The New Work of Composing

Roxanne Kirkwood Aftanas is an associate professor of English at Marshall University. She received her PhD from Texas Woman's University, and she teaches a range of undergraduate and graduate courses in writing and composition studies. She frequently collaborates with Morgan Gresham on issues in feminist mentoring, digital writing, and technical communication.

Jonathan Alexander is professor of English and Chancellor's Fellow at the University of California, Irvine, where he also serves as Campus Writing Director. The author or editor of seven books, Jonathan was awarded the Charles Moran Award for Distinguished Contributions to the Field of Computers and Composition in 2011.

Cheryl E. Ball is an associate professor of new media studies in the English Department at Illinois State University. Since 2006, Ball has been editor of Kairos: Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy. She has published articles in a range of rhetoric/composition, technical communication, and media studies journals including Computers and Composition, C&C Online, Fibreculture, Convergence, Programmatic Perspectives, and Technical Communication Quarterly. She has also published several textbooks about visual and multimodal rhetoric, including visualizing composition with Kristin L. Arola (Bedford, 2010). Her most recent book, RAW: Reading and Writing New Media (with Jim Kalmbach, Hampton Press, 2010), is an edited collection about reading and writing multimodal texts and administering writing programs with multimodal design components. Her online portfolio can be found at http://www.ceball.com/.

J. James Bono is an assistant professor and Coordinator of Writing in the Disciplines in the English Department at Daemen College. Before coming to Daemen, he was a Ph.D. candidate in the Composition, Literacy, Pedagogy, and Rhetoric program at the University of Pittsburgh, serving first as a teaching fellow in composition, and later, composing and revising emergency management plans and risk communication projects as a homeland security research fellow at the Center for National Preparedness. His research synthesizes these various interests as well as his operational experience as a paramedic into a study of writing's fundamental, infrastructural role in community resiliency during disasters. Bono has also published articles in the journals Computers and Composition Online and the Journal of Gaming and Virtual Worlds, and co-produced Ludic Literacies, a curated collection for the Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives. He has been an assistant editor of the online journal Kairos: Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy since 2008.

Amber Buck is a PhD candidate in English and writing studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Her dissertation, Life, Learning, and Literacy on the Social Network: Digital Participatory Culture, examines the digital literacy identity practices of undergraduate and graduate students on social network sites. Her work has been published in Computers and Composition and the edited collection Ubiquitous Learning: Emerging Ecologies, published by the University of Illinois Press.

Marilyn M. Cooper is a professor of humanities at Michigan Technological University. She has published articles in College Composition and Communication, JAC, College English, Computers & Composition, Technical Communication Quarterly, and The Writing Center Journal, and has published numerous book chapters. She is currently working on a book manuscript entitled The Animal Who Writes.

Dànielle Nicole DeVoss is a professor of professional writing at Michigan State University. She co-edited (with Heidi McKee) Digital Writing Research: Technologies, Methodologies, and Ethical Issues (2007, Hampton Press), which won the 2007 Computers and Composition Distinguished Book Award. DeVoss also co-edited (with Heidi McKee and Dickie Selfe) Technological Ecologies and Sustainability, the first title to be published by Computers and Composition Digital Press. In November 2010, she published--with Elyse Eidman-Aadahl and Troy Hicks--a National Writing Project book, titled Because Digital Writing Matters (Jossey-Bass). In 2011, she published an edited collection--with Martine Courant Rife and Shaun Slattery--titled Copy(write): Intellectual Property in the Composition Classroom (Parlor Press).

As a scholar and teacher, Bre Garrett's interests include embodied rhetorics, multimodal composing, and writing pedagogy. She recently published an interview essay with Jonathan Alexander in the fall 2011 issue of Composition Forum. Bre regularly presents her work at the Conference on College Composition and Communication, the annual Computers and Writing conference, and the bi-annual Feminisms and Rhetorics conference. Starting Fall 2012, she will teach, research, and direct the composition program at the University of West Florida.

Morgan Gresham is an associate professor of English at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg, where she currently serves as coordinator of first-year composition and chair of the Department of Verbal and Visual Arts. She received her degree in rhetoric and composition from the University of Louisville in 2000, and she teaches a range of undergraduate and graduate courses in writing and composition studies. She frequently collaborates with Roxanne Kirkwood Aftanas on issues in feminism, digital writing studies, and technical communication.

Poet and translator Jennifer Grotz is a contributing editor for Born Magazine and assistant professor of English at the University of Rochester. She is the author of The Needle (Houghton Mifflin, 2011) and Cusp (Houghton Mifflin, 2003), the latter receiving the Bakeless Prize for Poetry and the Natalie Ornish Prize from the Texas Institute of Letters. Her poems, reviews, and translations have appeared in Kenyon Review, New England Review, Ploughshares, Virginia Quarterly Review, Boston Review, TriQuarterly, and Best American Poetry 2000 and 2009.

