Dissertation
My dissertation, which argues that the practice of hacking is situated within the rhetorical canons of memory and delivery, is a history that focuses on 2600: The Hacker Quarterly—a print publication founded in 1984 and still in print today. Through a reading of 2600, I argue that while many of our composing technologies privilege the canons that focus on the creativity of the writer (invention, arrangement, and style), those technologies outsource the canons of memory and delivery as parts of a commercial distribution process. Hackers exploit this divide, and they use the privatized and commercial assumptions about memory and delivery as a means of disrupting that system. I situate my project alongside the work of composition and rhetoric scholars as well as histories of the computer industry, arguing that hacking is not solely a response to modern computing or networked technologies, but rather an activity enmeshed in a history of closed and culturally sanctioned practices of storing and transmitting texts—of memory and delivery. As such, hacking offers a way to rethink the deemphasized rhetorical canons.
Current Projects
Balancing Entertainment and Information Content in Technical Communication Comics
This (current and ongoing) project is a collaboration with Carlos Evia and Manuel Perez Quinones at Virginia Tech. We are developing an XML grammar that will allow for the creation of webcomics for use in technical communication. The larger goal of the project is to create a collaborative software through which an artist and a technical writer could build webcomics that both entertain and communicate technical information. Additionally, the project also has an end goal of making webcomics more accessible to readers who use audio-based browsing tools. We recently submitted a proposal and prototype of the project to Google for future funding. We see this project leading to several grants, presentations, and publications.
Cultural Studies and Composition
I am collaborating with Diana George and John Trimbur on a revision and update of their (2001) chapter--“Cultural Studies and Composition”--for A Guide to Composition Pedagogies (Oxford University Press). The revised chapter will be printed in a new edition of the book, forthcoming in 2013.
Recent Publications
“Why Linearity is Not the Issue: Or, The New Work of Composing is Much Like the Old, Only Different.” Written with Diana George and Dan Lawson. In The New Work of Composing. Forthcoming from Computers & Composition Digital Press. 2011.
“Rhetorical Situations, Research Writing, and Genre: Cross-Institutional Collaboration on Curriculum Design.” Written with Diana George, John Trimbur, Anne C. Wheeler, Kat Gonso, Amy Patterson, and Dan Lawson. Journal of College Writing 10 (2010): 1–42. 2010.
“Icons and Genre: The Affordances of Livejournal.com.” Written with Jennifer Cover. Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture 9.3: 2009.
For a full list of publications, see my CV
Recent Conference Presentations
“Self-Publishing Hackers: Print Zines as Sites of Dissent.” Computers and Writing. Ann Arbor, MI. 2011.
“Into the Archives of Participatory Culture: Remediating Print Fanzines and Digital Collaboration.” Conference on College Composition and Communication. Atlanta, GA. 2011.
“Affordances and Artifacts: Web Design in the Composition Classroom.” Council of Writing Program Administrators Annual Conference. Philadelphia, PA. July 2010.
For a full list of presentations, see my CV