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Guidelines for Graduate Student Special Topics
Course Proposals
The Guidelines are intended to assist students with the preparation of Special Topics course proposals, and to inform them of the criteria which the Selection Committee takes into consideration. The Selection Committee will be chaired by the Director of Undergraduate Studies, and will consist of a faculty member from each of Literature, Linguistics, Creative Writing and Rhetoric/Composition.
1 Students must be TAs; they should have experience teaching courses or break-out groups at the 200-level or above. If all else is equal, preference will be given to students well advanced in their PhD program.
2 Proposals are due October 1 for the following academic year: e.g. October 1, 2005 for courses to be taught in the fall semester of 2006 or the spring semester of 2007. Do not specify a semester for your course, as that decision will be made contingent upon other departmental offerings. The selection of Special Topics courses will be made by mid-October.
3 Each proposal packet should include the following:
i) Your contact information
ii) A letter detailing your interest in developing a special topics course, the teaching and scholarly qualifications you would bring to such a course, the students who would best be served by the course, and the professional development you would experience from designing and teaching the course.
iii) Philosophy of Teaching Statement
iv) Description of the Course and Course Goals
v) Tentative syllabus, as detailed as possible. Give a list of readings and assignments, grade distribution and a tentative class schedule, with numbered weeks. Indicate any special room, equipment or scheduling requirements: e.g. a three-hour slot, or a mediated classroom.
vi) A statement indicating possibilities for cross-listing your course with other departments. vii) A sealed, confidential letter of reference from a faculty member who is familiar with your teaching. This letter should specifically address your teaching skills and your ability to teach the proposed course.
The Selection Committee views these proposals as job applications. Please take the same care in putting together your proposal as you would if you were applying for a job. Appearance, grammar, spelling and proofreading do matter. A model proposal can be seen below.
ENGLISH 394
From Age of Empires to Zork: The Rhetoric of Video Games
Course Description:
With the electronic gaming industry in the Unites States now twice as large as the film industry, a new generation has grown up with video games as their dominant form of electronic entertainment media. Of course, much controversy surrounds video game play: does it lead to aggressive behavior? Is it addictive? Is it educational, stimulating cognition? Does it alter the gamer’s identity? Are video games sexist and misogynistic? These are all questions that need to be answered, as the nascent field of video game theory continues to form methodologies and terminologies through which the many genres of video game can be studied. This course introduces students to the fields of rhetoric and video game theory, providing opportunities to analyze the rhetorical effects of video games through play, reading assignments, discussions, and writing assignments.
Course Goals:
One of the key goals of this course is to provide students with strategies to analyze and write about specific issues that are important to the study of rhetoric and video game theory. Students will learn to
- Understand basic rhetorical theories and their applications
- Understand and use terminology relevant to video game theory
- Analyze the impact of genre on the rhetoric of video games
- Explore the multiple facets (social, cultural, ideological, etc.) of issues related to video game content and theory
- Engage in a variety of research methods to study and explore relevant topics, including gameplay as well as library and internet research
- Work with a variety of readings and video games and learn to interpret, incorporate, and evaluate these readings and games
- Synthesize and analyze multiple points of view
- Be able to focus on a specific rhetorical purpose
- Identify the kind of ideological work a particular video game undertakes and how it serves to persuade gamers to accept a particular view or way of knowing
- Use writing as a way of thinking through topics and ideas
- Engage with instructor, peers, and other members of the writer’s audience in order to better understand and meet their needs and goals as readers
Required Texts:
The main text for this course will be a course packet, containing a variety of essays and articles on rhetorical and video game theory. However, the course packet will be small, as many of the assigned readings are available online at websites devoted to gaming theory such as:
Game Studies: The International Journal of Computer Game Research (http://www.gamestudies.org/)
Ludology.com: Video Game Theory
(http://ludology.org)
Additional websites containing relevant articles will be provided as well, thus keeping the cost of the course packet to a minimum. Several video games are available for free download online as well, also helping to reduce student costs. Among these are:
Zork (text-based adventure): www.activision.com/games.zgi/atrium/library/main2html
SimCity Classic (simulation) www.simcity.com
Ultima IV (RPG): Origin, 1989. http://members.tripod.com/~hardwire1/ultima4.zip
Other games available for free online will be provided, but it is likely that one or two games will also need to be purchased by the student. A list will be provided for the student to choose from. Cost will again be carefully considered, as all of the following games can be purchased for $10 or less:
Tomb Raider (3D action/adventure): Core Design/Eidos, 1996.
