Nick Seaver's course materials
Nick Seaver
nick.seaver@tufts.edu
Office Hours
Here’s the idea: It seems obvious, maybe especially obvious these days, that attention is important. We worry about our ability to pay attention, we worry about other people’s ability to pay attention, and companies make a lot of money by attracting, and maybe abusing, their users’ attention. Some people argue that many of our Big Problems—from climate change to political extremism—can be explained by the shape of human attention. Attention seems intuitive, universal, and good, but also fragile, elusive, and under threat.
The goal of this class is to undermine that idea. How has attention come to seem like an all-purpose explanation for why things happen? What is attention anyway? How might our ideas about attention’s goodness work against us? We’ll critically examine attention by considering it in particular social, cultural, and technical contexts: we pay attention, value attention, and measure attention in a world full of other people and goals. Attention—the concept, the symbol, the mental phenomenon itself—is always tangled up in this world. That tangle is what we’ll study in this class.
By the end of the semester, you should be able to:
I’ve run this seminar for a decade now, often changing it to explore how the media of the classroom reconfigure our attention. This semester, I’m running an analog experiment, moving as much of the course as I possibly can off of screens and on to paper. I’m sure you’re aware of arguments against having devices in class; I don’t put much faith in the studies behind those arguments, but I do find it useful to explore firsthand how changing the substrates of my thinking changes what I think. This is an experiment in that vein, which is more concerned with thinking about our attention than it is with running away from computers. (It is, you may note, very dependent on computers for doing things like assembling and printing reading packets and syllabi.)
In addition to this syllabus, I will be providing hard copies of the readings and other assignments in weekly packets, a couple weeks ahead of time. You will submit your work to me in printed form, either in class or in my mailbox in the Anthropology offices in Eaton Hall. I’ll also be giving you a binder to hold the accumulated readings and a composition notebook to be used as a commonplace book for gathering materials and thoughts (more on that below).
There is no Canvas site for this course. You can find a copy of this syllabus online at classes.nickseaver.net/htpa, and I will still use email to communicate with you outside of class, but otherwise we’ll be working on paper.
If you have any accommodation needs that make this experiment hard for you to manage, please don’t hesitate to reach out. I am very happy to make adjustments that are needed to facilitate your full participation in class.
A typical week in the course looks like this: I will give you a packet that contains the readings and an exercise for the week, a couple weeks before you need it. You should do the readings and exercise before we meet, writing up notes in your commonplace book (more on that below) as you go. You’ll need to bring at least the week’s readings and your commonplace book to class. On top of that weekly cadence, there are a variety of other assignments, listed below.
The work in this course is designed to help us collaboratively explore ideas and to practice new ways of thinking about attention. Because the point is to practice, not to show off, I try to avoid assigning grades to as much of your work as I can, instead giving points for serious engagement with the work. To this end, most assignments have specifications, or “specs,” attached to them, and any work that is up-to-spec gets full credit. I hope and expect that most of you will go beyond the minimum specs most of the time; their purpose is to set a floor above which you can be experimental and self-directed without worrying that it might harm your grade.
Everything except the two papers is graded in this way, effectively pass/fail according to whether you’ve met the specs laid out in the assignment description, with no partial credit. If you have any questions about the specifications for a given assignment (I try to be as clear as I can, but there are always possible points of confusion), let me know ASAP. Your classmates will thank you.
Your grade in this course is calculated out of 100 points, which are allocated as follows:
| Assignment | Points | Deadline |
|---|---|---|
| Make at least one office hours appointment | 3 | 10/6 |
| Commonplace book: Reading notes | 11 | weekly, from 9/15 |
| Commonplace book: Exercises | 11 | weekly, from 9/15 |
| Commonplace book: Portfolio | 19 | 12/18 |
| Paper 1 | 28 | draft 10/23 · revision 11/2 |
| Paper 2 | 28 | draft 12/4 · revision 12/16 |
I’ll convert your point score into a final letter grade following this structure: 0–59 F, 60–62 D-, 63–66 D, 67–69 D+, 70–72 C-, 73–76 C, 77–79 C+, 80–82 B-, 83–86 B, 87–89 B+, 90–92 A-, 93–100 A.
Because it is relatively easy to acquire points by completing all the work in this class, I do not automatically give A+ grades. I reserve those for students who have engaged seriously with the work across the whole semester and demonstrated mastery of the material.
