Ps 545 Syllabus Spring 2009

PS 545 SPRING 2009

AMERICAN POLITICAL THOUGHT TR 2PM-3:15PM CB 233 ps545spring09.pbwiki.com INTRODUCTION: PS 545 American Political Thought explores contemporary American political thought, its formation and the ways in which it is involved in major problems of culture, political economy, ideology, community and identity. We will explore contemporary issues of capitalism, such as the intellectual history and conflict surrounding intellectual property and copyright; consumer culture and the schizophrenia of modern capitalist life; sexual taboos and the construction of subaltern communities; and the problematics of constructing virtual communities and publics. We will be engaging these questions through a variety of methods. Pedagogically, we will be using deep reading and discussion in class to explore the readings, and using digital ethnographic methods in Second Life to explore how these concepts play out in an artificial digital environment that some political theorists consider the idealized tabula rasa of American political yearnings. During the semester we will learn to explore these major issues within contemporary American political thought as political theorists do and as a community of “metanauts.”

INSTRUCTOR INFORMATION: Instructor: Dr. Christopher S. Rice Office: 1649 Patterson Office Tower Office Hours: TR 3:30pm-5pm

Email: [email protected] Telephone: 257-7030 Web: christopherscottrice.com

COURSE REQUIREMENTS: Grades and Examinations:

Your final course grade will be based on three (3) components: • Class Preparation & Participation – 30% • Research Journal – 30% • Second Life Virtual Fieldwork Project – 40%

Course Readings: • • • • • •

The following texts are required reading for this course: Tom Boellstorff, Coming of Age in Second Life. ISBN: 978-0-691-13528-1 James Boyle, The Public Domain. ISBN: 978-0-300-13740-8 Cory Doctorow, Content. ISBN: 978-1892391810 Warren Ellis, Crooked Little Vein. ISBN: 978-0061252051 Lawrence Lessig, Free Culture. ISBN: 978-0143034650. Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club. ISBN: 978-0393327342.

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All of the reading in this syllabus is REQUIRED. You should read all of the assigned material before the class period for which it is assigned and be prepared to discuss it in class. Be forewarned that there are elements in the Palahniuk and Ellis readings that you may find to be offensive. Fight Club contains material of a violent nature, whereas Crooked Little Vein contains material referencing various sexual subcultures in a highly graphic manner. If you find such material offensive, you should drop the class immediately. These are core readings relating to our Second Life work and there is no substitute available. If you have questions concerning these works and their potential offensiveness, please speak with me immediately. By continuing in the course past receipt of this syllabus, you acknowledge your willingness to be exposed to and engage with such material.

Class Participation: Because this course is designed around a collaborative research and learning approach, attendance is absolutely necessary to your success, as well as that of the course. You will be expected to come to each class session (in-class or in-world) having completed all readings assigned for that class period and prepared a one-page summary of key points for that dayʼs readings with a few questions or provocative points to guide our dayʼs discussion. You must bring a printed copy of this paper with you to each class session and post it to your avatar page before the beginning of class that day. This requirement also includes your participation in Second Life both as an individual and as part of your group activities. You will be required to fill out an assessment sheet for each member of your group at the end of the semester, commenting on their quality and level of participation in the research groupʼs in-world activities. I will also be making my own assessment of your in-world activities. If you feel that you cannot devote the time to this course that is expected (2.5 hours in-class + 8-10 hours out of class per week), then you may want to consider dropping the course. For those of you willing to invest the time, however, I promise you a rewarding experience!

Research Journal: In order to help you keep a record of your Second Life experiences and to help you make sense of these experiences in relation to our classroom work and the readings, you will be expected to keep an online research journal. You must post at least one entry of ~500 words per week discussing your participant observation work in Second Life. You must include at least one (1) image you have taken yourself in each journal entry. You should be certain to trace connections between your inworld work and the theoretical focus of the readings we are engaged with in class at the time. You are required to start a Wordpress account using your avatar name and send the URL to me by January 27. You must then begin posting your journal entry to this blog by Noon EST each Friday, beginning January 30. This journal will comprise 30% of your total grade, and I expect well-reasoned, well-researched and well-written entries. You may use the blog or your avatar space on the wiki as a storage place for other images and research notes for this project. If you choose to use the blog, please mark the entry you wish to count for this requirement with a title like “Weekly Research Report” (or something similar).