Artist and designer Molly Hayden first collaborated with Born Magazine to interpret Vandana Khanna's poem "Blue Madonna." She received a degree in visual communication from California Institute for the Arts, and was Senior Art Director at Paris, France studio before devoting herself full time to art and freelance. Her current work can be found at selenography.com.

Curtis Hisayasu is a doctoral candidate in English at the University of Washington. Working the field of American studies, his research investigates the emergence of realist narrative in the context of U.S. urbanization, the rise of urban social sciences, and late 19th century and early 20th century liberal discourse.

Valerie Kinloch is associate professor in Literacy Studies at The Ohio State University. Her research examines the literacy lives of youth and adults in in- and out-of-school spaces. Valerie's most recent books include: Harlem On Our Minds: Place, Race, and the Literacies of Urban Youth (2010), Urban Literacies: Critical Perspectives on Language, Learning, and Community (2011) and Crossing Boundaries: Teaching and Learning with Urban Youth (2012).

Diana George is professor of rhetoric and writing and Director of the Writing Center at Virginia Tech. Her work has appeared in a number of collections and journals, including College Composition and Communication, College English, JAC, and Cultural Studies. With John Trimbur she is the author of Reading Culture, currently in its eighth edition.

Denise Landrum-Geyer is assistant professor in the Department of Language and Literature at Southwestern Oklahoma State University (SWOSU), where she teaches courses in basic writing, composition, creative nonfiction, and rhetoric. Her research interests include rhetorical genre theories, composition histories/ theories, the history of the essay, and the intersections between composition, new media studies, and creative writing pedagogies. She also directs the SWOSU Writing Center.

Debra Journet is professor of English at the University of Louisville and was director of the 2008 Thomas R. Watson Conference, "The New Work of Composing," which was the genesis of this book. Her scholarship focuses on narrative theory in relation to evolutionary biology, composition research, and new digital genres. Recent work has appeared in Narrative, Written Communication, Journal of Business and Technical Communication, Computers and Composition, and Computers and Composition Online. A co-edited collection from the 2006 Watson Conference, Narrative Acts: Rhetoric, Race and Identity, Knowledge was published by Hampton Press.

Dan Lawson is an assistant professor and Director of the Writing Center at Central College in Pella, Iowa. His research interests include peer review pedagogy, visual rhetoric, and the graphic novel.

Tim Lockridge is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Saint Joseph's University. His scholarship has appeared in Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture and the Journal of College Writing, and he is an assistant editor at Kairos.

Andrea Abernethy Lunsford is the Louise Hewlett Nixon Professor of English and former director of the Program in Writing and Rhetoric at Stanford University and a frequent member of the faculty of the Bread Loaf Graduate School of English. The author or coauthor of twenty books, her most recent publication is Writing Together: Collaboration in Theory and Practice with Lisa Ede. 

Joddy Murray is an associate professor of rhetoric and new media in the English Department at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas. In addition to his book, Non-discursive Rhetoric: Image & Affect in Multimodal Rhetoric (SUNY Press, 2009), he has published articles and chapters on virtual collaboration, the undergraduate writing major, and language theory. He also publishes poems from time to time in various journals and literary magazines.

The Normal Group consists of Cheryl Ball and 12 undergraduate students from her Fall 2008 Multimodal Composition class at Illinois State University: Kenton Cody, Amy Determan, Ariana Haze, Jessica Huang, Steve LaGioia, Tom Raehl, Amos Rein, Katie Rockwell, Vince Scannell, Nick Walker, Matthew Wendling, and Julie Zei. In honor of The New London Group's effect on this collection of studen-scholars and their teacher, we named ourselves The Normal Group -- fitting since the Town of Normal is named after Illinois State Normal University, a teacher-training institution by mission.

Anthony O'Keeffe is a professor of English at Bellarmine University and works on digital pedagogy, narrative theory, and autobiography.

Jason Palmeri is assistant professor of English and affiliate faculty in Interactive Media Studies at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. Jason currently serves as the coordinator of the Miami Digital Writing Collaborative. He is the author of Remixing Composition: A History of Multimodal Writing Pedagogy (Southern Illinois University Press), as well as numerous articles in journals such as Computers and Composition and Technical Communication Quarterly.

