Logging On
Cheryl Ball, Editor
In This Issue
With this issue, we're excited to announce the re-appearance of the Kairos CoverWeb section. The history of this section is rich, and you can read several webtexts about it (see Doherty & Salvo, 2002 and Ball, Hewett, Eyman, and Inman, 2006). In brief, the CoverWeb was started as a multi-voiced, theme section that would publish webtexts that wove and linked among themselves around a central topic. We last published the CoverWeb in the Spring 2006 issue, whereafter Cheryl Ball and Beth Hewett, who had been promoted to editors that year, merged the Features section with the CoverWeb section. A by-product of this decision meant that the journal no longer published special issues leading out of the Computers & Writing conference but was open to publishing summer issues, such as those on Classical Rhetoric; Manifestos!; Rhetoric, Technology, and the Military; Undergraduate Scholars; Spatial Praxes; and Multimodal Research.
One of the things that keeps Kairos kairotic (and me sane) is Senior Editor Douglas Eyman's leadership style in which he says that we should try something for a while and ditch it if it doesn't work. In this case, the summer special issues are fabulous scholarly products, but they are a LOT of work for guest editors and for the Kairos staff to prepare on top of the regular Fall and Spring issues. So we're moving back to two issues a year and re-introducing the themed CoverWeb section for when a group of webtexts speaks to each other serendipitously (as they have in several recent "named" issues, such as "Un/Defining Digital Scholarship" and "Family, Memory, Composition.") This change doesn't mean that we will stop running special issues, just that guest editors won't be responsible for creating a table of contents for an entire issue of a journal. Many guest editors are interested in only running three or four webtexts from invited authors, not soliciting webtexts at large or working to fill an issue with Reviews, Interviews, and other sections of the journal. Or, maybe, a guest editor has only a series of interviews they want to run, and a PraxisWiki piece to go with it. The CoverWeb better allows for this kind of flexibility without putting too much pressure on a guest editor to put together a whole, cohesive issue—a responsibility that should still fall to the journal's editors. In addition, it allows the editors to treat extra-large webtexts (those that are really more like edited collections, which are simply too big to treat as a single webtext for the purposes of our production cycle) as a whole section rather than a single text.
In this issue, for instance, we've placed an extra-large webtext (one that would have otherwise run in the Topoi section) in conversation with a PraxisWiki piece. You'll see the CoverWeb header in the Table of Contents and the CoverWeb theme listed in the blue bar alongside the volume and issue number (where the special issue theme is usually listed). This issue's CoverWeb theme is accessibility, a harkening back to then Co-CoverWeb editors Beth and Cheryl's first full issue on Disability and Technology, and includes a multi-authored webtext "Multimodality in Motion: Disability and Kairotic Spaces," by M. Remi Yergeau, Elizabeth Brewer, Stephanie Kerschbaum, Sushil K. Oswal, Margaret Price, Cynthia L. Selfe, Michael J. Salvo, and Franny Howes. This webtext expands on their well-received presentation at the 2011 Computers and Writing conference. Accompanying this webtext is a PraxisWiki piece by Tara Wood and Sharon Madden, "Suggested Practices for Syllabus Accessibility Statements."
Elsewhere in this issue, you'll find equally engaging, if unrelated to the exact CoverWeb topic, in the rest of the sections. In Inventio, we've invited Geoffrey V. Carter to reflect on his January 2013 Kairos webtext, "A Thrilla in ManiLA" in an *Inventio* webtext called "iPad Invention." After learning from Carter that his original 35-minute video piece was composed only on an iPad—a technology those in computers and writing have often derided as not very productive for producing texts—we knew Kairos readers would want to know more about his process.
Two other webtexts from this issue also started as conference presentations (yet another theme for this issue!): David Coad's PraxisWiki piece on "Developing Critical Literacy and Critical Thinking through Facebook" was the result of an invitation to submit an extended version of his work after he blew the audience away presenting on this topic at the University of Alaska - Anchorage's annual Pacific Rim Conference on Literature and Rhetoric. Shawn Apostel's prezi for the Disputatio section was solicited and revised for Kairos after seeing a version of his presentation on "Prezi Design Strategies" at the National Association of Communication Centers conference in 2012.
We point out these remediations of conference presentations into webtexts to encourage you to continue the cycle yourself. Don't let the bastard of proximity (an editor happening into your session) stop you from submitting a revised, more engaged version of your in-progress conference work for publication consideration. You never know what we'll be interested in. There are also ways to publish while gaining knowledge yourself, such as conducting an interview of someone important (or soon to be important) to the field, or designing a review. We have three such texts in this issue. In the Interviews section, Michaella Thornton presents audio, video, transcripts, and imagery of her interview with William Endres and his work on illuminated manuscripts and the digital humanities. In the Reviews section, Amber Stamper reviews Susan Delagrange's multiple-award-winning book, Technologies of Wonder and Vincent Robles reviews Lamberti and Richards' Complex Worlds: Digital Culture, Rhetoric, and Professional Communication.
