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Wilfrid Laurier University

Waterloo, ON

Communication Studies

Speed, Acceleration, and the Accident in Digital Media

CS416l

Fall 2023

Day: Tuesday

Time: 4:00-6:50pm

Room: Schlegel sb305

Instructor: Jeremy Hunsinger

email: jhunsinger@wlu.ca

Office: 2-133

Student Drop-In hours: Monday, Tuesday Noon-1:30 p.m. and by Appointment

Calendar Description

This course engages questions of speed and the seeming acceleration of

everything in

our digital worlds and the accident/s that arise about them. We will engage
theoretical

descriptions of the speed, acceleration, and accident in our digital culture and
media. We

will also engage criticisms on speed, acceleration, and the accident in our
digital lives.

Further Information:
This is a seminar-based course, so it is a communal effort. Each week, we will
all

present and discuss the readings, and you should be prepared to show your
insights and

provide interesting questions, relate your experiences, and otherwise

contribute. The

course is much more about you building your knowledge in your direction. It
assumes

that you have had some exposure to research, and it will build upon that to
develop your

research following the methods used most often in the department.

Readings:

Speed And Politics, New Edition (2006) Paul Virilio

The Original Accident (2007) Paul Virilio

No Speed Limit: Three Essays on Accelerationism Steven Shapiro

The Sociology of Speed: Digital, Organizational, and Social Temporalities

(2016) Judy

Wacjman and Nigel Dodd

Virilio and the Media 2012 John Armitage (not required, but some may need
more

background)

A note on reading: While the readings are assigned each week, you will be
expected to

refer to prior readings each week and be enlightened by future assignments.

Each of

these weeks is interconnected to every other week. It is not designed to be

built linearly

but organically. The foundations for the work you need come from the prior
week’s
readings and previous classes. The goal is to build knowledge through your
reading and

discussion so that, in the end, you have the foundations to discuss these
themes

intelligently with anyone and act well-informed about this course content.
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Grading:

Participation
30 points

Reading Reviews
27 points

Final Paper
43 Points

Total
100 points

Assignments:

The Course week runs Monday through Sunday, so Sunday will be the last
day to post

work for the week you are in unless there is an exception. Unless stated
otherwise, the

time for things being due will be 7 PM Eastern Time. All assignments must
reference and

cite appropriately using MLA, APA, Harvard, or Chicago Style. All charges will
be

double-spaced, in 11-point font, and submitted electronically via myls as a

Word

document or PDF. Any artificial writing supports such as ‘artificial intelligence,’

‘machine
learning,’ or

language models and are permitted, but use must be declared referenced,
and their use

must be justified; their use can be no more than 20% of the work in the
instructor’s

opinion. Grammar, style, and spell checkers are allowed.

Reading Reviews:

Reading Reviews are due weekly before the class in which the readings are
due. Week

2’s readings as such are due Sunday, 16 Sept., and so on. They should be
reasonably

long, probably between 500 and 1500 words. You must relate the reviews to
other

readings in this course and other courses you’ve taken in communication

studies with

some depth. There are nine reading reviews, each worth 3 points. You will get
one

point if you demonstrate that you have done the reviews. You will get two
points if you

have shown that you’ve done the study and related in the manner above in
some depth.

You will get three points if you have done the above and exceeded
expectations in some

qualitatively demonstrable way. (It is 4th you; you should be able to do this
easily, but as

I tell my students, if I tell you how to do this, then it is not exceeding

expectations; it is

just meeting expectations).

Participation:
This course requires interaction and discussion between students and the
professor.

Your willing and active participation in that discussion will make this course
work well as

a seminar. Your presence in class is required (unless you are ill or excused)
and is part

of the participation grade. Your class participation is also required. You should
be

prepared with comments and questions about the readings each week. The
class should

collaborate outside class to ensure a successful and productive weekly

discussion. Each

week at the end of the course, you will post to myls a document with your
name, your

contributions for the week, and any questions you want to be answered about
more or

less anything. It is vitally important that you ask any questions that you want
answered

so that they can be answered. This documents your participation for the week.
If you
don’t document your work, it may not be counted.

Final Paper

The final paper for his course is divided into four parts. It is at most five
thousand words.

Week 4: The main idea and question to answer 3 points

Week 8
The annotated bibliography
10 points

Week 11 The Rough Draft

10 points
Exam period
Final Draft
20 Points

The main idea and question are around 250 words, providing your thesis or
research

questions and giving your research background.

The annotated bibliography is between 15 and 20 sources. Each annotation

should

answer the question, “What is the contribution this makes to my paper?” The
annotation

should be no longer than a paragraph.

The professor believes the rough draft is approximately 2/3 of the final paper.