Paul Prior is professor of English and professor and director of the Center for Writing Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Drawing on sociocultural theory and dialogic semiotics, he has explored connections among writing, talk, enculturation, and activity. This work has appeared in articles, chapters, and a book Writing/Disciplinarity: A Sociohistoric Account of Literate Activity in the Academy (1998). He has co-edited with Charles Bazerman What Writing Does and How It Does It: An Introduction to Analyzing Texts and Textual Practices (2004) and with Julie Hengst Exploring Semiotic Remediation as Discourse Practice (2010). Current projects focus on composing processes, genre theory, the integration of cultural-historical activity theory and actor-network theory (aka Flat CHAT), a case study of the redesign of an interactive online art object, and work on metaphor and discourse. For more information, see his website.

James P. Purdy is an assistant professor of English and writing studies at Duquesne University. He directs the University Writing Center and teaches composition, composition theory, and digital writing courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels. He has published in a range of scholarly journals, including College Composition and Communication, Computers and Composition, Computers and Composition Online, The Journal of Literacy and Technology, Kairos, Pedagogy, and Profession. He has also published in a number of edited collections, including Reading (and Writing) New Media, Teaching Composition, and Writing Spaces. With co-author Joyce R. Walker, he won the 2010 Ellen Nold Award for the Best Article in Computers and Composition Studies and the 2008 Kairos Best Webtext Award. He is currently working on the edited collection The New Digital Scholar with Randall McClure.

Devon Fitzgerald Ralston's research interests are focus on place, narrative, and identity, whether she explores Southern literature, American folklore and urban legends, horror films, digital storytelling, or social media. She is currently working on a project that explores the ways our digital lives become archives as well as the practices, nostalgic impulses, and impact on memory and narrative that such practices encourage. Devon collects robot kitsch, Frankenstein paraphernalia, and vintage film posters. For the 2012-13 academic year, she will be Visiting Assistant Professor at Miami University of Ohio.

Jacqueline Rhodes is professor of English at CSU San Bernardino. Her work on the intersections of rhetoric, materiality, and technology has appeared in College Composition and Communication, JAC, Computers and Composition, and Rhetoric Review, among other venues. Her book, Radical Feminism, Writing, and Critical Agency: From Manifesto to Modem, was published in 2005 by SUNY Press.

Jentery Sayers is an assistant professor in the Department of English at the University of Victoria. His research and teaching intersect digital humanities and media studies, with an emphasis on the material relationships between attention, design, and inscription. His current long-form project is a cultural history of magnetic recording. He has published in Computational Culture, Writing and the Digital Generation, Resource Center for Cyberculture Studies, Collaborative Approaches to the Digital in English Studies, ProfHacker, and Kairos: Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy. His work has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Simpson Center for the Humanities, and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Digital Workshop. He earned his Ph.D. in English from the University of Washington.

Ryan Trauman is a PhD candidate in Rhetoric and Composition at the University of Louisville. His dissertation argues for a historically situated approach to new media design. He is co-editor, with Tim Lockridge, of The Scholar Electric, the official blog for the Computers and Composition Digital Press. His scholarship has appeared in Computers and Composition Online, Kairos, and he is co-author of a chapter in Teaching with Student Texts (USUP, 2011). His creative nonfiction has appeared in North Dakota Quarterly. Two of his video essays have been screened at the SSML Midwestern Film Festival, one of which is distributed by the Center for Digital Storytelling (2006). He is on the editorial board of the Journal of Undergraduate Multimedia Projects (The JUMP), and he blogs regularly at his informal, professional blog, New Media Scholar.

Anmarie Trimble served as editor of Born Magazine and is an assistant professor at Portland State University, where she teaches in the interdisciplinary University Studies program. Previously she was editor for Second Story Interactive Studios, where she developed projects for PBS, Experience Music Project, Discovery/TLC and others. Her poetry has appeared in Black Warrior Review, Field: Contemporary Poetry and Poetics, and other publications.

Joyce R. Walker is an associate professor at Illinois State University in Normal, IL. She is the Director of the Center for Writing Research and Pedagogy, and the Director of the Illinois State University Writing Program. She teaches both graduate and undergraduate courses in rhetoric and writing Studies. Her research is primarily concerned with the ideas, productions, and communities that can be developed and facilitated through interactions between humans and their composing tools. Her recent article with James Purdy, "Valuing Digital Scholarship: Exploring the Changing Realities of Intellectual Work" which appeared in MLA Profession 2010, won the Ellen Nold Award for best article from the Computers & Writing conference in 2011. She is currently at work on a book-length project with Kevin Roozen called Tracing Trajectories of Practice and Person: Sociohistoric Perspectives of Literate Activity.

Matthew W. Wilson is an assistant professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Kentucky. His research is at the intersection of critical human geography and geographic information science, what is called 'critical GIS'. Wilson draws upon science and technology studies to understand the development and proliferation of location-based services and the rapid evolution of Internet-based geographic information. He earned his Ph.D. in geography from the University of Washington.