Instructor: Melissa Larabee
Class: TTh, 9:30–10:45; 11:00–12:15
Office hours: TTh, 12:15–1:15, English Building 332
Required Texts
Available via U of I Library eReserves
Course Overview
Traditional education—particularly at the university level—tends to privilege written text
as the medium of rational, credible discourse. Yet every day, a huge proportion of the
arguments we are exposed to come at us from other media—television, radio,
magazines, even the songs we hear at the grocery store and the graffiti we pass on the
street.
Being able to read—not just see or hear but read—and write these media is a critical
skill and is, so I believe, part of being a fully literate member of our society. Now as
never before we have the opportunity to be creators as well as consumers, and this
class is meant to give you the skills, strategies, and ways of looking to do so effectively.
How does a specific medium change the way you write? How does our use of
technology shape the way we communicate? What theories inform our relationships
with media? In this class, we will critically examine a number of media (printed text,
sound, photography, film, and more!), seeking to understand not just their affordances
but also their implicit conventions and how those conventions shape our perception of
both the media and the information presented therein.
Throughout the semester we will compose texts in a variety of media, striving for what
composition scholar Jody Shipka calls “sound engineering”—perfect rhetorical marriage
between medium and message. This practical exploration will be bolstered by extensive
reading in multimodal composition theory, and each project will be accompanied by a
traditional textual rationale.
Course Objectives
By the end of this course you should be able to:

analyze the unique affordances of a given medium and how they can best be
deployed in a given rhetorical situation
 understand how multimodal texts we encounter on a daily basis are rhetorically
designed
 remediate a single argument/text across at least two media
 compose effective multimodal arguments targeted to a specific audience
 engage in informed discussion about new media’s theories, including (but not limited
to) topics such as affordances, authorship, remediation, and multimodality
How to Keep your Instructor Happy
Please do
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Talk!
Listen!
Disagree with me when applicable
Engage directly with each other
Come to class prepared
Come to office hours
Talk to me when you are stuck
Clarify when you are confused
Communicate with me in times of trouble
Ask for an extension if you need it
Revise if you don’t like your grade
Format your rationales as follows:
 11- or 12-point typeface
 One-inch margins
 Page numbers
 Your name, please
 Single-spaced
 Your name in file name
Please don’t
o Sleep (in class)
o Drown out more timid voices
o Miss class and then email me to ask if you missed anything important
o Text or chat in class
o Arrive habitually late
o Plagiarize
o Miss appointments with me
o Use disrespectful language
Grade Components
Participation: 100 points
Blog: 100 points
Spatial project: 100 points
Advocacy project: 200 points
Wiki: 100 points
Sound project: 150 points
Social media presentation: 50 points
Film project: 200 points
Participation
Be engaged. This doesn’t mean you have to talk all the time or even in every class
session. What it means is attentive focus on the conversation at hand. I encourage you
to respond directly to your peers—the best conversations aren’t going to be filtered
through me—and to make them feel heard, especially in small group work.
Be respectful. Together, we want to build a classroom environment that’s conducive to
genuine discussion: as such, it’s vital that you offer respectful consideration to your
peers’ ideas and feelings, even when you disagree with those ideas and feelings. Racist,
sexist, homophobic, and other derogatory language is absolutely unacceptable.
Be prepared. Do the day’s reading or writing. Bring the required materials to class.
Come into the room with an opinion. Get enough sleep.
Be professional. For your time at the U of I, learning is your occupation, and I expect
you to treat the classroom as you would a place of employment. For instance, while I
understand that everyone runs a little late sometimes, continual, low-grade tardiness is
rude and will affect your grade. If you have a question about course policies, please
consult the syllabus to make sure I haven’t already answered it before emailing me.
Texting, instant messaging, web surfing, and necking are all considered unprofessional
behavior in the WAM classroom.
Discussion will be taking place not just in class but also on several digital platforms
including a class blog. In addition to regular participation, you may occasionally be
responsible for generating content for the course blog or leading online discussion.
Writing
Since the title of this course is “writing across media,” you will be expected to write
extensively throughout the semester in both traditional and non-traditional forms.
Traditional writing will take the form of a formal academic rationale for each major project
as well as online posts and discussions on your class blog in the form of reading
response and analyses of multimedia artifacts.
Blog
In the first week of class, you and a few peers will create a shared blog that will serve as
the locus for your writing activity for the course. Blog posts may include reading
responses, media analyses, and other brief, out-of-class assignments and are generally
expected to be about 250 to 300 words (which may or may not be supplemented with
other media). Prompts will be posted on the class blog. You are encouraged to read and
respond to/comment on the blogs of your fellow students–that’s what blogs are for!
Wiki
This class will be co-writing a WAM wiki project with several other sections; each
individual will be responsible for building out Wikipedia-style entries on the readings and
scholars from class as well as readings from individual research.
