Hey, everyone! My name is Amanda Visconti, and I’m one of your four course instructors for Digital Storytelling. My background is in both literature and technology–I’m a web developer at MITH and am also working on a doctorate in literature here at UMD. I chose to teach this course because I spend a lot of time thinking about how the material design of literary forms–physical and visual stuff, like the layout of books, hardware of the SNES, or the technological constraints on the code behind web pages–influences what a narrative can do, and there’s a much wider, weirder frontier of unexplored possibilities for stories in the digital realm then there is for book form (though artists’ books are also really neat!).
I never encountered anything digital in my college English classes ( : / ) and I felt more mentally and creatively challenged in my undergrad digital art courses, crafting stories through 3D animation or building websites to teach other people cool stuff I’d learned (an ongoing project is making websites that help people enjoy James Joyce’s amazingly complex, rewards-you-on-multiple-readings novel Ulysses, like this and this). Figuring out that I could combine my passions for the geeky (code, design, 3d animation) and nerdy (wacky Modernist novels and the visual design of books) was an important moment for me, so I’ve tried to pass that awareness on by teaching literature that includes the digital and hypertextual, from multilinear print stories to web comics and digital games.
Speaking of games as something you can study: I ran a digital humanities unconference earlier this year where we built and discussed digital and analog games, and strongly recommend you check out the next version (in Cleveland this February) if you’re thinking about studying games seriously. I’m also part of a UMD research team that builds, runs, and studies alternate reality games (real-world and digital games where you play yourself, but the world is slightly augmented, more dramatic, more challenging).
I’d love to swap recommendations for graphic novels, video/computer games, and any other type of new media you’re into. Looking forward to reading your introductory blog posts and getting to work with you!
