For the fifteen years that I have been teaching college courses, I have experimented with digital assignments, especially, the final thesis-driven digital essay. Below are some of products created by my students, most of whom had no programming knowledge or previous experience with digital projects. These projects inspire me to continue to pushing students beyond their comfort zone (i.e. the traditional 5-paragraph printed essay) to explore the intersections of creative-critical analysis in and through digital media. Take a look!

SDSU (2014-present)

Digital Literature (2020)
Brent Ameneyro’s Twitter bot poetry, see @robot_poetry  https://twitter.com/robot_poetry

Bree Hawkin’s Scalar-based critical essay on Tender Claws’ Pry

Cyberfeminism (2017)
–Katie Chestnut’s creative-critical response to Hélène Cixous’s seminal “Laugh of the Medusa” in a Twine-story

21st-Century Experimental Novel (2015)
–Jared Zeider’s creative critical project about Steven Hall’s The Raw Shark Texts: “I caught a Ludovician”
-Riley Wilson’s stitched hypertext marginalia in the pages of East of Eden

Book History (2015)
–Morgan Gates’ hypertext essay on Gertrude Stein’s Tender Buttons

Digital Literature (2015)
-Denise Chang’s essay on Netprov
–Juston McKee uses digital comics to present an argument about media-specific analysis
–Jenna Church’s project on memes
-Andrew Perez’s interactive fiction essay (screenshot of the IF game below)

Digital Humanities: Digital Literacy (2015)
–Natalie Wilson’s essay on posthuman bodies and Patchwork Girl

UCSD (2013-2014)
The Book in the Digital Age:

YALE (2008-2011)
Digital Literature
–Lydia Martin’s midterm remix of Jim Andrew’s “stir-fry text,” Blue Hyacinth
-James Pollack’s exploration and adaptation of Jason Nelson’s three-dimensional space
Medieval Manuscripts to New Media: Studies in the History of the Book

UCLA 2006
As a graduate student and teaching associate at UCLA, I experimented with having students create digital essays using Dreamweaver. Some of them remain my favorite projects and inspire me to continue to pushing students to explore the intersections of creative-critical analysis.
-Jaimie Castillo’s “Art Speigelman’s Memorial to Human Experience: In The Shadow of No Towers ‘Before 9/11′” uses the format of comics to present literary critical analysis.
–James Schoensiegel’s “”The Haunting in/of Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried” presents an original musical score to structure the pace of reading the essay