betajames

I'm working on my 3-year review letter. Here's part of it. Let me know if I'm missing anything, yeah?

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT & CREATIVE WORK

1. In my two-year review portfolio, I mentioned two scholarly works that were under review; both have since been published. Details on each, including citation information, are below.

"Fostering Meaning and Community in Writing Courses Via Social Media." Teaching Arts and Science with the New Social Media. Edited by Charles Wankel. Bingley, UK: Emerald Group Publishing Limited, April 2011. 
This chapter explains what is attainable and possible when incorporating simple social media tools in college-level writing courses. Among the chapter's findings are that the overall ease-of-use, mobile accessibility, and relative simplicity of social media tools like Posterous and Twitter make for low barriers of entry for a majority of students. These characteristics can encourage student participation in ways that content management systems like Blackboard do not. In essence, simple social media tools allow and encourage students to document and reflect on their own learning in ways that are as meaningful and unique as they are. The chapter concludes by focusing on how social media can make for successful additions to college-level courses if proper affordances are made in terms of framing and timing. For more information about the collection, please go here.

“‘We All Stray From Our Paths Sometimes’: Morality and Survival in Fallout 3.” Network Apocalypse: Visions of the End in an Age of Internet Media. Edited by Robert G. Howard. Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Phoenix Press, May 2011.
This chapter observes the resurgence of post-apocalyptic themes in popular media with specific attention to videogames. Fallout 3 is one such game that offers a unique perspective on morality and survival in the post-apocalypse. The opportunity for players to modify Fallout 3 adds complexity to this perspective. Among the chapter's findings are the necessity of ascribing to a moral code for survival in the post-apocalypse but also the importance of videogames as places of creativity and experimention. In essence, this chapter explores how a videogame provides players with a vehicle for exploring the nature of humanity through the powerful cultural lens of a prophetic, post-apocalyptic vision that presents itself as secular but pushes those who play to engage questions often associated with the religious. For more information about the collection, please go here.

In keeping with the standards of academic publishing, the editor of each collection made sure my contribution underwent a thorough peer review process. And although these works are print-based publications, I view them as representative of the interdisciplinary possibilities afforded by working in the digital humanities. Because it draws from cultural, literary, and rhetorical studies, there is an intellectual rigor within the field of digital humanities and I think it is no stretch to consider my work in those realms. In particular, videogame studies are an increasing, pervasive field of inquiry as evidenced by peer-reviewed journals like Game Studies, Eludamos, and Games and Culture. Both videogame studies and social media analysis can also be found in past issues of rhetoric and writing studies journals like College Composition and Communication and Computers & Composition and in sessions at the Conference on College Composition and Communication, Computers and Writing, and the Modern Language Association conference.

Intrinsic, respective aspects of the above chapters, too, are the argument for using social media to facilitate student learning and the argument for studying videogames as viable cultural artifacts. Each aspect is very much present in my past and future courses. 

2. In my two-year review portfolio, I also mentioned publishing pursuits even closer to my training in rhetoric and writing. Details on two pieces under editorial review are below.

"Playing with Techne" (working title). Rhetoric/Composition/Play. Edited by Matthew S.S. Johnson, Richard Colby, and Rebekah Shultz Colby. Foreword by Cynthia L. Selfe and Gail E. Hawisher. Afterword by Debra Journet.
This chapter explains how Platonic, Aristotelian, and Isocratic notions of techne function within videogames. In revealing techne as flexible and diverse, requiring different interactions in relation to particular principles, and the acquisition of means to desirable ends achieved through tapping into the potential within, videogames shape practices of literacy, causing reflection and/or revision in light of new knowledge. Learning becomes an ever-present possibility, further revealing techne as a kind of play, a fluid, contextual form of action. There is a certain richness to historical inquiry that makes for a worthy addition to discussions of composition pedagogy and videogames. This chapter endeavors to provide a degree of that richness.

