You will complete four projects this semester. The first three projects will help you learn your way around the practical and the theoretical sides of hypertext authorship. The fourth project is one of two large-scale collaborations that class members will work on. Check back to this page as the semester moves on to see the specific project assignments.

See also: course revision policy
see Schedule (for due dates)

In the meantime, here are brief descriptions of the projects you'll be doing:

Project 1: Memory Archive

Barthes suggests that images arrest our attention with marginal details—obtuse meanings—that exist beyond easy interpretation. The Doll Games and La Jeteé show us how we can combine those arresting details with evocative language. Project two asks you to create your own memory archive, combining striking images with evocative text to give your readers a new sense of your topic.

Project 2: Tactical Appropriation

Michel de Certeau suggests that despite the one-way nature of dominant media, we can (and do) appropriate and re-configure those media to our own ends. Project three asks you to consider the new media techniques of compositing, juxtaposition, and mixing to create a "tactical appropriation" of a dominant media form.

Project 3: MyMap

Mapping provides a different way for us to examine and explain the world around us using imagery and dialogue. Working from the Body Maps exhibit and the Katharine Harmon book, you will produce a personal web-map.

The Collaborative project

Having already experimented with hypertext and its rhetorical possibilities, our fourth project provides the opportunity to produce a more public, long-lasting work than we have yet done. The class will collaborate on a large-scale wiki project.