Learning Digital Narratives

This semester at UPJ, I’m teaching a class on Writing for Digital Media. It’s my first time teaching the course — a course I developed along with my department’s director for UPJ — and the first writing class of its kind being offered in the Pitt university system.

My colleague, Dr. Jeremy Justus, is in his third semester teaching the first-ever Pitt course on Digital Humanities. And so this semester, the chair of the Humanities division has asked some of us to get together and hash out a proposal for a new minor in Digital Humanities.

All of this — my course, Justus’ course, the new minor — has me doing lots of research into some of the incredibly exciting forms of narrative being generated in the digital environment. This semester, my Digital Writing students are all developing their own blogs, and since we’ve been exploring the blog as a genre for the development of a digital persona, and a place to entertain personal or professional curiosities, I thought I might blog along with them this semester, to chronicle my journey in encountering and, I hope, composing, digital narratives.

For those looking for a primer, here are some useful resources:

• An Introduction to Digital Humanities
• “What Is Digital Humanities, and What’s it Doing in English Departments?” by Matthew Kirschenbaum
• Electronic Literature Collection, Vol. 2 (for a sampling of digital objects)