Spring 2017 Course Preview: Rhetoric of the iPhone with Caroline Barta
UT English: Tell us a little bit about yourself and what you’re teaching next semester…
Caroline Barta: I’m Caroline Barta, and I’m a third-year graduate student in the English Department beginning work on my prospectus. I research early English women readers during the “long” seventeenth century (c.1598-1715). I hope to expand current perceptions about their textual communities, education, and rates of literacy.
This spring, I’m looking forward to teaching Rhetoric of the iPhone for the second time. At UT, I’ve also taught Rhetoric and Writing three times.
Some background: when I first dreamed up this course, I knew I wanted to design a writing seminar posing questions about the effect of ubiquitous technology on the “self” communicating. On the one hand, the concept was essentially pragmatic—I thought if my students felt conversant with what we were writing about (trust me when I say they teach ME things smartphones can do), it would free up space to focus on argument, style, research habits, and revision. On the other hand, simple pandering or an over-reliance on populism doesn’t make style clearer or deepen habits of reading. Critical gestures, like considering the archive, or questioning the stature of the author, text, and audience in the 21st century keeps the course from becoming two-dimensional and pushes our conversation into provocative, creative spaces.
UT: What will you be reading?
CB: In addition to reading the majority of Joseph Harris’ excellent book Rewriting (current favorite writing “textbook”), I assign short essays, articles, blogs, podcasts, and informative videos. For instance, the course’s reading begins with two articles tracing alternative histories of the iPhone and Google’s precursor to the Android, written by Fred Vogelstein. For Apple devotees, I also post an early video of Steve Jobs discussing the naming of the iMac (and the adjectives that lie behind the “I” in the name). Typically, although students have indicated interest in a class about the iPhone, most don’t realize the prehistory of their phones. Vogelstein’s narrative of the development of the iPhone nicely parallels our first assignment, which has students looking back through the archive of their phones to write an implicit argument about an event in their lives.
UT: What is your favorite of everything you’ll be reading next semester?
CB: It’s hard to pick a favorite, though I can say that the text my fall students talked about the most in their learning record reflection portfolios was “Shitty First Drafts” by Anne Lamott. The longer I am in the writing teacher game, the more I find students who describe a mental block or a deep-seeded struggle with perfectionism, which can lead them to turn in late or incomplete work. I think it is comforting for many students to hear about successful, professional writers having the struggles they do.
It’s also entirely possible my favorite reading for this semester hasn’t been written yet. One unique feature of my course is our class social accounts (class Twitter, Wordpress blog, Instagram, etc). As part of the semester-wide “media accounts project,” students take turns being curators of the class accounts for a week. Indeed, as the iPhone celebrates its 10th anniversary this year, I expect new articles fitting our course topic will be plentiful!
UT: What will their final projects look like?
CB: The final project is a revision of one of their three major essays into a 3-4 minute video presentation, which is screened to the entire course during presentation days. In preparation, students take a previously turned-in paper, revise it into a script, and consider the effect of adding types of rhetoric (video, auditory) to transform it into a video project. I’ve been fortunate to partner with the DWRL for the past year to provide in-class workshop help. I’m going to share three final projects, which perhaps gives you a sense of the extraordinary content produced this semester.
The first, Sean’s, is a nuanced consideration of the “socio-cultural” impact of the authorship of Kanye West and Chance the Rapper.
Sofia’s video argues the 2016 reimagining of “Where is the Love” is a Foucauldian-esque revelation of the power of the author-function, where the power of the text is related to the power we assign to author-figures. She forwards this argument by continuing this revelation by having UT students join in as author-figures (class cameos included…!). (Here’s the link:)
Finally, Kourtney’s video considers the connective tissue of streaming platforms, nostalgia, and classic 80s movies, in her perceptive analysis of Stranger Things.
UT: What’s one of the most important things you want your students to take away from this class? Or, what do you hope they’ll get out of it?
CB: I tell my students that writing well is a basic communication skill that will improve their future—regardless of their chosen path. On the final day of last semester, I asked them what they would take away. I was thrilled to hear that my class had shaken up their view of the ordinary—when they were walking around campus, they saw “digital composers,” writing on “electronic scratchpads” (to borrow the phrasing of one of my students, Connor M.)—when they turned on Netflix or flicked through Instagram or Snapchat, they moved from being unconscious authors to conscious scriptors. That makes me pretty happy. Looking forward to what my spring class will say!
CB: Perhaps my favorite assignment is the last: at the end of each semester, I ask my students to write advice letters to the next class, a paragraph of whatever they wish they had known to start the semester. It’s not a graded assignment; I can only request they complete it. The fall bunch left generous and kind legacies for their spring counterparts. The hopeful quality of the assignment—leaving a final say to offer advice to the future, yet unknown class, is the optimistic energy I aim to cultivate in my humanities classroom.
