Part of "the keyboard generation" that has grown up using computer-mediated communication -- from email and web pages to instant messaging by computer and cell phone -- you now live and study in a place that's highly wired and increasingly wireless. The Stanford dorms offer a unique intersection of technological saturation, residential learning culture, social interaction, and user savvy. In this course we'll explore the role of language in constructing this nexus of virtual and face-to-face community, while focusing on improving your own writing. What rhetorical conventions are emerging for new electronic media? How are these conventions affected when people live together? How do Stanford students use messaging, email, weblogs, or other media to study, socialize, or build community? Course readings will range from texts about college life to essays about online interaction, theoretical texts, and scholarly studies. The readings will provide a jumping off place for exploring your own notions of "residential rhetorics." You'll have the chance to develop and articulate your ideas through extensive in-class and online discussion, small-group presentations, informal and formal writing assignments, peer review, instructor conferences, and multiple-draft revision. Your formal essays will include description, narration, and analysis of a dorm-related "text event," which will lead to a contextual analysis relating your experience and ideas to the course texts. Your final research-based argument will combine residence-based field research and library research, culminating in a collaborative web publication and oral presentation. As a result, you and your classmates will become not only better writers, readers, and researchers, but also co-authorities in this emerging subject area.