Duke Nukem 3D (FPS): 3d Realms/GT Interactive, 1996.
Secret Paths to the Sea (“girl-game” adventure): Purple Moon, 1997.
Fallout 2 (RPG): Interplay, 1998.
The Sims (simulation): Maxis/Electronic Arts, 2000.
Again, students will be given choices as to which game(s) they will purchase. It is likely that many students will have some video games of their own already, which may take the place of the above games pending instructor approval.
Tentative Course Calendar, Spring 2005
The Rhetoric of Video Games
Unit One: Laying the Foundation (concepts, terminology, strategies)
Week 1: (Re)Introduction to Rhetoric
“An Introduction to Rhetoric” (Covino & Jolliffe)
“A Rhetoric of Motives” (Burke)
“Analyzing Visual Persuasion” (Rutledge)
Week 2: Introduction to E-Game Studies
Reading Response #1 due
“Computer Game Studies, Year One” and “Playing Research” (Aarseth)
“A Brief History of Interactive Entertainment” (Dombrower)
“The Gaming Situation” (Eskelinen)
“Structure Out of Chaos” (Samsel and Wimberley)
“Computer Games, Culture, and Curriculum” (Beavis)
Week 3: Narrativity and Interactivity
Reading Response #2 due
“Beyond Myth and Metaphor: The Case of Narrative in Digital Media” (Ryan)
“Games Telling Stories? A Brief Note on Games and Narratives” (Juul)
“Interactive Storytelling” (Dombrower)
“Computer Games” (Bolter & Grusin)
Games: Zork
Week 4: Narrativity and Interactivity (cont.)
Reading Response #3
“Making Sense of Software: Computer Games and Interactive Textuality” (Friedman)
“What’s Writing Got to Do with it?” (Samsel and Wimberley)
“What is an Interactive Story?” (Samsel and Wimberley)
“Games and Stories” (Wibroe, Nygaard and Andersen)
“Principles of Game Design: Great Rhythm” (Dombrower)
Games: Zork (cont.)
Unit Two: Gender and Beyond
Week 5: Reading Response #4 due
“Gender Online” (Holeton, chapter two)
“Gender Swapping on the Internet” (Bruckman)
“Gender Gap in Cyberspace” (Tannen)
Games: Secret Paths to the Sea
Week 6: Gaming Journal due
“Ad Images and the Stunting of Sexuality” (Moog)
“Men, Women, Computers” (Kantrowitz)
“Text as Mask: Gender, Play, and Performance on the Internet” (Danet)
Games: Secret Paths to the Sea (cont.)
Duke Nukem 3D
Week 7: Reading Response #5 due
“Dating on the Net: Teens and the Rise of ‘Pure’ Relationships” (Clark)
“Boobs and Rubes” (Au)
“A Rape in Cyberspace” (Dibbell)
“Principles of Game Design: Naturalness” (Dombrower)
Games: Tomb Raider
Unit Three: Identity, Avatars, and Agents
Week 8: Reading Response #6 due
“New Windows on the Self” (Holeton, chapter one)
“God, Three Acts, and the Spine” (Samsel & Wimberley)
“Avatars and Agents, or Life Among the Indigenous Peoples of Cyberspace” (Goldberg)
“A Rhetoric of Motives” (Burke)
Games: Tomb Raider (cont.)
Ultima IV
Week 9: Spring Break, no class
Week 10: Reading Response #7 due
“Performing in Computer Games” (Lancaster & Mikotowicz, part III, four essays)Games: Ultima IV (cont.)
Fallout 2
Week 11: Reading Response #8 due
“Playing With Yourself: Pleasure and Interactive Art” (Graham)
“The Reconstructed Text” (Samsel & Wimberley)
“Cultural Identity and Cyberspace (Holeton, chapter 3)
Games: Fallout 2 (cont.)
The Sims
Unit Four: Community and Environment
Week 12: Gaming Journal due
“The Sims: Grandmothers are Cooler Than Trolls” (Fasca)
“Web of Life: Cyberhood vs. Neighborhood” (Sanders)
“Virtual Communities: Real or Virtual?” (Latta)
“Digital TV and the Emerging Formats of Cyberdrama” (Murray)
Games: The Sims (cont.)
SimCity Classic
Week 13: Reading Response #9 due
“Virtual Community” (Holeton, chapter 4)
Games: The Sims (cont.)
SimCity Classic (cont.)
