Statement of Purpose

Syllabus

Format:

The format of this course should, in some ways, seem usual and familiar: we will meet three times a week in Pavilion VIII, you will be asked to do a significant amount of reading and writing, and there will be something like a final examination. At the same time, I hope that, in many ways, it seems quite unlike any course you've had before.

E.g.,

• 1) Although we will meet together regularly, we are also going to construct a virtual classroom. Each student will create their own HomePage on the World Wide Web from a toolkit. Each HomePage will be the place where student projects are presented and all HomePages will be linked together to form a Virtual Classroom.

• 2) The reading for the course includes some texts in the usual sense of the term, printed texts/books/articles that will be available in Clemons Library (R) or (C). But some texts are also available in The Digital Reserve Book Room(D) which is accessible from this syllabus.

• 3) Much of the work in the course is task-based: e.g.
  • a) you will transform an article from print to electronic text suitable for inclusion in the Digital Reserve Book Room;

  • b) you will be asked to convert an already scanned chapter of Crevecoeur's Letters to hypertext by tagging it in HTML;
  • c) you will work as a service librarian, for a section of The American Studies Yellow Pages, a guide to electronic resources for students of American Studies;

  • d) you will create a synoptic hypertext of a scholarly journal in American Studies or a related field;

  • e) you will help transform Henry Adams' The Education of Henry Adams into a hypertext;

  • f) and, in lieu of a final examination, you will create a hypertext anthology An Introduction to American Studies which will include a table of contents, a 10-12 page editor's introduction, and brief head notes to each item included in the anthology. All of these materials will be posted on your HomePage by the dates indicated in the syllabus.

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