3.0

Average Course Rating

In FUTURE_SHOCK, students tackle the tortures of invention in academic writing by analyzing how writers in the past invented entire futures, not out of thin air, but based on what they saw in the present. This course positions writing as a means of using and reusing the texts we encounter around us and the experiences in which we find them as sources of creativity. In class we’ll draw inspiration from future-focused genres like cyberpunk media and industrial music, and we’ll get tips from unlikely sources like mail art, graffiti, computer hacking, and more. In individual semester projects, students will write manifestos, reviews, genre analyses, an argumentative essay, and more as they develop a low-stakes, personal interest into a topic fit for an academic research project. Students will support their individual development by collaborating in small crews to learn rhetorical awareness, genre familiarity, and research techniques by observing and entering online communities like Reddit, Twitch, and Discord. Additionally, three non-academic experts will visit the class to discuss how they excel in the worlds of videography, beat-making/sampling, and web design by using and reusing the same writing and research skills we’ll be working with in class.