Week 14: Reading Response #10 due
“Aspects of the Self” (Turkle)
“Principles of Game Design: Other Principles” (Dombrower)
“Virtual Community: the Heart of the WELL” (Rheingold)
Games: Everquest
Unit five: Other Issues (Perspectives and Projections)
Week 15: Reading Response #11 due
“Beyond Shoot Your Friends: A Call to Arms in the Battle Against Violence” (Pearce)
“Coin-Op: the Life (Arcade Videogames)” (Pierce)
“Making a Pass at a Robot” (Turkle)
Games: Everquest (cont.)
Week 16: Gaming Journal due
“Real Interactivity in Interactive Entertainment” (Talin)
“Where to Start: Genres, Platforms, Audience, and Where Hollywood Missed the Mark” (Dombrower)
“Console Shootout: The Sequel” (Herold)
Games: Everquest (cont.)
Finals: “The End of Innocence: Cyberdammerung at the Atari Lab”
Final Project due.
Tentative List of Class Readings
Aarseth, Espen. “Computer Game Studies, Year One.” Game Studies: The International Journal of Computer Game Research 1 (July 2001). 7 Aug. 2001 http://cmc.uib.no/gamestudies/.
Aarseth, Espen. “Playing Research: Methodological Approaches to Game Analysis.” Ludology.org: Video Game Theory. http://ludology.org/
Au, Wagner James. “Boobs and Rubes.” Salon.com. 22 May 2001. 23 May 2001 http://www.salon.com.
Bolter, Jay David. Writing Space: The Computer, Hypertext, and the History of Writing. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1991.
Bolter, Jay David and Richard Grusin. Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999.
Burke, Kenneth. A Rhetoric of Motives. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1969.
Covino, William and David Jolliffe, eds. Rhetoric: Concepts, Definitions, Boundaries. Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 1995.
Dodsworth Jr, Clark, ed. Digital Illusion: Entertaining the Future with High Technology. Reading, MA: Longman, 1998.
Dombrower, Eddie. Dombrower’s Art of Interactive Entertainment Design. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1998.
Dovey, Jon, ed. Fractal Dreams: New Media in Social Context. London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1996.
Eskelinen, Markku. “The Gaming Situation.” Game Studies: The International Journal of Computer Game Research 1 (July 2001). 7 Aug. 2001 <http://cmc.uib.no/gamestudies/>.
Fox, Roy, ed. Images in Language, Media, and Mind. Urbana, IL: NCTE, 1994.
Frasca, Gonzalo. “The Sims: Grandmothers are Cooler Than Trolls.” Game Studies: The International Journal of Computer Game Research 1 (July 2001). 7 Aug. 2001 <http://cmc.uib.no/gamestudies/>.
Herold, Charles. “Console Shootout: The Sequel.” New York Times 8 Nov. 2001: D1, D9.
Holeton, Richard, ed. Composing Cyberspace: Identity, Community, and Knowledge in the Electronic Age. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 1998.
Juul, Jesper. “Games Telling Stories? A Brief Note on Games and Narratives.” Game Studies: The International Journal of Computer Game Research 1 (July 2001). 7 Aug. 2001 <http://cmc.uib.no/gamestudies/>.
Jones, Steven G., ed. Cybersociety: Computer-Mediated Communication and Community. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1995.
Jones, Steven G., ed. Cybersociety: Revisiting Computer-Mediated Communication and Community. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1998.
Kolko, Beth, Alison Regan, and Susan Romano. Writing in an Electronic World. New York: Longman, 2001.
Lancaster, Kurt and Tom Mikotowicz, eds. Performing the Force: Essays on Immersion into Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Environments. Jefferson, NC: Mcfarland & Company, 2001.
Murray, Janet H. Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace. New York: The Free Press, 1997. (excerpts only)
Qvortrup, Lars, ed. Virtual Interaction: Interaction in Virtual Inhabited 3D Worlds. London, Springer, 2001. (excerpts only)
Ryan, Marie-Laure. “Beyond Mth and Metaphor: The Case of Narrative in Digital Media.” Game Studies: The International Journal of Computer Game Research 1 (July 2001). 7 Aug. 2001 <http://cmc.uib.no/gamestudies/>.