"'Ride Out The Avalanche': On Teaching My First Graduate (Technology) Course" (working title). Better Late Than Never: Preparing "Late Adopter" Writing Teachers to Practice Multimodal Composition in Secondary and College Writing Classrooms. Edited by Christine Denecker and Christine Tulley. Respondents: Dickie Selfe, Debra Journet, and Heidi McKee. Afterword by Kristine Blair. 
This chapter reflects on my first graduate-level course, which proved to be the most polarizing in my eight years of teaching. In turn justifying critical reflection of one's own pedagogy, describing the context in which the course came to be and the rationale for its existence as well as course specifics and results, this chapter intends to provide a measured perspective for those seeking successful teaching with technology. Much of this perspective appears through the sharing of and reflecting on texts created by and for students, including anonymous feedback, instructor and student blog entries, and course materials, all of which are available online.

Of particular interest should be those responsible for the foreword, afterword, and respondent sections of each collection. Kristine Blair, Gail Hawisher, Debra Journet, Heidi McKee, Cynthia Selfe, and Dickie Selfe are some of the most influential scholars in the field of rhetoric and writing studies. I take great pride in the knowledge that the editors of both collections deemed my work important enough to be bookended by such important members of the rhetoric and writing community. 

"In the unflickering glare, at the center of a severe perspective, Nelson suddenly felt the visceral truth of the world as text; he apperceived the fundamentally linguistic nature of reality. Everything was text, at every level of existence, all the way up from quarks to queer theory. Words arranged in lines; lines arrayed on pages; pages pressed together, bound, and trimmed in books; books arranged cover to cover along a shelf like the words in a line of text; shelves stacked one atop the other like lines of text on a page; rows of shelves pressed together, with just the barest passage for a reader, like the pages of a book. And here he was, a mote of consciousness at the center of this rectilinear grid of information, this circuit board of signifiers, his little lump of appreciation accreted like a pearl out of all this text. The theorists were right; Vita was right. None of these volumes was the product of individual consciousness. It was the other way around. He, Nelson Humboldt, was the distillation of textuality, a bit of condensation, a by-product, a speck..." (255)

--Hynes, James. The Lecturer's Tale. New York: Picador, 2001.

A relative wealth of full-screen writing programs and distraction-free text editors are available online. Each purports to be unique in its presentation despite often promising to deliver the same, basic thing: increased focus on the task at hand.

Beyond the occasional rave review online, though, I haven't come across much analysis or research about any one of these programs. So, I'm curious about them, their implications, and how they are pitched to users. Both the programs themselves and their descriptive pitches enable and frame the act, purpose, and value of writing in different ways. Some are very process-oriented; others are more expressive. Many exhibit stark, monochromatic styles, harkening back to simpler times.

Certain programs invite certain kinds of writers. For instance, Writer for iPad implies concern about "destroying the voice and the organic structure of our original thought." Meanwhile, Ommwriter "believes in making writing a pleasure once again, vindicating the close relationship between writer and paper." Furthermore, WriteRoom "gets your computer out of the way so that you can focus on your work." These programs are pitched and presented more as environments than tools. They are more spaces for us to write from/within and less instruments facilitating the writing process, if it is a process at all.

Many of these programs are available for free or at minimal cost. I encourage my fellow THATCampers to download and give a program or two a trial run prior to (or even during) our time together.

Selected directory

FocusWriter (Linux/Mac/Windows)
JDarkroom (Linux/Mac/Windows)
Marave (Linux)
Ommwriter (Mac/Windows)
PyRoom (Linux/Mac)
Q10 (Windows)
WriteRoom (Mac/Windows)
Writer (iPad)
Writer (internet browser-based)

I didn't attend as many sessions as planned. The usual excuses apply: big city appeal, conflicts of interest, hangovers, lingering hallway conversations. With that admission, though, I think I made it to a good variety. 

Conference session summaries and commentary, both of which may be inaccurate and/or inconsequential, follow. Speakers are identified by their Twitter accounts when possible.

