*Fulfills SWR (Second Writing Requirement)

20618 ENWR 2520 - 001 (Seminar)
Special Topics in Writing

Topic: Writing Digital Stories and Electronic Essays

The focus of the course will be students’ writing projects. Students will produce both conventional print texts such as written narratives and personal essays, alongside more multimodal electronic texts, such as digital stories and academic web essays. Through a mix of theory, examples of digital stories and academic web texts and our own texts, we may explore questions such as: How have emerging technologies changed the genres and modes of writing in the academy? how has the concept of “voice” and “persona” in the personal essay been affected by the inclusion of images and audio in a digital story? What is the relationship between a story and a script? What does it mean to develop and pursue a research question in the age of the internet? How have hypertextual and multimodal writing options challenged the linear, logical and hierarchical structure of academic essays through the possibilities of hyperlinks and juxtaposition? In what ways are writers becoming more like designers, directors, and DJs?