Viewing the discussion weblog and portfolio wiki for J697 is restricted to students currently taking the class so that students may write frankly about their internship experiences. Email the professor at gdowney@wisc.edu to gain access to these online spaces.

All UW-Madison students and staff may access the online readings with their normal UW NetID and password.

Make sure you have filled out the internship application form and formally registered for the course before the start of summer session.

Before starting your internship, please read this guide to Making the Most of Your Internship prepared by L&S Career Services.

first week of class

Although your individual internships all vary in terms of their start and end dates, for the purposes of this course we starting our academic work either on the first day of the 8-week summer session (for a summer internship) or on the first day of the semester (for a fall/spring internship). 

W I K I   P O R T F O L I O

• By the first week of class you should have received an emailed invitation to join our course wiki.  (If you did not receive a wiki invitation, email the professor at gdowney@wisc.edu)  Follow the instructions in this email to sign up with the wiki, which is hosted by "PBWorks."
• On the first page of the course wiki you should see your name listed in a big table that mentions which week you will be covering the assigned readings and what book you are assigned to read for your final paper.  Using the "EDIT" button at the top of this wiki page, create a link from your name to a new wiki page of your own.
• Set up this personal wiki page with a short description of yourself, a photo of yourself.
• Now add a brief description of the organization where you're interning to your wiki page.  If you can, describe the mission, purpose, audience, and history of your organization.  Use headings to organize this information in a nice format.
• After your first week of interning, add a section to your page that describes in as much detail as you can what your duties, experiences, and reactions were during your first week of interning.  Do the same for a new section on your page describing your second week of interning.
• If there are other students taking internships during this semester or summer, visit at least two fellow student's wiki pages and comment on the experiences that they describe.
• The professor will assign you each a book to read that relates to your field placement, and will post that book selection to the front page of the wiki for you to see.  (These books should be available through either online booksellers like Amazon.com or through any local public library's "interlibrary loan" service.)

W E B L O G  D I S C U S S I O N   

• By the first week of class you should have received an emailed invitation to join our course weblog.  (If you did not receive a weblog invitation, email the professor at gdowney@wisc.edu)  Follow the instructions in this email to sign up with the wiki, which is hosted by "Blogger."
• Introduce yourself by posting to the main page of the weblog, and include both a picture of yourself and a link to your main wiki page in this posting. 
• On the main wiki page, your professor has assigned you to write up a reaction to one or more readings over the course of this class.  If it is your week to respond to one of the readings, post a substantive critical reaction to your assigned reading on the course weblog (at least 500 words, the equivalent of two double-spaced typewritten pages).  Indicate the author and/or title of the reading in the title of your post.
• If it is not your week to write up a reading reaction, and if there are other students interning during this semester or summer, then post a comment to one of the student reading reactions on the weblog.

R E Q U I R E D    R E A D I N G S

Required and optional readings are all available online at our download repository.  The login and password are your normal UW netID and password (just like for your email).

1. William Cronon, “‘Only connect...’: The goals of a liberal education” American Scholar (1998).
2. Tamara Draut, "The growing college gap," in James Lardner and David A. Smith, eds., Inequality matters: The growing economic divide in America and its poisonous consequences (2005), 89-101; 10 pages.
3. Marc Bousquet, “Students are already workers,” in How the university works: Higher education and the low-wage nation (2008); 30 pages.

O P T I O N A L  R E A D I N G S

• Laurie Rozakis, The complete idiot's guide to public speaking (1999), selections.
• Brandon Royal, The little red writing book (2004), selections. 
• Peter A. Facione, "Critical thinking: What it is and why it counts" (1998); 15 pages. 

This work is all due by the third week of the summer session, or the fourth week of a fall/spring semester session.

W I K I   P O R T F O L I O

• On your wiki page, describe the geography of your internship setting, both outside and inside, and your place in it.
• Create a section for each week's fieldnotes as before, and describe your experiences in as much detail as you can.
• Visit a fellow student's wiki page (if any) and comment on the experiences that they describe.