----

B.34 - Designing Education: What Videogame Designers and Rhetoricians Can Learn From Each Other

Samantha Blackmon (@saffista) encouraged the audience to think more like videogame designers, advocating a specific focus on the relationship between pedagogy and student engagement. Blackmon also ruminated on the idea of "to pass through" and what this means in videogames vs. how it occurs in a writing classroom. We can show through gameplay, through the act of performing knowledge, how we learn, which may lead us (students and teachers) to more effective writing processes. Blackmon also considered the heads-up display (HUD), in particular the PipBoy 3000 in Fallout 3, as a potential model for documenting process and progress, that the idea of a HUD in composition could influence the development of "squishy rubrics" for assessment.

Ian Bogost (@ibogost) introduced himself as coming to rhetoric from videogames and expressed interest in how cultural artifacts, e.g., videogames, work. "The rhetoric is in the rules," he explained. With Cutthroat Capitalism, McDonald's (the game), Oiligarchy, and Fatworld, Bogost put forth the idea of videogames as metarhetorical acts, as depicting process through a process. There was also an argument for algorithm and system over narrative and story, with page 82 of Diamond's _Guns, Germs, and Steel_ as an example of documentation, not discovery. Referencing McLuhan's Laws of the Media, Bogost encouraged the audience to think how and what we enhance, reverse, restrict, and obsolesce various and sundry processes.

Alex Reid (@digitaldigs) expressed interest in the affective aspects of composition, how ideas of flow and object-oriented rhetoric apply to the work we (students and teachers) do. For instance, if happiness is not a primary concern in composition or videogames, what is it that motivates? In this way, there are analogous challenges in composition and videogames. In the former, we have writer-object encounters; in the latter, we have player-object encounters. In both, there are unnecessary obstacles, but one still has greater appeal, perhaps because of its flow state. According to Reid, we can and should work more toward achieving and facilitating the flow state of composition.

Subsequent discussion concerned gamification, clarifying points on documenting process and progress, aesthetic intent, exploration as a form of play, and how we are (or can be) bridges between games and formal learning environments.

E.25 - Gaming the Academy

Scott Nelson and Andrew Rechnitz presented their work on The Agon, a game influenced by notions of roleplaying and make-believe in teaching and learning. Admitted gamer-scholars, Nelson and Rechnitz explained a variety of game scenarios based in agonistic competition for students of rhetoric to pass through. Rather than holding something like a mock trial in a face-to-face classroom session, The Agon will be a different sort of learning gamespace, one with closer ties to The Oregon Trail than Number Munchers.

Tekla Schell explained how she uses Mass Effect in teaching ethics. There was some focus on the videogame's dialogue wheel as the most interesting aspect because of how it doesn't so much present full dialogue choices as it does words or short phrases expressive of particular tone. Schell also noted that the relative positioning of students with the player-character Shepard can allow for a long view regarding the impact of ethical choices. 

G.23 - Poiesis in Motion: Rhetoric, Composition, and Mobility

Ehren Pflugfelder gave attention to the materiality in/of rhetoric, the embodiment of gesture, and notions of kinesis, energeia, and techne. He explained the regimes of movement in the world, how one can be living well and also have lived well, indicating existence and movement in "the moment up to the present." This is also the realm of gerunds. Most interesting to me, though, was Pflugfelder's unpacking of techne, which he explained as navigation while also nodding to Heidegger's position of it as a primary mode of revealing. It is through movement, through navigating technology, through expressing rhetoric that we are mobile.

Lars Soderlund provided something of a working example of this, delivering his talk about Gorgias's migrant teachings while walking around the room. Soderlund related the mobility of the sophists in educating the general public to the idea of circulation and how it feeds into a kairotic moment and then continues to circulate. Among the more recent examples Soderlund introduced was FDR's "fear itself," though he also related this to Jim Ridolfo's observations on rhetorical velocity. For Soderlund, circulation applies to ideas while mobility applies to people and things. 

----

Given Pflugfelder's and Soderlund's consistent mentions of objects and things, I anticipated some talk of object-oriented rhetoric, but none came. And I'm still too much in the beginning stages of understanding OOR to inquire as to why neither presenter touched upon it.