Samsel, Jon and Darryl Wimberley. Writing for Interactive Media: The Complete Guide. New York: Allworth Press, 1998. (excerpts only)
Snyder, Ilana, ed. Page to Screen: Taking Literacy into the Electronic Era. London: Routledge, 1998. (excerpts only)
Stone, Allucquere Rosanne. The War of Desire and Technology at the Close of the Mechanical Age. MIT: MIT Press, 1996. (excerpts only)
Turkle, Sherry. Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995. (excerpts only)
Vitanza, Victor, ed. CyberReader. Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 1996. (excerpts only)
Possible Games
Core Design: Tomb Raider. Eidos Interactive 1996.
Infocom: Zork. 1983.
Interplay: Fallout 2. Black Isle, 1998.
Maxis: SimCity Classic. 1991.
Maxis: The Sims. Electronic Arts, 2000.
Origin: Ultima IV, 1989.
Purple Moon: Secret Paths to the Sea, 1997.
3D Realms: Duke Nukem 3D. GT Interactive, 1996.
Verant: Everquest. SOE 1999.
Writing Assignments:
There will be three main types of writing assignments in this course: reading responses, a gaming journal, and a final project/paper. Each are described in more detail:
- Reading Responses: these responses are designed to show that you’ve not only read the material assigned each week, but that you’ve also begun to think critically about how the readings can be applied to our rhetorical study of electronic gaming. Eleven responses are assigned; you must do eight of them.
- Gaming Journal: one of the most crucial aspects to consider when studying the rhetorical effect of electronic gaming is the experience itself: the actual practice of interacting with the game via the controller, the level of immersion the gamer experiences, and the effect it has one the gamer’s identity. One way to attempt to measure these effects is to keep a journal documenting each session spent playing E-games: what did you play? What happened? What was the experience like? What kept you playing? What made you quit playing? What did you like best? How “real” was the experience? Gaming Journals will be collected three times over the course of the semester.
- Final Project: your final project should demonstrate your ability to apply rhetorical and video game theory. Over the course of the semester, we have focused on many concepts important to video game rhetoric: identity, gender, community, genre, immersion, environment, etc. I want you to focus on a topic you are interested in, and do thorough rhetorical analysis. For example, you may decide to analyze how two different E-games approach notions of masculinity and femininity. Or, you may decide to explore the importance of avatars in video games, tracing their development theoretically and across genres. These are two of the many possibilities: please let your own interests guide the path you take for your final project. All project topics must be approved by the instructor.
- Blackboard: In addition to these more formal writing assignments, you will be expected to contribute substantially to asynchronous discussions on a weekly basis on the class Blackboard site.
March 25, 2004
To Whom This May Concern:
I’m writing to express my very keen interest in teaching a special topics course in the next academic year. Before I graduate and seek a teaching position elsewhere, I would like to teach as many different courses as I can for ASU’s English Department. This diverse experience will make me a stronger and more competitive candidate upon graduation. As I have not yet taught any courses at the 300 level yet, I am excited at the opportunity to teach a 394 course next year.
I also believe the topic I have proposed is an important one, and one that would be both enjoyable and valuable to students. A significant portion of ASU’s student body play or have played video games regularly: studies suggest it is the most popular form of entertainment for college students across the country. Students can use their previous experience playing video games in this special topics course as a foundation from which to expand their critical understanding of the rhetorical strategies used by video games. If students spend hours each week playing video games (and again, research suggests many do), shouldn’t they be given the critical skills to analyze and evaluate the ways this medium impacts them? I believe this course would help students to articulate their own opinions and feelings about video games in a more specific and informed way, allowing them to join the academic/political conversation on the controversial aspects of video gaming.
What makes me ideally suited to teach this course? Perhaps most importantly, I’m well versed in video game theory, having read a great deal in the field as I prepare for my dissertation. With a dissertation topic devoted to the study of identity construction in electronic role-playing games, I’ve become very familiar with the methodologies and terminologies relevant to the field of video game studies. I also have extensive training/coursework in rhetoric and rhetorical theory. All of this knowledge makes it easier for me to know what concepts to focus on when constructing a syllabus devoted to the rhetoric of video games. And of course, I’m a gamer myself, which also helps me to have more expertise on this topic.
I’ve been looking forward to the opportunity to build a course from the ground up, and a special topics course devoted to the rhetoric of video games and video game theory would give me valuable experience in course design. This will in turn help me achieve my goal of gaining a tenure-track position at an institute of higher learning in the future. I’m excited about the prospective of instructing students on the interesting and important concepts of rhetoric and video game theory. Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you have additional questions.
Sincerely,
Zach Waggoner, Teaching Associate
zach.waggoner@asu.edu
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