Major Projects
There are four major projects in this course, with the first three each focusing on a
different medium and the final involving multimedia composition. Along with every major
project, you will be required to write a formal rationale examining your compositional
process and considering some of the related theory from the readings.
Late Work
I make every effort to be considerate with my due dates and to provide extensions when
necessary, but I expect my deadlines to be respected. After the listed due date,
assignments drop 10 percentage points for every day they are late.
Draft Assistance
I am happy to look over drafts if you would like preliminary input or even just help getting
started. This works best when you can email me a draft the night before so I have time
to read it before you come in. I will not review papers solely over email. I also highly
recommend the Writers Workshop http://www.cws.illinois.edu/workshop/.
Revisions
You may revise any project, but there is a strict protocol: you have one week after you
receive the paper back in which to make an appointment with me to discuss your
revision, and then another week from the date of our appointment to complete it.
Revisions should be accompanied by a cover letter discussing your changes and my
marked copy of the original draft.
Other Policies
Attendance
You may miss up to four classes with no automatic penalty to your grade; any further
absences will result in your final grade being dropped by three percentage points for
each additional absence. If you miss class, it is your responsibility to get the notes from
a classmate. Tardiness of more than fifteen minutes counts as half an absence.
Continual low-grade tardiness is rude and will affect your participation grade.
Plagiarism
Plagiarized material may result in failure of the assignment or even the course. If you are
using someone else’s words, they need to have quotation marks around them, and if you
are using someone else’s ideas, they need to have a parenthetical citation.
Disability Accommodations
To obtain disability-related academic adjustments and/or auxiliary aids, students with
disabilities must contact the course instructor and the Disability Resources and
Educational Services (DRES) as soon as possible. To contact DRES you may visit 1207
S. Oak St., Champaign, call 333-4603 (V/TTY), or email a message to
disability@uiuc.edu.
SCHEDULE – FIRST EIGHT WEEKS
Week One: Starting with What We Know
Tuesday,
August 25
Thursday,
August 27
Read for today:
--
In class:
Media and affordances
 What is “writing”? What are “media”?
 Affordances and constraints
 Media ideologies
Ann Wysocki, “The Multiple Media of Texts”
Read for today:
In class:
Reading traditional texts
 Practice and document design
 Typography
Week Two: Expanding Definitions
Tuesday,
September 1
Thursday,
September 3
Read for today:
Walter Ong, Orality and Literacy
In class:
Media and commodity
John Berger video
James Purdy, “When the Tenets of Composition
Go Public”
Read for today:
In class:
Wikipedia
 What is it and what does it do?
 How does it work?
Introduce WAM wiki assignment
Week Three: Rhetorical Sound Part I
Tuesday.
September 8
Thursday,
September 10
In class:
Jody Shipka. “Sound Engineering”
Heidi McKee, “Sound Matters”
Intro to sound
Sound engineering
Vocabulary
Introduction to audio project
Read for today:
Listen: This American Life (see blog)
In class:
Reading sound
Soundscapes
Read for today:
Week Four: Rhetorical Sound Part II
Tuesday,
September 15
Read for today:
Selections from Harlot of the Arts (see blog)
In class:
Discuss Harlot readings
Thursday,
September 17
Read for today:
In class:
Workshop: Audio Project Proposals
-Sound analysis activities
Rationale expectations
Week Five: Sound Essay Presentations
Tuesday,
September 22
Thursday,
September 24
Read for today:
--
In class:
Read for today:
Audio presentations
--
In class:
Audio presentations
Audio Project Rationale and Final Draft Due
before you go to bed on FRIDAY.
Week Six: Spatial Rhetorics I
Tuesday,
September 29
Read for today:
In class:
Thursday,
October 1
Read for today:
In class:
Liz Swanson, “Architecture, Experience, and
Meaning”
Intro to space/place
 Close reading of a space
 99 Percent Invisible
 Introduction to spatial project
Katherine Harmon, “You Are Here”
Mark Monmeier, excerpt from How to Lie with
Maps
 Map sharing
 Map analysis
Week Seven: Spatial Rhetorics II
Tuesday,
October 6
Thursday,
October 8
Read for today:
Damien Droney, “The Business of ‘Getting Up’”
Laurie MacGillivrey and Margaret Sauceda
Curwen, “Tagging and Social Literacy Practice”
In class:
Introduction to Graffiti
 History of graffiti
 Reading discussion
Read for today:
Watch: Exit Through the Gift Shop
In class:



Discussion: Exit Through the Gift Shop
Banksy analysis
Workshop: Spatial project proposals
Week Eight: Spatial Rhetorics III
Tuesday,
October 13
Read for today:
Schmidt, “New Media Writer as Cartographer”
Anders Lovlie “Annotative Locative Media and
Read for today:
GPS”
Digital approaches to physical spaces
 Schmidt and Lovlie discussion
 Activity
--
In class:
Spatial project presentations
In class:
Thursday,
October 15
Spatial project final draft and rationale due
FRIDAY before bed.