To re-member is to fashion together, thread by thread, the pieces or elements that constellate into complex narratives of selfhood and society; of individual and communal identities, experiences, cultures, and expressions; as mediated by increasingly digital environments.
For the past ten years (from 2009 to the present), the Computers and Composition Digital Press (CCDP) has offered a platform for the open-access publishing of scholarship in computer-mediated composition, digital literacies and rhetorics, and related topics. As part of a ten-year retrospective of the press, we aim to trace and synthesize themes that have emerged through the years, traversing the trajectories interwoven by the people and publications that have formed and enriched the press. This retrospective review essay, then, seeks to stimulate further dialogue on the publications.
The first book published by the press in 2009, Technological Ecologies of Sustainability, edited by Dànielle Nicole DeVoss, Heidi A. McKee, and Richard (Dickie) Selfe, considered “complex ecologies of interaction” that form in the mediated interactions between humans and computerized writing environments. As stated in the book’s description, “In academia, specifically, all writing is increasingly computer-mediated; all writing is digital.” In a sense, this first book serves as a metaphor for the trajectories that have since unfolded and expanded with each subsequent publication: each volume interweaves various threads in the ecologies of interaction that enable and are enabled by digitally mediated learning, teaching, and composing environments.
In the spirit of intercultural inquiry, the press’s publications foreground a diversity of voices and perspectives from various identities, communities, and embodiments. While Transnational Literate Lives in Digital Times by Patrick W. Berry, Gail E. Hawisher, and Cynthia L. Selfe investigates the ways in which individuals “take up digital literacies and fold them into the fabric of their daily lives,” Techne: Queer Meditations on Writing the Self by Jacqueline Rhodes and Jonathan Alexander explores “the often contradictory interplay between digital and traditional technologies and the author/ed self.”
Many of the books offer critical engagements with the digital across dimensions of race, gender, class, labor, sexuality, and geography. For instance, Generaciones Narratives by John Scenters‐Zapico examines the literacy experiences of marginalized populations living along the U.S.-Mexico border, Racial Shorthand, edited by Cruz Medina and Octavio Pimentel, studies how communities of color engage in social media practices, and Cámara Rhetorica by Alexandra Hidalgo interrogates rhetoric through the lens of feminist filmmaking. As varied texts such as Strategic Discourse: The Politics of (New) Literacy Crises, edited by Lynn C. Lewis, Con Job: Stories of Adjunct and Contingent Labor, directed and produced by Megan Fulwiler and Jennifer Marlow, and Sustainable Learning Spaces, edited by Russell Carpenter, Richard Selfe, Shawn Apostel, and Kristi Apostel, illustrate, our work as teachers and scholars is situated in the politics of labor, literacies, and sustainability.
Moreover, the publications reveal, reflect, and in turn, affect the ways the digital is embedded in our scholarship, pedagogy, and activism. The New Work of Composing, edited by Debra Journet, Cheryl Ball, and Ryan Trauman, for instance, analyzes the “complex and semiotically rich challenges and opportunities posed by new forms of composing.” A range of titles including Collaborative Approaches to the Digital in English Studies, edited by Laura McGrath, Digital Writing Assessment and Evaluation, edited by Heidi A. McKee and Dànielle Nicole DeVoss, Soundwriting Pedagogies, edited by Courtney S. Danforth, Kyle D. Stedman, and Michael J. Faris, The Archive as Classroom, edited by Kathryn Comer, Michael Harker, and Ben McCorkle, and The Rhetoric of Participation, edited by Paige V. Banaji, Lisa Blankenship, Katherine DeLuca, Lauren Obermark, and Ryan Omizo, offer approaches to teaching digital composing in the classroom through collaboration and participation, as well as for extending composing into the sonic dimension and assessing multimodal and digital projects.
The books gesture to the presents and futures of signification in the field: while Provocations: Reconstructing the Archive, edited by Patrick W. Berry, Gail E. Hawisher, & Cynthia L. Selfe, and featuring the work of Erin R. Anderson, Trisha N. Campbell, Alexandra Hidalgo, and Jody Shipka, invites the interplay of “experimental genres, fruitful and unusual collaborations, and/or mediated, born-digital formats,” Making Future Matters, edited by Rick Wysocki and Mary P. Sheridan, aims to “shed light on and enact complex possibilities of mattering.” Our trajectory is forward-looking, characterized and inspired by continued development, as described in Expanding Literate Landscapes by Kevin Roozen and Joe Erickson. Our scholarship is, at its core, composed of stories: as such, Stories that Speak to Us, edited by H. Lewis Ulman, Scott Lloyd DeWitt, and Cynthia L. Selfe, considers how people “fashion their lives; make sense of their world, indeed construct the realities in which they live.” Our work is also one of wonder, as Technologies of Wonder by Susan H. Delagrange reminds us.
CCDP publications have made a significant impact in the field and have garnered many awards: Cámara Rhetorica by Alexandra Hidalgo is the winner of the 2017 Computers and Composition Distinguished Book Award; Techne: Queer Meditations on Writing the Self by Jacqueline Rhodes and Jonathan Alexander won the 2015 CCCC Lavender Rhetorics Award for Excellence in Queer Scholarship; Con Job: Stories of Adjunct and Contingent Labor by Megan Fulwiler and Jennifer Marlow was recognized with the 2014 Computers and Composition Michelle Kendrick Outstanding Digital Scholarship Award; and The New Work of Composing, edited by Debra Journet, Cheryl Ball, and Ryan Trauman, was the winner of the 2012 Computers and Composition Distinguished Book Award. Transnational Literate Lives in Digital Times by Patrick W. Berry, Gail E. Hawisher, and Cynthia L. Selfe also won the 2013 CCCC Advancement of Knowledge Award and the 2013 CCCC Research Impact Award and Technologies of Wonder: Rhetorical Practice in a Digital World by Susan H. Delagrange was recognized with the 2011 Computers and Composition Distinguished Book Award, the 2012 Winifred Bryan Horner Outstanding Book Award from the Coalition of Women Scholars in the History of Rhetoric, and the 2013 CCCC Outstanding Book Award. The Press also won the Computers and Composition Michelle Kendrick Outstanding Digital Production Award in 2018.