I want to meet with each of you individually, in person, outside of the classroom, at least once during the first month of the class. This is meant to give us a chance to get to know each other, for me to learn about your interests, and to encourage you to make more use of office hours through the rest of the semester.
Sign up for a slot using the office hours link at the top of this syllabus.
Each week of the class, you’ll need to read several article- or chapter-length texts, loosely connected around a given topic. In some cases, the connections won’t be obvious; thinking about connections among the readings is your job.
We can’t possibly talk about everything in all the readings in class; our discussion will follow the interests of the people who participate, so you should participate! Parts of the readings we don’t get to may nevertheless be important for arguments you want to make in your papers, and you’re always welcome to sign up for office hours if you want to talk more about topics we didn’t manage to fit into class time.
I expect that you will be actively annotating and making the most of the physicality of these readings, and there will be times set aside during class for sharing and talking about your annotations with each other. If you lose a packet or miss class, you can find the reading list on the course website, and in most cases you should be able to locate the texts online.
Lastly, these readings can sometimes be hard to understand. I expect you to do your best to make sense of them, to look up terms or supporting literature as needed to figure out what’s going on, and to spend enough time reading to get something out of it. Keep in mind that, according to Tufts’ credit hour policy, you should expect to spend 6 hours a week on this course outside of the classroom. Students who come to me with worries about understanding the reading are almost always not spending long enough on it.
Each week also includes some kind of exercise, which is an activity for you to do out in the world, related to the week’s theme, to document in your commonplace book. You should treat these exercises like readings: they provide a different kind of material for us to discuss and draw connections with in class. Some of them will make more sense if you have done the week’s reading first. I will be checking that these have been completed during class.
A commonplace book is a traditional journal-like book for keeping quotations, ideas, and other bits of text or paper that you want to collect in one place.
I’ll be providing you with a plain composition book on the first day of class to use as your commonplace book for the term. If you’re a notebook enthusiast and would prefer to provide your own, you’re welcome to. The only requirement is that it be completely dedicated to this class, as you’ll be asked to turn it in to me occasionally.
Each week, your notebook should contain, at minimum:
By satisfactory, I mean that your questions and observations should go beyond basic matters of fact (“What does the author mean?”) and aim for broader, more interesting goals: Why does their argument matter? What is unexpected about it? How does it fit with or diverge from other readings from the week or earlier in the semester? Questions that could have been asked without doing the reading are generally not satisfactory.
These notes are also meant to support you in class. If you are not comfortable speaking off the cuff, you are welcome to read out a passage and question you’ve already written.
The quotes, questions, and exercise documentation are just the minimum. I encourage you to be expansive and creative with your commonplace book—enjoy the affordances of paper and feel free to decorate, tape things in, and so on.
You should also use the notebook for taking notes on class discussions, to gather your thinking toward your papers, and anything else related to the class. Be creative!
Please date the pages. You may want to number them as you go and leave the first couple pages blank so you can keep an updating table of contents.
I’ll check your notebooks weekly during class, stamping pages that meet the specs. You’ll get one point for the reading notes and one for the exercise. I’m looking to see that the work is there and that it meets the minimum specifications. It does not have to be clever or smart; if your work is riding the line of being unsatisfactory, I’ll tell you and expect that future entries will be up to spec.
Note that if you are absent, then I can’t stamp your book, and you can’t get credit for the work. This is intentional: your preparation for class only matters when you come to class to share it with us. Once during the semester, I’ll accept these assignments late, in the following class period. (This is a de facto attendance policy; see more on that below.)
At the end of the semester, you’ll build a portfolio out of your commonplace book. The assignment is to read back through your notebook and make five selections from it to annotate and share. A “selection” is an exercise or one week’s reading notes. Annotations should be a clearly distinct layer of markings on top of the original (for instance, you may have copied out passages in pencil and you could return to them with colored pen, or you could layer in post-its on top of your old work) that expand on the original material, linking it to ideas from other weeks of the class, identifying something you missed the first time around, and generally drawing out themes that have come to interest you over the course of the semester.
You’ll also submit a one-page cover letter with your portfolio that explains why you chose your selections and what you think is interesting or significant about them as a group. (You might, for instance, pick pages that all relate to the same theme, or which illustrate a change in your thinking over the semester.)
