Converging assumptions: How new media can bridge a scholarly/creative split in English studies
citation
Ball, Cheryl E., & Moeller, Ryan M. (forthcoming/March 2008). Converging the ASS[umptions] between U and ME; or, How new media can bridge a scholarly/creative split in English studies. Computers and Composition Online [Special issue: Media convergence]. Retrieved February 17, 2008, from http://www.bgsu.edu/cconline/convergence/
abstract
Authors of new media texts regularly draw on both scholarly and creative genres to construct their arguments. In so doing, they bridge disciplinary boundaries that have split English departments in the past. These boundaries are discussed in our text using the following binaries: high :: low, literature :: composition, and popular :: academic discourse. In this article, we examine, then complicate, the binary form :: content through a popular and academic YouTube video (Wesch, 2007). We then situate new media texts within the historical split between rhetoric and literature using Berlin’s social epistemic rhetoric as a bridge. Our argument concludes by showing that new media texts can provide a convergence between binaries in English studies, particularly the one found in tenure guidelines suggesting that research is either scholarly or creative. New media is both/and.
materials
- convergence-final.pdf of the print-like webtext
Reinventing the Possibilities: Academic Literacy and New Media
and you thought I’d stopped researching, eh? naw, just finally got finished moving…
citation:
Ball, Cheryl E., & Moeller, Ryan M. (2007). Reinventing the possibilities: Academic literacy and new media. Fibreculture Journal, 10. Retrieved December 24, 2007, from http://journal.fibreculture.org/issue10/ball_moeller/index.html
abstract:
This webtext demonstrates the possibilities of using new media to teach students critical literacy skills applicable to the 21st century. It is a manifesto for what we think writing scholars should be teaching in general-education “writing” classes like first-year composition. In order to answer the question of what we should teach, we have to ask what kinds of academic literacy, if any, we value. We argue here that rhetorical theory is a productive way to theorize how meaning is made among new media texts, their designers, and their readers. We use the Ancient Greek concepts of topoi and commonplace to explain how designers and readers enter into a space of negotiated meaning-making when converging upon new media texts. That negotiated space offers a new-media space for learning critical literacies by means other than research papers. As examples, we discuss two student texts and the literacies they demonstrate.
from Adrian Miles’ (!!) introduction to the issue
Ball and Moeller offer a manifesto come “webtext” that can only ever be online. It uses a very simple alphabetic architecture as one form of navigation, but also uses typographic cues to indicate writerly voice, as well as providing internal links. Hence ‘Reinventing the Possibilities: Academic Literacy and New Media’ can be read traditionally, from beginning to end by following the letters, or hypertextually by reading the internal links. They argue for the relevance of rhetorical frameworks for the study of what is best thought of as a digital writing, specifically identifying the value of “topoi” as places of ‘negotiated meaning making’ which allow for a variety of critical literacies to be experienced. The arguments here are rich, variable, and splintered, as they ought to be. It is a call to arms as much as a demonstration of other academic forms in the humanities and is what I would characertise as part of the first wave of such work.
note of interest to C&W readers:
In the lexia, New Media Outcomes, which - lol - happens to be the N node in the alphabet-block navigation, there is a link to a PDF in which we have taken the WPA Outcomes Statement for First-Year Writing and modified it to see what it might look like if the goals of first-year composition were multimodal instead of linear, academic writing. (We jumped off from Shipka’s brief discussion of this in her fab 2005 CCC article.) Enjoy.
A Conversation: From ‘They Call me Doctor?!’ to Tenure (peer-reviewed webtext)
citation
Arola, Kristin L., & Ball, Cheryl E. (2007, Spring). A conversation: From ‘They call me doctor?!’ to tenure. Computers and Composition Online. Retrieved April 10, 2007, from http://www.bgsu.edu/cconline/doctor/.