SECOND LIFE VIRTUAL FIELDWORK PROJECT: Introduction: In order to better understand and to be able to apply the concepts in American political thought that we will be exploring this semester, we will be conducting digital fieldwork in the realm of Second Life (http://secondlife.com). The project will be more fully explained in class and on the course website within the first two weeks of class, but you will need to be aware of the following basic requirements for the project: • You are required to set up a free Second Life account and create your avatar at http://secondlife.com and send me your avatar name by January 27. • You are also required to create a PBWiki account by going to http://pbwiki.com. After creating your account, go to the course webpage while logged in, and click the “Join This Space” button and follow the instructions. Then email me with your PBWiki ID by January 27. Unless otherwise approved, your PBWiki user ID should be the same as your complete SL avatar name, only all in

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one “word.” If possible, please send your PBWiki ID and your Second Life avatar name in the same email. We will only identify each other by avatar name when we are in Second Life and on PBWiki to preserve anonymity. Therefore, your avatar name should not be related to your UK user ID or other identifying elements of your data shadow (yahoo ID, gmail account name, etc.). Students will need to form research teams of 4-5 students each. We will discuss in class how to do this (I assign you or you self-organize), but groups must be assigned and a “team page” created on the course webpage by January 29. A page explaining the research project will be posted on the course wiki early in the semester and explained in-class by Dr. Rice. We will also be having two orientation and training sessions in a lab at the W.T. Young Library on January 27 and 29 during our regular classroom period to get you all up to speed on how to do this type of fieldwork and navigate Second Life. Donʼt Panic!

Grading: The Second Life Research Project will be a combination of individual and group work. Your grade for Second Life (40% of your course grade) will be broken down into the following elements: • Each student will create an Avatar Page on the course wiki with photos, videos and other details regarding your avatar. You must also place a link to your Research Journal, Group Page on the wiki, and links to your participation papers on this page. • Each group will be required to submit a work plan for their research project to their group page on the course website by April 2. When the group submits their final project work on their group page on the course website, it must include an itemization of the work each member contributed to the overall project. At the conclusion of group presentations during the Final Exam period, you must submit to me a completed evaluation form for each of your groupʼs members (including yourself) assessing their contribution to the group effort and participation in Second Life. Finally, you must attend all presentations during the Final Exam period. Should you miss any of the final presentations for an unexcused absence, you will forfeit the entire 40% for the Second Life project. • Each group will make a 20 minute multimedia presentation (with an additional 5-10 minutes of Q & A) on their research project during the designated Final Exam period. The entire group must participate in the presentation, and the presentation must include a slideware (Powerpoint, Keynote, Sliderocket, etc.) element and video and images from your research. The presentation will be worth 10% (out of 40%) of your SL Project grade. • Each member of the group must produce at least 3500 (but no more than 4000) words and a minimum of 10 images on the group research topic to contribute to the Project. This must be posted to the course website on the group page by April 30. Each memberʼs contribution should be edited so as to form a part of a seamless whole. Video may substitute for some of the images and words, but this must be negotiated with the instructor in advance. This portion of the SL project will be worth 30% (out of 40%) of your SL Project grade.

Safety Note: For most of your fieldwork you will be going out into the wilds of The Grid. The University of Kentucky has no control over what goes on in these spaces, and you may occasionally be exposed to something offensive, frightening, or downright bizarre. Much of the Grid is under a Mature designation, meaning you could be exposed to profanity, nudity, giant anthropomorphic squirrels having bizarre bondage sex in an abandoned house, or griefers employing strange scripts (such as a swarm of flying, singing penises) to harass speakers and disrupt public events. While rare, these situations do occur. By continuing in the course past the receipt of this syllabus, you acknowledge that you understand that you may be confronted inadvertently with offensive material. You are not, however, required to stay in the presence of anything or any situation which you perceive to be offensive, threatening or otherwise unsafe. The University of Kentucky has purchased an island in Second Life that is considered to be a “safe space.” The SLURL for UK Island is http://slurl.com/secondlife/University%20of%20KY/209/142.28. You are to designate this SLURL as your “Home” location. If at anytime you want to bail out of a situation on The Grid, simply hit the Home button at the top of your Second Life browser and you will be teleported

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away from the situation instantly and back to UK Island. Dr. Rice will show you how to do this during the second week of classes. I will not, however, provide any eye rinse…

Policies: All participants in PS 545 are expected to abide by Linden Labʼs Community Standards (http://secondlife.com/corporate/cs.php). All participants in PS 545 are also expected to maintain proper ethical standards in their in-world field research (read http://aoir.org/reports/ethics.pdf for more on this). Visitors to UK Island will be logged by avatar name only. Students and visitors to UK Island are held to the same standards of the real life University of Kentucky Code of Student Conduct (http://www.uky.edu/StudentAffairs/Code/). As a matter of policy, UK Island is a no-use zone for weapons and intentional harm. Do NOT use weapons or destructive behavior to harm or threaten others or property on UK Island. In short, please abide by real-world campus and classroom rules and etiquette while on UK Island. Dr. Rice will explain all of this in class during the second week of classes.