Each selection counts for 3 points, plus 4 for the cover letter. I’ll be sharing more detailed specifications toward the end of the semester, but you should be anticipating this annotation layer as we move through the course.
You’ll write two papers this semester, each of which should be 1,800–2,000 words long (about 7–8 pages double-spaced, depending on formatting). These are meant to give you a chance to apply course concepts to objects of your choice from outside of class.
You’ll have multiple prompts to choose from, and more details will be provided later in the semester.
This semester, we are participating in the Writing Fellows program. The writing fellows are students who have been trained to help you improve your writing. For each paper, you will submit a draft, meet with a writing fellow to discuss it, and then submit a final revision for me to grade. Writing fellows will provide constructive feedback on writing, but they are not subject-matter experts, copy editors, or graders.
Paper drafts are due in hard copy, in my mailbox in the Anthropology office in 110 Eaton, by noon on their Friday deadline. You’re welcome to turn them in earlier to me during our Tuesday class session.
I cannot extend draft deadlines. This is a condition of the Writing Fellows program, to ensure that the fellows have time to read and meet with students in time for you to make revisions. I’ll be taking those hard copies, looking them over, and giving them to the writing fellows on Friday afternoon, so a draft that arrives late will not reach the writing fellows in time to schedule a meeting.
You’re responsible for booking an appointment with your assigned writing fellow during the fellowing period (between the draft and revision deadlines) and ensuring that you have enough time to revise.
For turning in a draft of at least 900 words (half the minimum final length) and meeting with your writing fellow, you earn 2 and 3 points, respectively.
The final revision is graded conventionally, out of 23 points. More details about what I’m looking for in papers will come with those assignments.
There are a few ground rules for participating in this course:
Following our analog experiment, I won’t allow any computer, tablet, or smartphone use during class time. Please keep them put away. If you have an accommodation that requires the use of a device, let me know, and I will be happy to make exceptions.
The point of college is to use your brain and to learn new ways to use your brain. ChatGPT is not your brain. Using AI to summarize readings, write papers, or answer discussion questions is like bringing a forklift to the gym: What is the point of being here?
I discourage the use of LLMs for any aspect of this course. These technologies are still new, and it is possible that there are ways to use them that don’t short-circuit your learning, but they are not designed for that, and by default, they will interfere with your ability to learn. If you think you have a use that’s an exception, talk to me about it.
The one hard-line AI rule in this class: Do not submit computer-generated text as though it were your own writing. I’m not here to evaluate the output of machines, the writing fellows are not here to teach computers how to write, and you are not here to learn how to prompt AI. You will be wasting everyone’s time. If you submit work that is obviously AI-generated (e.g., it includes hallucinated citations or quotes, or framing text like “as a large language model…” or “sure, I can write that for you…”), I will return it to you ungraded and you will receive a 0 on that assignment. If you submit work that seems like it is AI-generated (e.g., it is formulaic, does not seriously engage course materials, or reaches for obvious, perfunctory conclusions), then I will return it to you with the expectation that you will revise it to make it better (which is what I would do if you had generated such a submission with your own brain, too). I do not use AI-detection tools on your work (aside from my brain, which is very fine-tuned to the signatures of LLM-generated prose).
Your success in this class is important to me. If there are any circumstances (personal, health-related, family-related, religious, etc.) that affect your ability to participate, please let me know as soon as possible so that we can work together to come up with reasonable accommodations for you. The sooner I know about any issues, the better. Any such discussion will remain confidential.
For disability-related accommodations, I encourage you to consult with the StAAR Center, which can arrange for formal accommodations across your classes. But you do not need to register with them or provide documentation to me in order to request accommodations in this course.
Following university expectations, this course is designed to meet in person; in some situations, I may have to move meetings online. Please check your email before we meet in case I’ve had to make a last-minute change.
I try to be a responsive emailer; you should expect a reply within 24–48 weekday hours of emailing me. If you don’t get a reply in that window, please follow up—your message may have gotten buried. I generally don’t answer emails over the weekend or after 5 pm. Email is the only electronic channel for this course, and I use it for logistics: if something has come up, or a deadline is in question, email me.
I hold regular office hours to meet with students either via Zoom or in person, which you can sign up for using the link above. This time is reserved for you, and you should feel free to use it to talk to me about anything: the course, your academic program in general, or whatever you’re interested in. You don’t need to have a specific problem to sign up, and I enjoy talking with you outside the classroom, so feel free to make use of office hours as often as you like.
