description
With this PFIG grant, I will complete the afterword and index to the first digital, multimodal book published by an academic press: The New Work of Composing, an edited collection that will be published in 2011. The index is an interactive database of keywords based on each chapter’s digital assets (i.e., web pages, images, videos, audio files, written text, etc.). The afterword is a multimedia essay based on sample keyword searches in the index-database, addressing how the intellectual work of the “book” changes when distributed in a multimedia environment. This book also has 14 multimodal chapters and an introduction, which has already been drafted for the prospectus. To complete the index and afterword, I will continue work started this past summer with the creators of the Dynamic Backend Generator (a database program) at the University of Southern California. The DBG designers helped me create a prototype of the database to be used for the book’s index, to which the afterword will be linked.

accompanying materials

• grant application
  

abstract
This project intended to collect oral histories of local Utah residents & scan their keepsake/artifacts for arhival purposes.

accompanying materials

• not available

abstract
The New Work of Composing is the working title to the field of English Studies’ first digital, multimedia-rich “book” to be published in the field’s first fully online press: Computers and Composition Digital Press. This research grant will support the principle investigator, who is co-editor of The New Work of Composing, through a course release. During the release time, the PI will (1) provide initial feedback and editorial support for authors submitting to the collection, (2) edit the digital, multimedia submissions, which are due early in the spring of 2009, (3) study the process of editing scholarly, book-length, digital collections that contain multimedia elements, and (4) work toward the publication of a scholarly article about the process of authoring and editing large, digital multimedia collections to satisfy (in small part) the field’s increased interest in understanding and evaluating digital scholarship (especially digital books) for tenure and promotion purposes.

accompanying materials

• proposal

abstract
The Modern Language Association reports that over 52% of humanities department chairs have no experience evaluating digital books for tenure/promotion, including “born-digital” books (i.e., a book that exists only in a digital format, with no possible print or analog counterpart). I intend to edit the first born-digital scholarly book in English studies, The New Work of Composing. This book will add to humanities’ understanding of writing in a digital age by providing an example of born-digital scholarship that will help us consider the new intellectual work of the “book.” The deliverables for this NEH summer stipend include designing the book’s interface and composing the afterword, a media-rich assessment of digital scholarship with an emphasis on the process of writing, designing, and editing the field’s first born-digital, scholarly book. Computers and Composition Digital Press—the humanities’ first digital-only, open-access, academic press—has asked for a prospectus in Spring 2009.

accompanying materials

• proposal narrative

abstract
This grant proposal was intended to fund a series of surveys and workshops to assess how teachers across the curriculum at Illinois State University implemented student-based projects using multiple media.

accompanying materials

• proposal (pdf)