----

Jason Swarts produced a very helpful handout in relation to his talk on movement among and between locations and spaces and how it's possible to code and define them. Types of spaces identified by Swarts include geographical, municipal, commercial, event, transit, and social. The significance attached to locations include activities, times and dates, conditions, people, trajectories, addresses, and articulations. Swarts also explained how he coded a collection of Twitter data, moving from "location" to more specific areas, including "building," "event," "path," "road," "area," "relational," "geographical," and "transit. 

Ryan Moeller concluded the session with some perspective on his study of students' mobile and non-mobile writing events.

----

I have to admit to being so interested in Moeller's talk that I took almost no notes. Among the few scribblings I took, though, is this: I'd be interested in overlaying Jason Swarts's coding passes on Moeller's study. I'm curious as to what might be gleaned from doing so.

----

H.18 - Writing Text, Writing Code, Writing Connections

Julie Meloni (@jcmeloni) introduced the audience (or maybe just me) to critical code studies, explaining that everybody does something with code, but so many don't know what code is or means. "Everyone writes code, knowingly or not," she declared at one point. And doing so builds and feeds the machine, making it better and into something new. Writing and code both represent and construct the world.

Annette Vee (@anetv) spoke about the effects of code on computers and humans. Code says and does, making for real (not symbolic) change. All speech is performative; code is descriptive and performative by degrees. The perlocutionary should be the goal. Computers are linguistic/social objects, with code/software as the audience.

Brian Ballentine expressed interest in points of entry in software programming as well as the relationship between code and narrative. Ballentine used the Matrix as an early illustrative example, explaining Hollywood "code view" vs. "real code view. He later explained how writing bookends the software development process and the need to have narrative present in every stage, even if the meaning of "event" is something different for programmers.

L.29 - Serious Games and Digital Rhetoric

Doug Eyman (@eymand) thought aloud about writing and videogames, framing serious games as theory machines and advocating that the real value of games cannot/does not come from reading them as texts. Instead, games are a "generative force for defamiliarization." Eyman explained this through the different kinds of writing associated with games: writing ABOUT games (analysis and review), writing AROUND games (fan fiction and wikis), writing INSIDE games (e.g., Mass Effect's codex), and writing THROUGH games (mods, technical documents). It should be noted here that Eyman also mentioned machinima, but I didn't record where he placed that kind of writing, (either INSIDE or THROUGH makes sense). 

Steve Holmes read a paper on moving toward a rhetoric of the MMORPG, noting the rhetorical nature of videogames and how persuasion is evident through procedure. He invoked Ian Bogost, but Holmes also critiqued the apparent privileging of coded procedures, preferring to instead look at "uncoded" aspects of World of Warcraft. Among these aspects were social principles, random consequences, and extra-game social rewards. Holmes privileged the player over the system, noting out-of-game motivation and the realm of expressive products, and wants more accounting for human agency in procedural rhetoric.

Scott Reed (@rhetoroxor) looked at the challenge of boredom in our post-process moment, on how this involuntary loss of meaning leaves us with no history to made (boredom here, not post process, ha!). He stressed the need to be other than goal-oriented. Reed also advocated an embrace of the digital agon and for us to play with unexpected connections.

Jimmy Butts read a paper on play in the U.S. prison system, building upon the instance of an inmate banned from playing Dungeons & Dragons to argue for the precious importance of play to all humans. It was with marked sarcasm that Butts listed those games still available to those incarcerated: "Thank goodness for Stratego."  

Jan Holmevik spoke about the future of virtual worlds and WoW's movement from theme park to narrative. Play is a bridge, creating locations for our rhetorical consideration. In the future, Holmevik hopes to see more harnessing of the power of community-distributed models and less top-down structures.

N.04 - The New Work of the Digital Book in Composition Studies

Debra Journet began by talking about the book as something of intellectual heft, its weight, its length, its "symbolic rendering." The book is an object, a technology, a genre. How do we translate this materiality into something digital? How do we make the digital a comparable amount/form of work? What we recognize as a book is based in part on our assumptions about convention. If the university press book is the gold standard (and it is), there are important, necessary changes in distribution and authorship as well as economic consequences when moving into the digital. 

