Schedule

Week 1 (12-9): Introduction & Blogging with WordPress

• Resources:
  • Lecture slides (PDF).
  • We Live in Public Documentary, via Vimeo
  • Science Blogging: The Essential Guide, Chapter 1 (Wilcox, 2016; on blackboard)
  • Science Blogging: The Essential Guide, Chapter 11 (Lillie, 2016; on Blackboard)
  • Gutenberg WordPress Editor FAQ (wordpress.com, 2018)
  • The History of WordPress (WPBeginner.com, 2018)
• After class and before the next one starts, read (can be found on Blackboard):
  • Critical Theory and the Digital, (Berry, 2014) 
    
  • Science Blogging: The Essential Guide, Chapter 1 (Wilcox, 2016)
    
  • Science Blogging: The Essential Guide, Chapter 11 (Lillie, 2016)
    

Week 2 (19-9): The Digital: A Brief History & Podcasting

• Resources:
  • Lecture slides (PDF)
  • Audacity Tutorials, Download, Lame MP3 Encoder.
  • Various resources on podcasting by the Podcast host
  • Angus’ current podcast rotation
  • Creative Commons Images for non-Copyright materials for your blogs. You can also try Google Image Search with Usage Rights, Wikimedia Commons, or Archive.org.
• After class and before the next one starts, read (can be found on Blackboard):
  • Revolutions in Communication,  Chapter 10: Computers (Kovarik, 2015).
    
• Fun (i.e. not mandatory):
  • ‘The website of the Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage comic.
  • Check out this interactive timeline of video games from the Museum of Play.
  • Watch a Brief History of Video Games (good primer for later classes if you know little about the subject) or if you have some serious time on your hands, the 2004(!) documentary Video Game Invasion.

Week 3 (26-9): Discussion on The Digital & Lecture on Networks and Information Technologies

After class and before the next one starts, read: 

• Revolutions in Communication,  Chapter 11: Digital Networks (Kovarik, 2015; on Blackboard).
• The Anatomy of a Search Engine (Brin and Page, 1998; link). 

3 October: No class!

Happy Leids Ontzet!

Week 4 (10-10): Discussion on Information Technologies & Lecture On Digital Bullshit

After class and before the next one starts, read:

• On Bullshit (Frankfurt 2005; on Blackboard)

Week 5 (17-10): Discussion on Digital Bullshit & Lecture on Neo-Tribes

Before next class, read (materials on Blackboard):

• The Introduction to From Society to Tribal Communities by Dawes.
• Maffesoli’s From Society to Tribal Communities

Pick and read one (or more) of chapters on Digital Communities:

• Boellstorff’s Coming of Age in Second Life
• Pearce and Artemesia’s Communities of Play
• Miller’s Tales from Facebook
• Burges and Green’s YouTube

Need a potential blog topic during the creative ebb of examweek? Why not write about how Maffesoli’s theories and/or the community described in one of the four chapters on digital communities relate to one of the offline or online communities you are part of!

No class on 24-10 (Exam week)

Week 6 (31-10): Discussion on Neo-Tribes & Lecture on Playgrounds

Lecture Slides

After class and before the next one starts, read(can be found on Blackboard):

• Ian Bogost’s (2016) Play Anything, Foreward and Chapter 1 (Playgrounds Everywhere).
• 
  
• Bogost’s The Squalid Grace of Flappy Bird. (Atlantic, February 3, 2014).
  

Play:

• Flappy Bird (most true to the original when played on a smartphone)

Week 7 (7-11) : Discussion on Playgrounds & Lecture on Virtual Worlds

PDF of the lecture here.

After class and before the next one starts, read (can be found on Blackboard):

• Philip Brey (2014)’s The Phyiscal and Social Reality of Virtual Worlds in The Oxford Handbook of Virtuality
• Chapter 1 and 2 from Nick Yee (2014)’s The Proteus Paradox.

Play:

• A classic adventure game, e.g. The Curse of Monkey Island, or the ancestor of all virtual worlds: Colossal Cave Adventure (more info here)
• A classic roguelike, e.g. NetHack, (controls)
  
• A classic management/strategy game, e.g. Hamurabi

Week 8 (14-11): Discussion on Virtual Worlds & Lecture on   Labour in Games

PDF of the lecture here.

After class and before the next one starts, read (can be found on Blackboard):

• Games of Empire, Introduction and Chapter 8 (Dyer-Whiteford and de Peuter, 2007)
• One of the following Kotaku articles by Jason Schreier:
  • Inside Rockstar Games’ Culture Of Crunch.
  • The Messy, True Story Behind the Making of Destiny
  • How Blizzard Saved Diablo 3 from Disaster.

Play:

• Sid Meier’s Colonization
• Sid Meier’s Civilization or Civilization 2
• Freeciv, or some other 4X game.

Week 9 (21-11): Discussion on
Labour in Games  and Lecture on Cyborg Bodies

PDF of the lecture here.

After class and before the next one starts, read (can be found on Blackboard):

• Chapter 6 of Brendan Keogh (2018)’s A Play of Bodies: How We Perceive Video Games.
• Your Humanity is in Another Castle: Terror Dreams and the Harassment of Women by Anita Sarkeesian and Katherine Cross from The State of Play.

Optional, but recommended:

• Donna Haraway (1985)’s A Cyborg Manifesto 

Play:

• Zoe Quinn’s Depression Quest 
• Anna Anthropy’s dys4ia or Queers in Love at the End of the World
• Mike Mica’s hack of Donkey Kong: Donkey Kong Pauline Edition

Week 10 (28-11): Discussion on Cyborg Bodies and teaser for Interactive Pasts  

PDF of the lecture here.

• Twine
• The Interactive Past book
• Interactive Pasts website
• If this piques your curiosity, you should join the Digital Approaches to Historical Inquiry course.

Week 11 (5-12): Blended Presentations

Week 12 (12-12): Blended Presentations & Course Re-Cap

Deadline for Course Project: 21 December

Read more about the Course Project here.