The University of Pennsylvania, an Ivy League school, will begin offering a creative writing class titled, “Wasting Time on the Internet,” in which “distraction, multitasking, and aimless drifting is mandatory.”
Starting next spring, the English department at the Ivy League school will offer a class in which students “will be required to stare at the screen for three hours, only interacting through chat rooms, bots, social media and listservs,” according to a course description, Mediaite reported.
Professor Kenneth Goldstein said he will require students to turn their social media posts into works of literature.
“Could we reconstruct our autobiography using only Facebook? Could we write a great novella by plundering our Twitter feed? Could we reframe the internet as the greatest poem ever written? ” he asks in the description. “Using our laptops and a wifi connection as our only materials, this class will focus on the alchemical recuperation of aimless surfing into substantial works of literature.”