Cheryl Ball (@s2ceball) documented the process from idea to review, looking at what's possible now as well as best practices, abilities, and expectations in addition to issues of copyright and peer review. Ball addressed questions of time and money, assumptions about the amount of advance work, and the process of labor in digital production before narrowing to a focus on media-based vs. print-based language in various publishing documents (namely proposals and reviews). We need to recognize the print biases that persist and remain, the expectations associated with those biases. 

Ryan Trauman (@trauman) closed the session with some thoughts on fostering the digital push in acknowledgement of history. "History is a narrative technology," he said while previewing certain, various histories of new media, naming Gitelman, Kittler, Bazerman, Benjamin, Feenberg, and Foucault as places to start. In moving from history to practical example, Trauman noted the fallacy of "artist before her time." From his perspective, it isn't that innovators see the future so much as the shortcomings of current technology. "The future emerges out of negotiation," he explained. One such negotiation concerned the table of contents, which was both a design approach and opportunity for him, and he concluded his talk with a demonstration of a Flash-based table of contents that was dependent on reader selection for its clustering organization. 

----

In my notes on the game-oriented sessions summarized above, I express annoyance over the introduction and use of videogames as metaphors, primary texts, and teaching tools. Even if they are in the right direction, these are small steps. I'm concerned that not much really changes as a result of these steps. I'm impatient for more substantial change. I don't want to use videogames in a composition course. I don't want a gamified composition course. I don't want some kind of immersive media replacement that dovetails with past/present pedagogy. I don't want a superficial layer on top of a learning system already rife with problems of engagement and motivation. I don't want achievements as replacements for grades. A videogame can function as documenting a process or system, right? I want games to call bullshit on what we do. I'm uncertain if games as metaphors, primary texts, and teaching tools are enough to do that.

----

Who I met, re-met, and/or at least shook hands with: Jen Almjeld (@jenalmjeld), David Bailey (@dbfuturist42), Kris Blair (@cloudydc), Ian Bogost (@ibogost), Richard Colby, Chris Denecker, Scott Graham (@easyrhetor), Dennis Jerz (@DennisJerz), Liz Losh (@lizlosh), Brian McNely (@bmcnely), Scott Reed (@rhetoroxor), Alex Reid (@digitaldigs), (@Scrivenings), Lee Sherlock (@Imsherlock), Chris Tolley, Mark Vega (@megavark), and Quinn Warnick (@warnick).

I also spent an alcohol-infused, smoke-filled evening with Simon Ferrari (@simonFerrari), Ben Medler (@benmedler) and Simon's friend Mark (whose last name I do not recall).

Beer recommendation: Terrapin rye pale ale
Food recommendation: brisket barbacoa at Nuevo Laredo

Postscript: The discussion about conference hashtags was as important as it was, in some ways, moot. Many appeared amused and/or exasperated by the plethora of descriptors, from #4C11 to #cccc2011 to #theconferenceoncollegecompositionandcommunication. Newcomers included as many hashtags as they could while still getting their points across; veterans set up archives and tweeted about which hashtag was rising or falling in popularity. I won't be surprised to learn of future papers and talks given about this event within the event. I'll be interested in reading those papers and listening to those talks. And yet, I remain amazed at the hugeness of the conference. When compared to the overall number in attendance, I'd wager a slim fraction of those participated or even knew of the hashtag kerfluffle. This is not to imply that future analysis and scholarship on conference hashtags are unimportant or unnecessary. I'm just curious about perspective and perhaps how the absurdity of the event may have inhibited participation.

Every child knows that play is nobler than work.  He knows too that the worth or merit of a game is not inherent in the game itself but rather in the value of that which is put at hazard.  Games of chance require a wager to have any meaning at all.  Games of sport involve the skills and strength of the opponents and the humiliation of defeat and the pride of victory are in themselves sufficient stake because they inhere in the worth of the principals and define them.  But trial of chance or trial of worth all games aspire to the condition of war for here that which is wagered swallows up game, player, all.

Cormac McCarthy. Blood Meridian. New York: Vintage, 1992.  p. 249