The final draft is at most five thousand words, with adequate citations and
referencing for

fourth-year work. The best papers will be submitted for the departmental
paper award.

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Calendar:

Week 1 Introduction, Expectations, and Basic Readings

Week 1 11 Sept.

Read:

Introduction: Viriilo and the Media

Introduction: The Sociology of Speed

Introduction: Tempo Tantrums (Sarah Sharma)

What Time is it (Wolin)

Read:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02700062
C. Wright Mills On Intellectual

Craftsmanship

Week 2 Speed and Politics

Week 2 18 Sept.

Read:

Speed and Politics to 80

Reading review due

Week 3 Speed and Politics 2

Week 3 25 Sept

Read: Speed and Politics to end

Reading review due

Week 4 The Original Accident

Week 4 2 Oct.

Read:

The Original Accident

Theory of the Derive

Reading review due

Turn in the question/thesis.

Reading week 9 Oct.

Week 5 Accidents

Week 5 16 Oct.

Read:

Accidentology

Paul Virilio: Clinical Theory

Dissimulation

Reading review due

Week 6. Manifestos

Week 6 23 Oct.

Read:

Cyborg Manifesto

Accelerate manifesto

xenofeminist manifesto

On the Necessity of Prefigurative Politics

Reading review due

Week 7 Accelerationism

Week 7 30 Oct.

Read: No Speed Limit

Speed Trials: A Conversation about Accelerationist Politics

Cyborg Anamnesis Accelerates Feminist Prototypes

Reading review due

Week 8 Back to Basics

Week 8 6 Nov.

Read:
Sociology of Speed to 54

The Information Bomb 1-18

Democracy and Time

Reading review due

Bibliography due
Week 9 Back to Basics

Week 9 13 Nov.

Read Sociology of Speed Part II

Radical Contingency and the Materialization of Technology

Reading review due

Week 10 Back to Basics

Week 10, 20 Nov.

Finish Sociology of Speed

Flow Along a Channel: Communication and Its Technologies

Reading review due

Week 11 Finding Themes, putting our ideas to work

Week 11 27 Nov.

Read

Putting Theory To work

Turn in a rough draft.

Week 12 Conclusions

Week 12 4 Dec.

What have you learned in this class

What would you do differently in the class? In life?

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*note well*

If you are sick, or a person you live with is sick with a communicable disease

(COVID-19, flu, norovirus, etc.), stay home and send the professor a note.
Grades are given in whole points, not half or partial points.

Grades are, unless there is a clear mistake, final.

Late work is only accepted with a university-acceptable excuse or instructor

permission.

The justification must be submitted promptly, preferably at least a week before

the event.

Still, in emergencies, reasons may be turned in after the event within two
weeks of the

student’s return to class. All materials must be turned in by this course’s last
day of

teaching.
Students will be treated and should treat each other fairly, equitably, and with
respect.

Also, note well:

Pandemic Considerations: If pandemic conditions require the University to

adjust course

delivery during the term, it may be necessary to alter course requirements.

Students will

be provided with the required information as soon as is feasible under the

circumstances.

For synchronous remote learning involving Zoom, and where permissible by

the course

structure, students are encouraged to use technological supports such as

virtual

backgrounds and the muting of audio and video feeds whenever desired to
protect the

privacy of their virtual work environment. You might also consider conducting
a 360°
scan of the workspace. The message tab (comments/chat section in Zoom) is
a way to

participate in classroom discussions without video and audio.

The educational materials developed for this course, including, but not limited
to, lecture

notes and slides, handout materials, examinations and assignments, and any
materials

posted to MyLearningSpace, are the intellectual property of the course

instructor. These

materials have been developed for student use only and are not intended for
wider

dissemination and communication outside a given course. Posting or

providing

unauthorized audio, video, or textual material of lecture content to third-party

websites

violates an instructor’s intellectual property rights and the Canadian Copyright

Act.

Recording lectures in any way is prohibited in this course unless the instructor
has

granted specific permission.

Failure to follow these instructions may be in contravention

of the university’s Student Non-Academic Code of Conduct and Code of

Academic

Conduct and will result in appropriate penalties. Students may avail

themselves of one

point of extra credit by sending the professor a picture if a sugar glider by the
end of

week four.
Participation in this course constitutes an agreement by all parties to abide by
the relevant University Policies and to respect the intellectual property of
others during

and after their association with Wilfrid Laurier University.

Otherwise, the spirit of the semester should be we will try our best. We will try
to be kind

to each other. We will try to be professional and caring as appropriate. We’ll

chat, read,

write, review, and peer review, but we will stay safe and healthy. We’ll try to
make this

the best experience possible, and we all try to do that together.

Other guidance is provided in the attached addendum