COURSE POLICIES: Classroom Standards: I expect all students to behave in a professional manner during class time. This means coming to class on time and being ready to start class at 2pm. It is disrespectful to me and to your fellow students to come late and disrupt class, so be on time. I will not tolerate chronic tardiness, and if you arrive to class more than 5 minutes late, you may be asked to turn around and leave. Also, unless you have obtained prior approval from me, you may not leave class early. Furthermore, I do not tolerate rude and disruptive classroom behavior. During class, refrain from engaging in non-relevant and distracting side-conversations, reading a newspaper, doing crosswords, sudoku or other puzzles/games, sleeping, text messaging or other cellphone use, or listening to your iPod or other .mp3 players. When in class, turn-off your cell phones – silencing will not suffice when many of your phones have a “vibrate” function that could crack a walnut. Laptops and other internet access devices ARE permitted in class for taking notes and looking up material relevant to that dayʼs work on the internet. Please do not abuse this privilege by using your internet access device to Facebook, do email shop online or play games. I reserve the right to dismiss from class any student in violation of these policies.

Email Policy: You may always feel free to contact me via email. However, I do have a few general guidelines you must follow when doing so. Always begin the subject line of an email to me with “PS 545:”. This will put your email into the appropriate inbox, allowing me to respond to your email in a timely fashion. Emails that do not have “PS 545:” at the beginning of the subject line may not receive a response. Also, emails are NOT text messages/IM communications. When emailing me you should open the email by addressing me as Dr. Rice, identifying who you are and which course you are in (and at what time the course meets), concisely providing the nature of your problem/request, and then signing off with your name. If you have followed these directions, you may expect a response within 48 hours of its receipt. If you have a pressing emergency, you should speak to me during office hours, before or after class, or by phone. As a final note, I will NOT provide your grades (nor discuss any personally-identifiable grade information) by email or over the phone.

A Brief Note on Cheating & Plagiarism: In addition to being in generally poor form, plagiarism and cheating are theft of othersʼ intellectual property. Plagiarism or cheating will NOT be tolerated. If cheating or plagiarism is found to occur, it will be dealt with according to University Senate Rule 6.4 DISPOSITION OF CASES OF ACADEMIC OFFENSES.

Classroom and Learning Accommodations: Any student with a disability who is taking this course and needs classroom or exam accommodations should contact the Disability Resource Center, 257-2754, room 2 Alumni Gym, [email protected].

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One Last Thing – Dropping the Course: Not that I hope you choose to leave our little soiree, but there are a couple of dates you should keep in mind should the need arise. The last day to drop this course without it appearing on your transcript is February 4, 2009. The last day to withdraw from the course is April 3, 2009.

COURSE SCHEDULE: NOTE: All items in the Course Schedule are subject to change at the discretion of the instructor. These changes will be announced in class and/or on the course website. You are responsible for all announced changes, so come to class and visit the course website often.

Introduction to Second Life and Virtual Fieldwork January 20 – Boellstorff, Chs. 1 & 3 January 22 – Boellstorff, Chs. 4 & 7 January 27 – Training Session @ WT Young Library Boellstorff, Ch. 8& 9 January 29 – Training Session @ WT Young Library February 3 – Discussion of Boellstorff and Second Life Boellstorff, Ch. 5

Exploring Identity Under Conditions of Contemporary Capitalism February 5 – Palahniuk, pp.11-85 February 10 – Palahniuk, pp.86-155 February 12 – Palahniuk, pp.156-208

What is Mainstream and What is Taboo? Subaltern Cultures in American Political Thought February 17 – Boellstorff, Ch. 6 February 19 – Ellis, pp.1-110 February 24 – Ellis, pp.111-216 February 26 – Ellis, pp.217-276

Exploring Copyright and the Commons in American Political Thought March 3-April 30 – Boyle, Doctorow, Lessig - Schedule TBD March 3 – Lessig, pp.1-61 March 5 – Lessig, pp. 62-123 March 10 – Lessig, pp.124-182 March 12 – Lessig, pp.183-247 March 24 – Lab Session @ WT Young Review Lessig to date March 26 – Lessig, pp. 244-306 March 31 – Boyle, Chs. 1 & 2 April 2 – Boyle, Chs. 3 & 4 April 7 – Boyle, Chs. 5 & 6 April 9 – Boyle, Chs. 7& 8 April 14 – Boyle, Chs. 9 & 10 April 16-28 – Doctorow (Selected Essays) April 30 – Lab Session @ WT Young Library

Spring Break (March 17,19) –– NO CLASS Group Research Presentations (Tuesday, May 5) – 1-3pm, CB 233

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