Probably no better fit for the CIC classrooms has been Professor Steven Shaviro’s English 407 course, “Cyberculture,” which investigates the ways in which culture has been reshaped in the past two decades by electronic technologies. Although a portion of the readings for the course were and are still available in traditional print, a good deal of the readings are now available to read, view and project in class online.

Students frequently tested theoretic readings via primary research—during the course of 11 weeks, class members analyzed their own and others’ experiences with personal computers, the Web, hypertext, video, multimedia, interactive games, online communities, and virtual technologies and identities in the contexts of political and philosophical debates about the globalization of cyberspace. Via an online class bulletin board projected in each class session, individual students served as weekly discussion leaders. Every class member, as well, constructed either a Web site or a Web log (Blog), or attempted to critique the purpose and developments in another’s site or Blog. In the most recent course offering, students also had the opportunity in one class session to virtually interview an artist about his work in visual aesthetics and linguistic morphing, the merging of graphic designs and natural languages with computer coded expressions.