Class agenda from 10/27/22:

This past week was the first week that selections for presentation were less in sync, and seemed much more disparate in theme, design, and sentiment. Still, our discussions were certainly insightful, and I am so glad these two texts were selected for a closer look. Thanks to Giselle and to Nicole for their thoughtful presentations which helped fill out context for both works, and fed our further understanding. The scrapbook story world of Retratos vivos de mamá was a meaningful contemplation of grief and loss, and I am so happy we had such personal engagement with this piece both in your blogs and in our discussion in class thanks to Giselle’s final prompt. This work seems to explore the elusive (and often failed) nature of love, and the inexplicable silence that comes after loss. I thought that the genre of this piece, (i.e. the digital scrapbook of personal memory), might be an interesting genre for you all to consider in thinking about your own creative production of an elit story (for later on in our semester).

Meanwhile, How to Rob a Bank had a very different tone – the wild misadventures of two dangerous fools in love. This transmedia fiction might also serve as “food-for-thought” for your own future creative work. The ingenious move made here is the way Alan Bigelow has used social media as an “overview” forensic form of storytelling. The animated text conversations between the main characters, and their use of their iPhones to Google search, text, and game, tells us (the outside unintended reader) so much about their lives. This approach offers us all a surprisingly deep form of character development. There is less interactivity here than in the other pieces we have looked at, but there is also an important critique of the way digital culture has mediated our lives askew.

What to-do for next week?

Read Jasmine’s selection: Dial

Read Ricki’s selection: cya laterrr

Blog due:

Blog about your reading experience and understanding of Dial  and/or cya laterrr

See you in our our CAS classroom next time (11/3)!