W E B L O G  D I S C U S S I O N   

• If it is your week to respond to one of the readings, post a substantive critical reaction to your assigned reading on the course weblog (at least 500 words).
• If it is not your week to write up a reading reaction, then post a comment to another student's reading reaction on the weblog (if any).
• Read the first half of your scholarly book and post a brief summary of the topics you've covered so far to the weblog.  Indicate the author/title of the book in the title of your post.

R E Q U I R E D    R E A D I N G S

1. Robert Emerson, Rachel Fretz and Linda Shaw, "Writing up fieldnotes I: From field to desk," Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes (1995), 39-65.
2. Robert Emerson, Rachel Fretz and Linda Shaw, "Processing fieldnotes: Coding and memoing," Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes (1995), 142-168.
3. Barbara Ehrenreich, Nickel and dimed: On (not) getting by in America (2002), selection.

This work is all due by the fifth week of the summer session, or the seventh week of a fall/spring semester session.

W I K I   P O R T F O L I O

• On your wiki page, describe the social relationships and social networks of your setting, and your place in them.
• Create a section for each week's fieldnotes as before, and describe your experiences in as much detail as you can.
• Visit a fellow student's wiki page (if any) and comment on the experiences that they describe.

W E B L O G  D I S C U S S I O N   

• If it is your week to respond to one of the readings, post a substantive critical reaction to your assigned reading on the course weblog (at least 500 words).
• If it is not your week to write up a reading reaction, then post a comment to another student's reading reaction on the weblog (if any).
• Read the second half of your scholarly book and update your original blog post with further reactions on this book.  Adjust the title of your post to read "UPDATED: ..."
• Comment on another student's book summary (if any).

R E Q U I R E D    R E A D I N G S

1. Nathan Ensmenger, "Resistance is futile?  Reluctant and selective users of the Internet," in William Aspray and Paul Ceruzzi, eds., The Internet and American Business (2008).
2. Pew Internet and American Life Project, “Networked workers: Most workers use the internet or email at their jobs, but they say these technologies are a mixed blessing for them” (2008).
3. Frank Levy and Richard J. Murnane, “How computers change work and pay,” in The new division of labor: How computers are creating the next job market (2004), 31-54; 20 pages.

This work is all due by the seventh week of the summer session, or the eleventh week of a fall/spring semester session.

W I K I   P O R T F O L I O

• Create a section for each week's fieldnotes as before, and describe your experiences in as much detail as you can.
• Visit a fellow student's wiki page (if any) and comment on the experiences that they describe.
• Do a rough coding of your fieldnotes, following the techniques discussed in Emerson et al. (you don't have to go into great detail, but try to identify some useful concepts and themes).
• Write your final paper relating your scholarly book, the coded fieldnotes of your experiences, and the course readings and discussions (minimum 2000 words).  Post this paper as a separate page linked to your main wiki page.
• Read another student's final paper (if any) and comment on it.

W E B L O G  D I S C U S S I O N   

• If it is your week to respond to one of the readings, post a substantive critical reaction to your assigned reading on the course weblog (at least 500 words).
• If it is not your week to write up a reading reaction, then post a comment to another student's reading reaction on the weblog (if any).
• Post a final substantive statement to the weblog on what you thought about your internship experience, the online course experience, or both (250 words minimum).

R E Q U I R E D    R E A D I N G S

1. Robin Leidner, "Serving hamburgers and selling insurance: Gender, work, and identity in interactive service jobs," Gender & Society (1991), 154-177.
2. Jackie Krasas Rogers,"A temporary job: Is it the 'temporary' or the 'job'?" in Temps: The many faces of the changing workplace ( 2000), 151-174.
3. Richard Florida, "Preface to the paperback edition" and "Preface," The rise of the creative class: And how it's transforming work, leisure, community, and everyday life (2002).

This work is all due by the last day of the summer session, or the last day of a fall/spring semester session.

M E E T I N G

All students who have completed the summer internship are asked to attend an optional one-hour debriefing meeting at the beginning of the following semester (date, time and location TBA).  We would like to find out if your internship met your learning and training goals.