As a rule, I tend to be flexible about deadlines, guided by a few principles: I do not want to make your life hard for no reason; I value my own time as well as yours; and extensions are not always in your best interest. If you need an extension and ask for one before a deadline (and not just the night before), we can usually work something out that balances your needs with mine and does not inadvertently make your life harder later on. I do not automatically deduct points from late work (though in many cases, especially for small assignments, I will simply not accept late work). The major exception this semester is the draft deadlines for the writing fellows, which are strict.
No matter what, if you find yourself in a situation that requires flexibility, you should let me know. This is much more effective and results in much better outcomes than the alternatives. (Look ahead and take note of weeks where you might have many due dates clustered together—these are not unforeseeable situations, usually, and you can resolve them through planning in advance.)
There is no separate grade for attendance this semester, but, as noted above, your commonplace book grade depends on your presence in the classroom. One time during the semester, I’ll accept commonplace book work late (in the meeting following your absence).
The reason for this is that we don’t have many meetings together; each absence misses a substantial amount of the course. Each absence after the one you can make up will drop your final grade by 2 percentage points, so attend accordingly.
If you are having a serious issue with attendance or need accommodation, please talk to me about it, and we can usually sort out a solution.
Like all your courses, this one is predicated on the idea that it’s you who’s doing the work. If you don’t do your own work, you don’t learn, and there’s little point in you being enrolled in the class. Academic integrity issues usually arise when students feel overwhelmed by work and panic. If you start to feel overwhelmed, talk to me early so we can find better ways to manage the situation.
I encourage you to take an expansive view of what academic integrity means, grounded in a practical understanding of the point of being in college (to learn). Humans communicate with words and concepts, and in genres and situations, that are never entirely original. Communication always involves combining existing materials in meaningful ways. Different groups of people have different norms that govern these combinations: DJs, poets, programmers, lawyers, and physicists all abide by different sets of rules about what counts as “original,” what kinds of copying are okay (and when), and how you should relate to the materials that you draw from. Sometimes, these rules change. In this class, we’ll practice the norms of citation and attribution currently shared by social scientists (and, more generally, by colleges in the US).
Rather than expending your energy worrying about originality, I suggest that you think instead about what kind of citational network you are locating yourself in and how your emerging thinking relates to the sources you’re working from. What thinkers are you thinking with? Where do they come from? How might their positions in the world inform their thoughts? What is your position relative to them? How might you re-shape your citational network to better reflect your priorities or ideals?
Failure to abide by these norms is considered plagiarism, as laid out in the Tufts Academic Integrity Policy, which you should be familiar with. If I suspect that you’ve violated this policy, I am required by the university to report you to the Dean of Students, at which point the consequences are out of my hands. I do not spend much effort on detective work, but I do not recommend testing those limits. I also do not use plagiarism detection services like Turnitin (which make money by sucking it out of academic institutions, appropriating your work, and cultivating hostile relationships between students and instructors).
9/8: Hello
We’ll read this week’s pieces together in class.
9/15: Reading
While doing the reading this week, keep track of the distractions that interrupt you. These may be things like notifications, friends knocking on the door, or your own mind wandering. Keep your commonplace book nearby and mark them down as they arise. Then make a diagram that represents your data. (There are some nice examples at www.dear-data.com/by-week.)
9/22: Moving
Go to a public place that you already frequent (either on campus, like the student center, or off-campus, like a coffee shop or museum). Stay put for one hour, immerse yourself in the scene, and take notes — as detailed as you can manage — about what surrounds you (you can draw pictures, make diagrams, whatever you like). Pay particular attention to how people in the setting are or are not attending to each other: Are they conspicuously ignoring each other? Seeking people out? How do they communicate their attentional states to each other? How do you know what you know about them? What might you not know? Do you think people are paying attention to you?
9/29: Working
Watch someone at work. Look at how they look; attend to how they attend. What can you tell about the way they are dividing up and interpreting the things they see? (You can, of course, ask them.) Sketch the scene—it’s okay if you think you can’t draw, try anyway—and describe the basic operations of the work. Your drawing does not have to be figurative. For one way of doing it, look at Morgan O’Hara’s Live Transmission series at www.morganohara.art/live-transmission.
10/6: Wait, What Are We Talking About?
