nclc350

*This calendar is subject to change. Additional and/or substitute homework may be assigned at the discretion of the instructor. Wiki, virtual community, and digital game assignments will be posted on the class wiki each week.

Legend: CR = Cybercultures Reader

Week 1 / Monday, January 26th: Introduction to Course

Introductions & Syllabus. Introduction to tools used for this course (wiki, blog, Second Life). Please bring your laptops to class.
See course wiki for this week’s virtual assignment.

Assigned readings: sent to you via email prior to class start date

Introducing Cyberculture
Michael Benedikt, “Cyberspace: First Steps” (CR 29-44)

Week 2 / February 2nd: Cyber Places & Spaces

Response Assignment #1 due on course blog.

Assigned readings:

Wilber, Shawn. “An Archaeology of Cyberspaces” (CR 45-55).
Escobar, Arturo. “Welcome to Cyberia” (CR 56-76).
Ostwald, Michael. “Virtual Urban Futures” (CR 658-675).
Watch: The Machine is Us/ing Us & A Vision of Students Today

Week 3 / February 9th: Assessing the “Real” in Virtual Reality

Response Assignment #2 due on course blog.

Assigned readings:

Jean Baudrillard, “Simulacra and Simulations” from Jean Baudrillard, Selected Writings, ed. Mark Poster (Stanford; Stanford University Press, 1988), pp.166-184
Kevin Robins, “Cyberspace and the World We Live In” (CR 77)
Excerpt from “Erotic Ontology of Cyberspace” by Michael Heim

Week 4 / February 16th: Political Economy of Cyberspace

Response Assignment #3 due on course blog.

Assigned readings:

Kroker, Arthur and Marilouise Kroker. “Code Warriors: Bunkering in and Dumbing Down” (CR 96-103)
Kroker, Arthur and Michael A. Weinstein. "The Political Economy of Virtual Reality: Pan Capitalism"

Watch: Introducing Your YouTube Ethnography Project (to use to discuss upcoming projects)

Week 5 / February 23rd: The Cybernetic Body

Response Assignment #4 due on course blog.

Assigned readings:

Haraway, Donna. "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century," (CR 291-324).
Lupton, Deborah. “The Embodied Computer/User” (CR 477-488).
Anne Balsamo, “The Virtual Body in Cyberspace” (CR 489-503).
Allucquère Rosanne Stone, “Will the Real Body Please Stand Up? Boundary Stories About Virtual Cultures,” (CR 504-528).

Video Screening: Evolution of the Cyborg Mind

Week 6 / March 2nd: Post & Trans-Humanism

Response Assignment #5 due on course blog.

Assigned readings:

Kenyon, Samuel. “Would You Still Love Me if I was a Robot?” Journal of Evolution and Technology - Vol. 19 Issue 1 – September 2008 - pgs 17-27 (handout).
Dvorsky, George. “Better Living Through Transhumanism,” Journal of Evolution and Technology - Vol. 19 Issue 1 – September 2008 - pgs 62-66 (handout).
González, Jennifer. “Envisioning Cyborg Bodies” (CR 540-551).
Stelarc. “From Psycho-Body to Cyber-Systems: Images as Post-human Entities” (CR 560-576).

Film Screening: Blade Runner

Week 7 / March 9th: SPRING BREAK!

Week 8 / March 16th: Cyberculture in Popular Media

Response Assignment #6 due on course blog.

Assigned readings:

Oehlert, Mark. “From Captain America to Wolverine: Cyborgs in Comic Books: Alternative Images of Cybernetic Heroes and Villains” (CR 112-123)
Pyle, Forest. “Making Cyborgs, Making Humans: Of Terminators and Blade Runners” (CR 124-137).
Landsberg, Alison. “Prosthetic Memory: Total Recall and Blade Runner” (CR 190-201)
Kim, Jeffrey, Jonathan Allen and Elan Lee. “Alternate Reality Gaming” (handout).

Week 9 / March 23rd: (Re)Constructing Identities

Response Assignment #7 due on course blog.

Assigned readings:

Hotchkiss, Lia. “‘Still in the Game’: Cybertransformations of the ‘New Flesh’ in David Croneberg’s eXistenZ” (handout).
Turkle, Sherry. “Cyberspace and Identity,” Contemporary Sociology, Vol. 28, No. 6 (Nov. 1999), pp. 643-648 (handout).

Film Screening: eXistenZ

Week 10 / March 30th: Cyber-Pleasures & Addictions

Response Assignment #8 due on course blog.

Assigned readings:

McRae, Shannon. “Coming Apart at the Seams: Sex, Text, and the Virtual Body”
Choe Sang-Hun, “Hooked on the virtual world: A reality in South Korea”
Branwyn, Gareth. “Compu-Sex: Erotica for Cybernauts” (CR 396-402).
Alapack, Richard, Mathilde Flydal Blichfeldt, and Aake Elden. (2005). “Flirting on the Internet and the Hickey: AHermeneutic,” CyberPsychology & Behavior, Vol. 8, No. 1, pp. 52-61 (handout).

Film Screening: Synthetic Pleasures

Week 11 / April 6th: Sex/Gender & CyberFeminisms

Response Assignment #9 due on course blog.

Assigned readings:

Hecate. (1999). “(En)Gendering the Digital Body: Feminism and the Internet,” Queensland Review. Natham, Australia. (handout).
Nina Wakeford "Networking Women and Grrrls" (CR 350-359)
Squires, Judith. “Fabulous Feminist Futures and the Lure of Cyberspace (CR 360-373).

Week 12 / April 13th: Race/Ethnicity in Cyberspace

Response Assignment #10 due on course blog.

Assigned readings:

Lisa Nakamura, "Race In/For Cyberspace: Identity Tourism and Racial Passing on the Internet" (CR p. 712)
Christina Elizabeth Sharpe, “Racialized Fantasies on the Internet,” Signs, Vol. 24, No. 4, Summer 1999 (handout).
Susan Zickmund, “Approaching the Radical Other: the Discursive Culture of Cyberhate,” (CR 237)

Week 13 / April 20th: Cyber-Colonization

Assigned readings:

Barwell, Graham and Kate Bowles. “Border Crossings: The Internet and the Dislocation of Citizenship” (CR 702-711).
Stratton, Jon. “Cyberspace and the Globalization of Culture,” (CR 721-731).
Sardar, Ziauddin. “Alt.Civilizations.Faq: Cyberspace as the Darker Side of the West,” (CR 732-752).

Week 14 / April 27th: Group Digital Ethnographic Research Presentations (Groups 1 & 2)

Week 15 / May 4th: Group Digital Ethnographic Research Presentations (Groups 3, 4 & 5)