Department of English Offers New Algorithm and Social Media Focused Courses for Undergraduates

The Department of English's faculty in rhetoric and writing studies are excited to offer two courses in the coming spring semester that tackle the complicated issues of social media and algorithm on our daily lives.

In ENGL 36003, Algorithmic Justice, assistant professor Maggie Fernandes will offer students the chance to study the cultural and societal influences that algorithms play — often behind the scenes — in art, language, healthcare, privacy and more.

As Fernandes explains, "I'm excited to teach this class because I enjoy learning about how students interact with and make sense of everyday algorithmic technologies, including streaming platforms like Netflix and Spotify, social media like Instagram and TikTok, and emergent AI-driven tools like ChatGPT. I'm also looking forward to doing some critical-creative multimodal projects with students that represent these often obscured technologies that help us to think about local and global impacts of algorithms."

In ENGL 49003, Content Strategy and Online Writing, associate professor Adam R. Pope will provide students with a framework for becoming content authors and orchestrators for the future workplaces. The course will cover building and maintaining a content strategy for an organization, with a particular focus on building and maintaining WordPress-driven website presences and social media accounts as part of an overall content strategy.

Pope explains that "this course is one that I've quite excited to teach on campus for the first time. I'm in the middle of my second book project and have spent the last year interviewing brands and influencers on the work they do and how they coordinate with each other via their online communication strategies. I hope to involve several creators in classroom interviews as we go through the semester and am really looking forward to student projects in this class!"

Both courses are offered face-to-face on campus in the spring semester and count towards both the English major as well as the rhetoric and writing studies minor. Pope plans on offering limited honors seats for his course.