up (Altered Book 2011)” by robfos

Assignment Overview

  • Form can vary widely!!
  • Students generally work individually, though I am open to collaborative proposals.
  • Drafts due for workshop on Monday, December 4
  • Unessay due Friday, December 8 by 5pm

The Nitty-Gritty

As your final assignment this semester you will develop an unessay project.

  1. I highly prize creative takes on this assignment. Before jumping into typical paper writing mode, consider other media, presentation styles, and modes of critical engagement you might employ instead.
  2. This is a hands-on course about media and technology: I would be thrilled to see unessays that do rather than simply describe. Consider using your unessay assignment to get your hands dirty (perhaps literally) with one of the mediums we discuss in class.
  3. Take advantage of my advice and help as you develop your unessay ideas. That’s what I’m here for!

You may complete your unessays on your own schedule, but they must be turned in by the listed due dates. I would strongly advise you not to put the assignment off. To motivate you to work earlier, we will schedule workshops in advance of each deadline, and I am happy to offer feedback on drafts submitted at least one week in advance of a given deadline.

I will also show you some stellar examples of unessays in the weeks leading up to the first deadline, and would be happy to show you others during office hours. I have a growing collection of stunning student unessay work that I love revisiting.

Assignment Background

Thanks to Daniel Paul O’Donnell for this brilliant assignment, which I’ve only slightly modified for our class. For more on the research behind the Unessay assignment, see the work of Emma Dering and Matthew Galea.

The essay is a wonderful and flexible tool for engaging with a topic intellectually. It is a very free format that can be turned to discuss any topic—works of literature, of course, but also autobiography, science, entertainment, history, and government, politics, and so on. There is often something provisional about the essay (its name comes from French essai, meaning a trial), and almost always something personal.

Unfortunately, however, as Wikipedia notes,

In some countries (e.g., the United States and Canada), essays have become a major part of formal education. Secondary students are taught structured essay formats to improve their writing skills, and admission essays are often used by universities in selecting applicants and, in the humanities and social sciences, as a way of assessing the performance of students during final exams.

One result of this is that the essay form, which should be extremely free and flexible, is instead often presented as a static and rule-bound monster that students must master in order not to lose marks (for a vigorous defence of the flexible essay, see software developer Paul Graham’s blog). Far from an opportunity to explore intellectual passions and interests in a personal style, the essay is transformed into a formulaic method for discussing set topics in five paragraphs: the compulsory figures of academia.

Enter the Unessay

By contrast, the unessay is an assignment that attempts to undo the damage done by this approach to teaching writing. It works by throwing out all the rules you have learned about essay writing in the course of your primary, secondary, and post secondary education and asks you to focus instead solely on your intellectual interests and passions. In an unessay you choose your own topic, present it any way you please, and are evaluated on how compelling and effective you are. Here are the guidelines:

  1. You choose your own topic.

The unessay allows you to write about anything you want provided you are able to associate your topic with the subject matter of the course and unit we are working on. You can take any approach; you can use as few or as many resources as you wish; you can even cite the Wikipedia. The only requirements are that your treatment of the topic be compelling: that is to say presented in a way that leaves the reader thinking that you are being accurate, interesting, and as complete and/or convincing as your subject allows.

  1. You can present it any way you please.

There are also no formal requirements. Your unessay can be written in five paragraphs or twenty-six. If you decide you need to cite something, you can do that anyway you want. If you want to use lists, use lists. If you want to write in the first person, write in the first person. If you prefer to present the whole thing as a video, present it as a video. Use slang. Or don’t. Write in sentence fragments if you think that would be effective. In other words, in an unessay you have complete freedom of form: you can use whatever style of writing, presentation, citation, or media you want. What is important is that the format and presentation you do use helps rather than hinders your explanation of the topic.
Perhaps most importantly, the unessay allows you to use media deliberately and thoughtfully. You can create a digital unessay, or you can create an analog project—in fact, many of the most compelling unessays I’ve seen have been entirely analog.

  1. You are evaluated on how compelling and effective you are.

If unessays can be about anything and there are no restrictions on format and presentation, how are they graded? The main criteria is how well it all fits together. That is to say, how compelling and effective your work is.

An unessay is compelling when it shows some combination of the following:

  • it is as interesting as its topic and approach allows
  • it is as complete as its topic and approach allows (it doesn’t leave the audience thinking that important points are being skipped over or ignored)
  • it is truthful (any questions, evidence, conclusions, or arguments you raise are honestly and accurately presented)

In terms of presentation, an unessay is effective when it shows some combination of these attributes:

  • it is readable/watchable/listenable (i.e. the production values are appropriately high and the audience is not distracted by avoidable lapses in presentation)
  • it is appropriate (i.e. it uses a format and medium that suits its topic and approach)
  • it is attractive (i.e. it is presented in a way that leads the audience to trust the author and his or her arguments, examples, and conclusions).

Why Unessays Are Not a Waste of Your Time

The unessay may be quite different from what you are used to doing in English class. If so, a reasonable question might be whether I am wasting your time by assigning them. If you can write whatever you want and present it any way you wish, is this not going to be a lot easier to do than an actual essay? And is it not leaving you unprepared for subsequent instructors who want you to right the real kind of essays?

The answer to both these questions is no. Unessays are not going to be easier than “real” essays. There have fewer rules to remember and worry about violating (actually there are none). But unessays are more challenging in that you need to make your own decisions about what you are going to discuss and how you are going to discuss it.

And you are not going to be left unprepared for instructors who assign “real” essays. Questions like how to format your page or prepare a works-cited list are actually quite trivial and easily learned. You can look them up when you need to know them and, increasingly, can get your software to handle these things for you anyway. In our class, moreover, I will be giving you separate instruction on what English professors normally expect to see in the essays you submit to them.

But even more importantly, the things you will be doing in an unessay will help improve your “real” ones: excellent “real” essays also match form to topic and are about things you are interested in; if you learn how to write compelling and effective unessays, you’ll find it a lot easier to do well in your “real” essays as well.

Model Unessays

I will bring some physical model unessays to class to discuss, or you can peruse them during office hours. Below are some fantastic digital unessays that students have submitted. These examples don’t necessarily model the content of your assignments, as some were completed for classes covering very different topics, but hopefully they will give you a sense of what kinds of work you might complete.