Assignment Overview

Assignment Details

For this class, you should make a commonplace book that will help you gather your thoughts as you prepare for class discussions; consider and respond to your colleagues’ ideas in class; respond to, reflect on, and synthesize our lab activities; and develop your final book project. This blog post offers a nice primer on getting started with a commonplace book.

We will discuss the form of commonplace books in our first classes, and your commonplace book can take many forms, but it should facilitate:

  1. Transcribing and annotating salient quotes from our readings
  2. Cutting, pasting, and contextualizing external materials, including artifacts created in labs
  3. Steady expansion throughout the semester.

If you have a compelling reason, such as a specific health condition, I will consider digital commonplace books, but—for reasons we will discuss in class—I strongly prefer you maintain an analog book if at all possible.

In the sections below, I break down all the distinct kinds of things you will record in your commonplace books, but overall you should consider it a growing, evolving record of your work across our course activities. A few times in the semester I will collect your books to assess your progress, either physically or by asking you to submit photographs through Canvas.

1. Discussion Prep

For each week of class there are readings listed under Core and Penumbra. The core readings are just that: central to the week’s discussion and lab. Everyone should read these closely and prepare to discuss them. The penumbral readings try to capture a broader spectrum of scholarship pertinent to each week’s theme, which I could not require because time is, sadly, finite. Each week you should choose one of the penumbral readings, based on your own interests, to read and be prepared to reference as a means of expanding our conversation together.

Before each discussion class period—usually Mondays, but always indicated on the schedule—you will select three quotes from our assigned media. This means three quotes in total for each discussion class, not three for each chosen piece. You should either transcribe those quotes or print and paste them into your commonplace book, and then write out one question or observation that you would like to discuss for each chosen quotation.

These transcriptions and questions/observations will serve as prompts for our conversations together and demonstrate your initial engagement with the ideas of our class. I know that some students are more comfortable with speaking spontaneously in class than others, and a primary reason I ask you to write your ideas before class is so you can directly reference them. It is perfectly fine—encouraged, in fact!—for you to contribute to class by saying “I transcribed this quote…and wrote this question about it…” Particularly in a graduate class, students are often tempted to write 3 lengthy paragraphs, but I strongly urge you to stick to 1-2 concise but well-developed sentences for each quote, either declarative (an observation) or interrogative (a question). For example, if I transcribed this quote from Ursula K. Le Guin’s “A Rant About ‘Technology’” into my commonplace book:

“Technology” and “hi tech” are not synonymous, and a technology that isn’t “hi,” isn’t necessarily ‘“low” in any meaningful sense.

I might write a question like:

How does considering historical technologies as technologies shift our perspective when analyzing and using the tools and devices most often called “technology” in 2025? If older technology “isn’t necessarily ‘low’ in any meaningful sense,” how might we categorize it instead?

In order for your questions/observations to be “Satisfactory,” they should, in general:

  1. Get beyond basic questions or observations of fact and instead work toward questions or observations of significance.
  2. Demonstrate close thought about the themes, style, arguments and other elements of our texts, as well as about the relationships among them.
  3. Emerge from (and refer to) specific ideas, pages, quotations, scenes, &c. from our assigned texts rather than broad or generic concepts.
  4. Genuinely open toward discussion and debate during class (i.e. no leading the witness, your honor).

Discussion prep will be deemed “Unsatisfactory” when it indicates lack of preparation or inattentive reading.

2. Notes & Observations

During both discussion and lab sessions, you should use your commonplace book to record notes about our discussions and lab activities. Importantly, these should not be exhaustive notes, taken as if you are preparing for a test. You should not attempt to transcribe every word said or trace each thread of our conversations. Instead, in each class strive to identify a few key insights or ideas that you would like to record. Perhaps these build on the questions or observations you brought into class, or perhaps something emerges that surprises or challenges you.

You might transcribe a really smart quote from a classmate. You should feel free to make connections on the page—literally—by drawing arrows between your discussion prep and your notes taken during class. Doodle relevant doodles. Draw a diagram of a technical process we are discussing. These notes can be as individual as you all are, so long as they show evidence of engagement, thought, and synthesis. If it’s helpful, print out an image related to our topic after class, paste it on the page, and annotate it.

3. Lab Artifacts

Each of our labs will produce some kind of bookish artifact—a e.g. sheet, a print, a zine, a website. You should use your commonplace book to collect these artifacts, or records of them. You might literally paste (or staple, or sew, &c.) an object in, scrapbook-style, or you might take a picture, print it, and add that to your book. For digital labs you might add screenshots to your commonplace book.

4. Book Project Process Documentation

This last area is the least structured, but as you develop your final book project, you should use your commonplace book as a drafting and brainstorming space. Notes, ideas, sketches, and more—anything that helps you think through your project.