abstract/preface excerpt
… We realized—with our limited understanding of being at the beginning or in the midst of our tenure tracks—that there were three stages to the transition between grad school and tenure-track life. First, how do grad students make the transition from being grad students to being addressed by the lucrative term, Doctor? (The use of which still makes both of us feel slightly giggly and uncomfortable—although Cheryl, in her third year out at this writing, finds it is growing on her). Second, what should brand new tenure-track faculty members expect their first year out? Third, there’s another (usually) five years ahead of you until tenure—so how should tenure-track faculty members prepare themselves for those seemingly-long-but-all-too-quick years? …
Data from CCCC Research Grant survey on multimodality
Anderson, Daniel, Anthony Atkins, Cheryl Ball, Krista Homicz Millar, Cynthia Selfe, and Dickie Selfe. (Author-Researchers). Matt Bemer. (Designer). (2006). Data from a CCCC research grant survey on teaching multimodal composition. Composition Studies 34(2). Available: http://www.compositionstudies.tcu.edu/archives/342/cccc-data/.
This website accompanies an article appearing in the print version of Composition Studies entitled “Integrating Multimodality in Composition Curricula: Survey Methodology and Results from a CCCC Research Initiative Grant.” In that article the author-researchers listed below provided methodologies and outcomes of a national survey conducted in 2005 to discover how instructors use multimodal composition practices in their writing classrooms and research. The authors describe the procedures they used to collect and analyze data from writing teachers about the production, distribution, interpretation, and consumption of multimodal texts.Supported by a research initiative of the Conference on College Composition and Communication, the survey was designed to identify instruction in which students and faculty members produce (not just analyze) multimodal texts. The aim of that article is to present a snapshot of instructors working to integrate these new semiotic forms into writing classes.
The data provided here includes all of the respondents’ answers to the 141-question survey, the original of which is linked in the Home icon above. Those answers are tallied to show response-rates and percentages for each question as well as for individual answers. For instance, the survey had 45 total respondents, but not all respondents answered every question. So, on each page, one survey question is listed at the top, after which an N number is provided to show the response rate for that particular question. Below that is a table that includes the answer choices, the number of responses to each possible answer choice, and the percentage breakdown for answers based on both the number of respondents to that question and to the number of overall (45) respondents to the survey. For many questions, choosing multiple answers was possible, so note that there will be instances when the answer percentages equal more than 100 percent. Finally, some questions are open-answer, however, and for those we have not quantified the answers but instead simply list the narrative responses below the questions.
We provide this raw data (having removed the answers that were personally identifying for respondents) so that other researchers can follow up on this work in ways useful and suitable to their own institutions and needs. We hope this service to the community is of help and that further research can be done to examine individual or groups of questions regarding why and how writing studies engages in teaching multimodal composition.
refereed article, research | Comment (0)refereed article: Composition Studies
citation
Atkins, Anthony; Anderson, Daniel; Ball, Cheryl; Homicz Millar, Krista; Selfe, Cynthia; & Selfe, Richard. (2007, forthcoming). Integrating multimodality in composition curricula: Survey methodology and results from a CCCC Research Initiative grant. Composition Studies, 35(1).
abstract
This article describes methodology and outcomes of a national survey conducted in 2005 to discover how instructors use multimodal composition practices in their writing classrooms and research. The authors describe the procedures they used to collect and analyze data from writing teachers about the production, distribution, interpretation, and consumption of multimodal composition. Supported by a research initiative of the Conference on College Composition and Communication, the survey was designed to identify the instruction occurring at institutions with a nascent or established curriculum of multimodal pedagogy in which students and faculty members produce texts that combine words, images, and sound as composing resources. The aim of this project was to produce a snapshot of those programs working to define multimodal composition and to integrate these new semiotic forms into writing classes.
co-authors
- Dr. Anthony Atkins, University of North Carolina-Wilmington
- Dr. Daniel Anderson, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
- Krista Homicz Millar, PhD candidate, University of Michigan
- Dr. Cynthia Selfe, The Ohio State University
- Dr. Richard Selfe, The Ohio State University
contribution
- principle investigator on survey research
- 25% authoring on 40 manuscript pages
- contact author
publisher
Composition Studies is the “oldest independent periodical in its field.” See it’s website. The editors are Brad Lucas and Carrie Leverenz, and the journal is hosted at Texas Christian University.
accompanying materials
pre-press copy of article [PDF]