Humanities and Technology, Interactive Media Studies 171 is a course that looks at the ways new media interacts with and changes the definition of being a human. Past iterations of this class (mine included) have focused on the digital sphere as the site of interest. After teaching 171 last fall, and subsequently engaging with mobility studies, I have come to see the digital-centric approach as particularly limited in terms of defining humanity. While some scholars shun the notion of the internet as a public sphere (Dean, 2003), and others wholeheartedly embrace it as a twentieth century Habermasian coffeehouse, I find the internet to be part of a larger landscape where people who have multiple identities can interact across spheres that encompass the physical and digital worlds. In other words, publics are networked not just between people and tangible objects, but through systems and culture.

My focus has shifted to how people engage the realm of digital and the real for one activity. I am interested in how the digital sphere has come to influence our agency as humans. I am interested in how we use computers to locate library materials before we set off down the stacks to find the actual codex. I am interested in the use of GPS and Google Earth to get “more accurate” directions. And for the purposes of this website, I am particularly interested in the popular form of recreation known as geocaching. Studying movement, according to human geographer Tim Cresswell, is essential to conducting an ethnography in the mobile age (647). What I am exploring here, in this project, is not movement within a space—a topic well covered in human geography. Nor am I looking at web-based movements—a topic in vogue in rhetorical studies. Instead, I am looking at the movement between these two spheres and how in the movement itself, humanity comes to be further define.

The movement between the digital sphere and the physical world mirrors Lefebvre's mental space and social space (27). Lefebvre describes the creation of social spaces as a double illusion of both transparency and realism where “each side... refers back to the other, reinforces the other, and hides behind the other” (27). The design of these spaces, he goes on to say, is a mediator between invention and realization. So for me the question is not whether the web is a social sphere, nor is it which sort of space constitutes a public. The question instead is how publics are formed through movement.

Human geographers like Tim Cresswell have examined movement in the physical space of society by looking at immigration and class mobility (2004). Meanwhile digital humanists and media scholars like Jane McGonigal examine the mental spaces that act as publics (2011). And while Lefebvre begins to bridge these spaces through his brand of postmodern geography, he does not directly address movement between these spheres in the specific way I am attempting to here. In this project I aim to bridge the gap between the physical and non-physical (non-place) publics by examining their interaction. To do this I am looking at a variety of disciplines and using two similar but distinct theoretical lenses that foreground interconnectedness: Latour’s Actor-Network Theory and mobility studies’ New Mobility Paradigm.

Since this project will eventually make up a significant portion of my 171 curriculum, I have created this webpage, which will serve in the future as the site for this course unit. The layout of this page will change between now (as it stands for a 760 course) and a course site more my undergraduate students. To help illustrate exactly how this course will operate and to make my pedagogical reasoning clearer, I am including some extra material here (this page included). I encourage the reader to navigate through this page at her own will; however, I will still provide a brief outline below.

This page, the landing page, will act in much the same way as this page does—to help contextualize this course unit as part of the larger rhetorical structure of 171. The link to Timeline provides a calendar with the day-to-day activities, readings, and homework for the student. When possible, I hyperlink the materials to the Timeline. The Readings page the annotated bibliographies of the selected readings for the course with an additional rationale. The first part of the annotation will remain available to the students in the fall as it gives them some prefacing questions and context. The rationale is solely for the purposes of this course. The rationale justifies each piece’s inclusion as well as how I see this networking with the previous readings as part of literature review. Likewise my Assignments page has the assignment sheets for the two major activities in this course unit. I am also attaching a rationale to each assignment that again will not be made available to the student in the fall. Finally, I have an implications page with some of my preliminary insights derived from the planning stage of this course. As the course is implemented, I am hoping this list will continue to develop.