Writing 275: Communication in the Digital Age
Sponsored by LAMP and TWP, Writing 275 is a theme-based course that invites undergraduates to explore digital communication. Each iteration is taught by a graduate student with the mentorship of a LAMP-affiliated faculty member. Please scroll down to see the prior iterations and themes of Writing 275. Please see LAMP Opportunities for inquiries about teaching Writing 275.
Writing 275 Catalog Description
Explores contemporary challenges, contexts, and opportunities with communication across media platforms. Examines historical contexts and texts related to rhetoric and communication, and how these ideas have persisted and shifted in the digital age. Texts include theoretical approaches to communication and rhetoric (past and present) and examples of communication across a range of media (for example: podcasts, multimodal texts, web-based presentations, and social media content). Students learn to conduct rhetorical analysis across media, and create written, visual, and/or verbal rhetorical content across media platforms. Prerequisite: Writing 101.
Spring 2026
Writing 275S: Communication in the Digital Age: How Do You Meme?
Instructor: Savannah Marciezyk, English
How did random images with captions become a key form of communication? Why do some memes catch on while others fizzle out? How do memes travel from sub-cultures to mainstream audiences?
Drawing on texts from both literary studies and philosophy, in this course we’ll ask what a meme is, and examine how it manages to communicate through structural, metaphorical, and referential modes. We will look at the ways memes have been weaponized or coopted to fuel political movements (like Pepe the Frog and “Kamala is brat”); how different platforms like TikTok or Instagram generate their own meme formats; and consider the ways internet cultures are formed by and around meme content. We’ll also consider how meme formats have changed over time, and how they’ve made the jump from internet to IRL.
Assignments for this class will ask students to make cross-modal, cross-platform connections, and will be built around developing analytical writing skills. Through low-stakes short papers, students will have the opportunity to experiment with style and take intellectual risks. Other assessments will include collaborative in-class presentations, a competition to make the best Duke meme, and final projects that trace a meme’s evolution and its impact on digital culture.
Spring 2025
Writing 275S: Communication in the Digital Age: AI, Media and Society
Instructor: Ernest Pujol Leon, Program in Literature
Generative AI is changing the way we produce and interpret content across digital and traditional media forms. This course explores these transformations through a media studies perspective, asking pressing questions about technology and society. Students will examine the challenges posed by AI across various domains of modern life, including the arts, education, work, and digital communication. Through a combination of readings, class discussions, and hands-on projects, we’ll consider how AI is reshaping cultural expression and reflect on our critical role in this transformation.
Spring 2024
Writing 275S: Multisensorial Communication: Digital Media from Personal Narratives to Protest Movements
Instructor: Zeena Yasmine Fuleihan, Program in Literature
How does the incorporation of one sensorial media into another affect a story’s message? Forms of ekphrasis have been employed in artistic communication for centuries, whether in the use of song and dance in Greek theater, description of visual art in written fiction, or the function of music in a film, podcast, or even bookending a political speech. We continue to see the significance of multisensorial input on TikTok and Instagram today, where users overlay soundtracks from others onto their own videos to participate in the making of a viral meme. This class interrogates the role this overlapping of media plays from written and live work to digital and social media. The class will be in four units: we will first consider ekphrasis and multimedia communication in its most traditional forms such as in literary fiction and plays; the second unit will focus on the expression of personal narratives through multimedia forms; the third unit will take us to its use in political messaging; the final unit will consider this in social justice and protest movements such as the Arab Spring; Black Lives Matter; Woman, Life, Freedom protests in Iran; and #MeToo in the US. Across all units, course material will engage the problematics of identity, gender, sexuality, race, cultural difference, trauma, power, and accessibility, among others. Literary and media examples will come in large part from the Middle East, North Africa, and Arab diasporas, among other sources. All texts will be in English. We will read, listen to, and watch a variety of stories, songs, podcasts, films, and videos. We will also visit a local art exhibition or a theater performance to consider how forms of ekphrasis are employed in live works and responded to by viewers and reporters in digital media. Readings will be comprised of a mix of theoretical and creative sources; likewise, assignments will include academic essays and creative assignments through which students will practice employing multiple forms of media or ekphrasis in their own work.
Spring 2023
Writing 275: Health and Harm in Digital Communication
Instructor: Jo Murdoch, Program in Literature
With the digital world shaping our lives more profoundly every year, what can we do to help manage the harmful and helpful aspects of online interaction? Digital communication can seed misinformation and spur violent conflict—and it can also create and mobilize communities. Social media networks amplify BIPOC voices and support businesses—and they are also having to reckon with the mental health impact of aesthetic filters and online bullying. As avenues for digital content creation increase, so does the need for grounded, thoughtful reception. This course embraces both the practice and the analysis of digital communication, drawing on multimedia sources from Pew studies to celebrity podcasts to the battleground of COVID news. We will analyze the overt and implied messages in the media we consume, from social and news media to various kinds of streaming entertainment and the advertisements that follow us everywhere online. Students will build a multimedia portfolio over the course of the semester, informed by their rhetorical study of interactive essays, podcasts, and video op-eds. Regular prompts for reflective writing and digital content development will build toward the capstone project, a collection of 1–2 podcast episodes paired with other digital compositions exploring distress and well-being in relation to digital communication.
Fall 2021
Writing 275: Writing in a Time of Climate Crisis
Instructor: Joseph Ren, Program in Literature
The opening decades of the 21st century have witnessed ever intensifying climate catastrophes-- record numbers of hurricanes, record wildfires, continental drought. These catastrophes have in turn compounded staggering social inequality and apparent governmental dysfunction/ Consequently, the apparent threats social, economic, and ecological catastrophe post toward future survival preoccupies contemporary culture. How do we respond to the climate crisis through writing? We will explore how essays and narratives (e.g. in film, fiction, and podcasts) advocate for environmental justice. We will hone their research, writing, and editing skills and will have the opportunity to produce small documentaries and podcast episodes that we will develop together peer workshopping and collaborative writing.