As each text unfolds in spatial and temporal dimensions, in looking back upon the histories of the press’s publications, we can glean insights into the presents and possible futures of digital composition and production. Even as these works enrich our conversations into the intersections of composition and computer-mediated environments, our investigations continue to expand, evolve, and complicate, constellating into complex tapestries of interaction, interconnection, and transformation.
Works Cited
Banaji, Paige V., Lisa Blankenship, Katherine DeLuca, Lauren Obermark, and Ryan Omizo, editors. The Rhetoric of Participation: Interrogating Commonplaces In and Beyond the Classroom. Logan: Computers and Composition Digital P/Utah State UP, 2019, https://ccdigitalpress.org/book/rhetoric-of-participation.
Berry, Patrick W., Gail E. Hawisher, and Cynthia L. Selfe, eds. Provocations: Reconstructing the Archive, featuring the work of Erin R. Anderson, Trisha N. Campbell, Alexandra Hidalgo, and Jody Shipka. Logan, UT: Computers and Composition Digital P/Utah State UP, 2016. Web.
Berry, Patrick W., Gail E. Hawisher, and Cynthia L. Selfe. Transnational Literate Lives in Digital Times. Logan, UT: Computers and Composition Digital P/Utah State UP, 2012. Web.
Carpenter, Russell, Richard Selfe, Shawn Apostel, and Kristi Apostel, Eds. Sustainable Learning Spaces: Design, Infrastructure, and Technology. Logan, UT: Computers and Composition Digital Press/Utah State University Press, 2015. Web.
Comer, Kathryn, Michael Harker, and Ben McCorkle, editors. The Archive as Classroom: Pedagogical Approaches to the Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives. Logan: Computers and Composition Digital P/Utah State UP, 2019, https://ccdigitalpress.org/book/archive-as-classroom.
Danforth, Courtney S., Kyle D. Stedman, and Michael J. Faris, editors. Soundwriting Pedagogies. Logan: Computers and Composition Digital P/Utah State UP, 2018, http://ccdigitalpress.org/soundwriting.
Delagrange, Susan H. Technologies of Wonder: Rhetorical Practice in a Digital World. Logan, UT: Computers and Composition Digital Press/Utah State University Press, 2011.
DeVoss, Dànielle N., Heidi A. McKee, and Richard (Dickie) Selfe, eds. Technological Ecologies and Sustainability. Logan, UT: Computers and Composition Digital P/Utah State UP, 2009. Computers and Composition Digital Press. Web. [Insert date of access here].
Fulwiler, Megan, and Marlow, Jennifer. Con Job: Stories of Adjunct and Contingent Labor. Logan, UT: Computers and Composition Digital Press/Utah State UP, 2014. Web.
Hidalgo, Alexandra. Cámara Retórica: A Feminist Filmmaking Methodology. Logan, UT: Computers and Composition Digital P/Utah State UP, 2017. Web.
Journet, Debra, Cheryl Ball, and Ryan Trauman, Eds. The New Work of Composing. Logan, UT: Computers and Composition Digital P/Utah State UP, 2012. Web.
Lewis, Lynn C., Ed. Strategic Discourse: The Politics of (New) Literacy Crises. Logan, UT: Computers and Composition Digital Press/Utah State University Press, 2015. Web.
Medina, Cruz, and Octavio Pimentel, editors. Racial Shorthand: Coded Discrimination Contested in Social Media. Logan: Computers and Composition Digital P/Utah State UP, 2018, http://ccdigitalpress.org/shorthand.
McGrath, Laura, ed. Collaborative Approaches to the Digital in English Studies. Logan, UT: Computers and Composition Digital P/Utah State UP, 2011. Computers and Composition Digital Press. Web. http://ccdigitalpress.org/cad.
McKee, Heidi A., and Dànielle Nicole DeVoss DeVoss, Eds. Digital Writing Assessment & Evaluation. Logan, UT: Computers and Composition Digital Press/Utah State University Press, 2013. Web.
Roozen, Kevin, and Joe Erickson. Expanding Literate Landscapes: Persons, Practices, and Sociohistoric Perspectives of Disciplinary Development. Logan, UT: Computers and Composition Digital P/Utah State UP, 2017. Web.
Rhodes, Jacqueline, and Jonathan Alexander. Techne: Queer Meditations on Writing the Self. Logan, UT: Computers and Composition Digital Press/Utah State University Press, 2015. Web.
Scenters‐Zapico, John. Generaciones’ Narratives: The Pursuit & Practice of Traditional & Electronic Literacies on the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands. Logan, UT: Computers and Composition Digital Press/Utah State University Press, 2010.
Ulman, H. Lewis, Scott Lloyd DeWitt, and Cynthia L. Selfe, Eds. Stories That Speak to Us. Logan, UT: Computers and Composition Digital P/Utah State UP, 2013. Web.
Wysocki, Rick, and Mary P. Sheridan, editors. Making Future Matters. Logan: Computers and Composition Digital P/Utah State UP, 2018, http://ccdigitalpress.org/makingfuturematters.