So I am done teaching my first two classes of 2007 and now I am nearly done with the syllabus for The One (yes one, they give new faculty a course release, thank the powers that be!!) class I am teaching next semester: Topics in Digital Media. Unlike this semester where the name of the syllabus game was a motley collection of chapters/articles, next semester I am concentrating on whole books although we won’t be reading all of them in their entirety so over the next few weeks I have to perform some whittling magic. It is just nice to have it done before I head away South to visit the family.

One of my dissertation thesis advisors, Christopher Kelty, is teaching a superb looking course at Harvard this fall on networks. The only thing I would add to that syllabus right now is a book by a department colleague, Alexander Galloway, who just published a book with Eugene Thacker The Exploit. And while I have not read more than a chapter, what I like about it is its experimental style. They open this book with the following orientation:

It is our intention in this book to avoid the limits of academic writing in favor of a more experimental, speculative approach. To that end, we adopt a two-tier format. Throughout Part I, “Nodes,” you will find a number of condensed, italicized header that are glued together with more standard prose. For quick immersion, we suggest skikking Part I by reading the italicized sections only…. In this sense, we hope you will experience the book not as the step-by-step propositional evolution of a complete theory but as a series of marginal claims, disconnected in a living environment of many thoughts, distributed across as many pages.

The good thing is while the form is experimental, at the sentence level, things are quite clear. I have often had the experience of reading experimental work whose content was the experiment but not the form, and basically I did not understand a thing. In this case, it is the form that achieves their desire to explore and present their marginal claims.

Annemarie Mol in The Body Multiple also uses a two-tiered experimental approach that is just fantastic, especially since her writing is especially accessible.

Pedagogical faultlines, being held in Amsterdamn in mid-September, re-examines pedagogy in light of new media technologies as well as traditional institutions…. Hopefully they will have the programme up soon, but it certainly looks quite intriguing.

Most of my recurring anxiety nightmares emerge straight out of work experiences. A common dream I had, for years, was basically being slammed with a deluge of like 25 customers/tables while waitressing. Yes, I have waited tables for many years.

Now, I have a new dream which reflects new working conditions. Basically I show up on the first day of class with NO syllabus and it is horribly embarrassing. Thankfully that scenario is easily avoided.

I am teaching two classes this fall, one called Impacts of Technology, the other Human Culture and Communication. I had to come up with the Impacts of Technology syllabus from scratch (Culture and Comm is somewhat standard for the Department I am teaching in) and here is a first version of my syllabus.

I am sure it will change but it is nice to have most of it done as I hope to avoid any work-related nightmares this summer.