abstract
In a roundtable keynote, presented in a synchronous MOO (multi-user, object-oriented chat/game platform), the four presenters address multi-layered questions: Is Computers & Writing truly a discipline? What distinguishes it from the related disciplines of Composition & Rhetoric or Technical Communication? What is the research and theory that inform its teaching and practice? The panelists take questions from the audience as well.

accompanying materials

• keynote transcript (HTML version of MOO format)
  

abstract
In this keynote, I draw on Joe Marshall Hardin’s (2001) descriptions from Opening Spaces on English studies and aestheticism and the binaries between high and low art cultures, as represented by literature and composition studies. In speaking about aesthetic versus academic literacies, I discuss a sample new media text that a student produced (Robert Watkins’ “Words are the Ultimate Abstraction”) and show how new media production in our classes can bridge the gap between high and low literacies.

accompanying materials

• Jacobson talk (doc)

see also

• “Converging the ASS[umptions] between U and ME” (article that came out of this talk; under Peer-Reviewed Articles)