Talk to 3–5 people outside of this class about what attention is. You should just ask them what they think attention is and let them answer in their own terms without you guiding them. Write down what they say and ask follow-up questions that you find interesting. Afterwards, look through their responses and think about these questions: What do they compare attention to? Do they use any interesting metaphors? How do they think about measuring it?
10/13: Overload
Blair catalogs a variety of ways that people have coped with having more to read than they can manage. This week, you should take an inventory of your own strategies for coping with overload. This might involve your reading for school, social media content, news, or anything else you find overwhelming. Write down some of the techniques that you use. How do you decide what not to read? How do you keep track of things that you have decided are worth keeping? Where do things go when you want to find them again? Which of these techniques came built into something you already use? What do they depend on in order to function?
10/20: Economy
For this exercise, find a connection between the topic of your first paper and the idea that attention is essentially economic. In your commonplace book, describe something related to your paper topic (a technology, a kind of job, a particular person, a metaphor, anything) and think about it in economic terms. Who’s buying? Who’s selling? What exactly is being exchanged, and how is it being valued?
10/27: Politics
Turner, Fred. 2013. “Where Did All the Fascists Come From?” In The Democratic Surround. University of Chicago Press.
Note: This chapter discusses Nazi propaganda and rallies.
Centers for “viewpoint diversity” and “civil discourse” have multiplied on American campuses over the last few years. Find one or two, and read their mission statements and program descriptions. Copy down any sentences that describe the political problem or solution in terms of attention: bubbles, blind spots, listening, exposure, seeing the other side. What kind of attention does it think politics needs, and who is supposed to be doing it?
11/3: Listening
This is a score for a performance piece by Pauline Oliveros: “Take a walk at night. Walk so silently that the bottoms of your feet become ears.” Perform it, alone or with one friend from outside the class, and write about your experience.
11/17: Attentional Subjects
Everyone will read the Hacking piece, and you’ll choose three of the others.
Everyone read this
Hacking, Ian. 1986. “Making Up People.” In Reconstructing Individualism. Stanford University Press, 222–36.
Note: This chapter discusses suicide.
Three of these, chosen in class on 10/27
Messinger, Seth D. 2013. “Vigilance and Attention among U.S. Service Members and Veterans After Combat.” Anthropology of Consciousness 24 (2): 191–207.
Note: This article discusses PTSD and suicide.
Semel, Beth. 2022. “Listening Like a Computer: Attentional Tensions and Mechanized Care in Psychiatric Digital Phenotyping.” Science, Technology, & Human Values 47 (2): 266–90.
Note: This article mentions self-harm.
Hartmann, Marlene. 2021. “The Totalizing Meritocracy of Heterosex: Subjectivity in NoFap.” Sexualities 24 (3): 409–30.
Note: This article quotes explicit sexual material and misogynist slurs.
Identify a kind of attentional subject out in the world, using the kinds of people studied in this week’s readings as examples. You might find one by thinking about your own experience, or by looking at online discourses, personality quizzes, marketing segments, special interest forums, or anywhere else people come up with labels for themselves or for other people. Write about it in your commonplace book: Where does this category of person come from? How are they understood to pay attention? What problems do they have? What powers do they have? Are there any kinds of discipline associated with this kind of person?
12/1: Looking
This week we will be meeting in the Tufts University Art Gallery, in the Aidekman Arts Center at 40 Talbot Avenue.
Greenblatt, Stephen. 1991. “Resonance and Wonder.” In Exhibiting Cultures, edited by Ivan Karp and Steven D. Lavine. Smithsonian Institution Press, 42–56.
Note: This chapter discusses the Holocaust.
Find something that has been framed. It could be framed by a literal picture frame, the edge of a screen, a window, a doorway, or anything else that carves up the visual field. Look at it: what do you see? What do you notice thanks to the frame? What does the frame cut out? Think about the boundary between what you can see and what you can’t.
12/8: ADHD
ADHD accommodations take a variety of forms that carry with them different ideas about what attention is and what ADHD is. Look at one or two collections of accommodations and try to read their implicit theories of attention out of them. You can find two examples from the Job Accommodation Network and the Washington County School District in Utah. Copy a few items of interest into your commonplace book. What do they assume attention is? What do they think ADHD requires, and how do they vary?
Everything in this syllabus is subject to change as the term unfolds. Let me know how the class is working for you; I may make changes based on student comments or my own sense of how things are going. Any changes will be discussed in class and confirmed via email.