Here are some examples of the books I have had internship students read in previous semesters:

Edward Bernays, Propaganda (1928). "A seminal and controversial figure in the history of political thought and public relations, Edward Bernays pioneered the scientific technique of shaping and manipulating public opinion, which he famously dubbed "engineering of consent." During World War I, he was an integral part of the U.S. Committee on Public Information (CPI), a powerful propaganda apparatus that was mobilized to package, advertise and sell the war to the American people as one that would "Make the World Safe for Democracy." The CPI would become the blueprint in which marketing strategies for future wars would be based upon.  Bernays applied the techniques he had learned in the CPI and, incorporating some of the ideas of Walter Lipmann, became an outspoken proponent of propaganda as a tool for democratic and corporate manipulation of the population. His 1928 bombshell Propaganda lays out his eerily prescient vision for using propaganda to regiment the collective mind in a variety of areas, including government, politics, art, science and education. To read this book today is to frightfully comprehend what our contemporary institutions of government and business have become in regards to organized manipulation of the masses."

Pablo Boczkowski, Digitizing the news (2004).  "In this study of how daily newspapers in America have developed electronic publishing ventures, Pablo Boczkowski shows that new media emerge not just in a burst of revolutionary technological change but by merging the structures and practices of existing media with newly available technical capabilities. His multi-disciplinary perspectives of science and technology, communication, and organization studies allow him to address the connections between technical, editorial, and work facets of new media. This approach yields analytical insights into the material culture of online newsrooms, the production processes of new media products, and the relationships between offline and online dynamics."

Todd Gitlin, Media Unlimited: How the Torrent of Images and Sounds Overwhelms Our Lives, revised edition (2007).  "Gitlin, a professor of journalism and culture, examines why and how it has come about that so much of our time is spent being bombarded by communications, information, and entertainment from a variety of media. Gitlin wants to avoid the typical analysis of the effects of the media on society and, instead, looks at the media as an experience in itself, with no definitive meaning necessarily attached, analyzing the feelings elicited by a stream of information. He concedes that his objective is a gamble, but it pays off. Citing observations by Marx, de Tocqueville, Orwell, and a stream of others, Gitlin offers a short, dizzying history of how we got to the point where we are supersaturated with a torrent of information coming at us at incredible speed. The author explores how we manage and have even begun to resist media saturation, as we step back, take a breath, and consider "what we want to do about it besides change channels.""

Stephen Graham and Simon Marvin, Telecommunications and the City: Electronic Spaces, Urban Places (1996). The authors are interested in how telecommunications “impinge on the economic, social, physical, environmental and institutional development of cities.” Calling cities “giant engines of communication,” they point out that the field of urban studies has so far neglected empirical study of telecommunications in cities, instead forecasting either utopias or dystopias.

Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion (1922). "Written by one of the most influential men of his times and one of the greatest journalists in history, Public Opinion is an incisive examination of democratic theory, the role of citizens in a democracy, and the impact of the media in shaping thoughts and actions. It changed the nature of political science as a scholarly discipline and introduced concepts that continue to play an important role in current political theory."

Robert W. McChesney and John Nichols, Our Media, Not Theirs: The Democratic Struggle Against Corporate Media (2002).
"Much of the U.S. media is consolidated in the hands of a few large companies, which results in journalism biased toward the corporate point of view, this book contends. The authors argue for local control, chronicle the rise of grassroots media activism, and conclude with a proposal for meaningful improvement."

Jesse Walker, Rebels on the Air: An Alternative History of Radio in America (2004). "An associate editor for Reason magazine, Walker argues that government collusion with big business for decades is responsible for reducing variety and eliminating dissident voices in radio broadcasting. Opening his history of alternative radio with the amateur operators in the early 1900s, he shows that as soon as the first regulations were passed in the Radio Act of 1912, pirate stations began defying the rules. Walker de0ions that pushed the limits of radio broadcasting (both legally and illegally), documents the history of the Pacifica Foundation and the community radio movement of the 1960s and 1970s, and ends with some open questions about the future of micro radio and the potential of the Internet."