Last, but certainly not least in its variety of offerings, we present the Reviews of the 2013 Conference on College Composition and Communication, organized by Christopher Dean and edited by a host of good souls: Andrea Beaudin, Steven Corbett, Chris Dean, Alexis Hart, Will Hochman, Michelle LaFrance, Randall McClure, Kathy Patterson, Fred Siegel, and Stephanie Vie. These reviews editors work diligently with authors to develop their session, workshop, and conference reviews into short essays that the session presenters can use in their productivity binders and that prove invaluable to those of us who couldn't attend the conference. Although some readers think Kairos is responsible for soliciting these reviews, we don't actually have anything to do with the process; these editors listed above do all the work, and we just get to publish their independent handiwork. We are happy to serve as the publication venue for this valuable resource for the field. In addition to the CCCC Reviews editors mentioned above, I also owe a big thank you to our own Reviews Editors, Elizabeth, Stephanie, and Jill, as well as Jill's editorial intern, Howard Fooksman, for transitioning the reviews between Word and wiki and whatnot, making sure the formatting was done correctly, and helping me assemble what amounts to 196 pages of reviews into a book that you can download and read offline.
Awards
Annually at the Computers and Writing conference, Kairos gives five awards to scholar-teachers in the field who deserve our utmost praise and attention within their specialties. This year, the winners included the following, with the blurbs we read to congratulate them. We thank Communications Editor Monica Jacobe for organizing the entire awards process, from publicity to receipt of nominations to soliciting judges to writing up the awards blurbs that Doug and Cheryl deliver at the C&W Friday night banquet. Remember that you can nominate anyone (or any webtext or blog) throughout the year by emailing us at kcommunications@technorhetoric.net.
Best Webtext Award
Winner
Matthew Levy's webtext, "I Trip the Light Anaclastic: A Remix of Virginia Burke's 1959 'Why Not Try Collage?'" published in the January 2012 edition of Enculturation is remarkable amid a very strong field of webtexts. By responding to and disassembling a classic text while taking full advantage of new media, this piece offers the best representation of what can be possible in digital scholarship and makes a significant impact on our understanding of both its content and form. We applaud Levy on this significant achievement and make this our choice for Best Webtext this year.
Finalist
Occasionally in the past, the Kairos awards have named both a winner and a finalist in the Webtext category. We would like to do so this year. Dan Anderson's "Watch the Bubble" lets readers/viewers into the process of new media work and the human aspect of making in ways that fascinated and impressed us. We could not let this year's awards pass without giving it this honor.
John Lovas Memorial Weblog Award
cac.ophony.org presents its readers with a variety of perspectives and a good deal of excellent commentary on the work of Computers & Writing that crosses areas of interest—current events and news, teaching with technology, public writing, and beyond. This diverse collection of voices is combined with a design that makes for east reading and approachability. Reading back across the year at this blog we found posts that gave us new ideas for our own work in the classroom, in research, and in our daily lives with technology. Clearly, the editors and contributors are engaging with important questions we should all share in, and that seems to us to be the spirit in which the Lovas Memorial Award should be given. We congratulate them!
Graduate Student and Adjunct Awards, sponsored by Bedford/St. Martin's Press
Kristi McDuffie (Illinois State University) for Service
What came through loud and clear in the nomination materials for Doctoral student Kristi McDuffie was how extensively her service to the field of Computers & Writing has not just extended beyond her home campus but made a significant impact on the wider field. Her extensive work behind the scenes in publishing and editing with Kairos, the #writing series at the WAC Clearinghouse, the Council of Editors of Learned Journals, and beyond has quite obviously shaped our field, even though, as her recommender [Cheryl Ball, who had no influence in the awards judging] notes, her research on the rhetorics of race are, technically, outside the field of Computers & Writing. To make such significant contributions so early in her academic career is beyond impressive and helped McDuffie rise above the other extraordinary nominees in this category.
Lorelei Blackburn (Michigan State University) for Teaching
All the nominees for this award were doing impressive and interesting work in classrooms related to Computers and Writing. The reason we chose Lorelei Blackburn is because of her diversity of impressive experiences and successes in this area, to say nothing of the many presentations and publications on her pedagogy, which have contributed to the larger understanding of C&W pedagogy beyond her own classrooms. Seeing some of her assignments as well as commentary on her teaching by students and other practitioners allowed us to see that as a teacher, Lorelei Blackburn changes her students understanding of the world around them by helping them engage with the rhetorical power created when writing and the digital meet.
Erin R. Anderson (University of Pittsburgh) for Research
In reviewing materials submitted for Erin Anderson, we were especially impressed by the way she has integrated several academic interests into powerful research and notable scholarship. This is particularly true of her integration of oral histories with new media. Having read "The Olive Project," last year's winner of the Kairos Best Webtext Award, we were particularly glad to be able to consider Erin for this award. Ultimately, we agreed with the assessment of her recommender, who said of Erin that "Her . . . projects in digital/new media in many ways continue and deepen her commitment to marginal or counter-publics, to activist support for voices lost or suppressed in dominant circuits of exchange, and to a theorized practice (or practical theorization) of writing at the present moment. She is both actively exploring and contesting the affordances digital media can offer creative/critical discourses that draw upon the work of the academy but that are profoundly oriented toward extramural audiences and poetical intervention."
Comings and Goings
Kairos is a truly online journal in that we don't have a home institution, no mothering organization, no affiliations, and our staff is spread as far and wide as possible: from University of Rhode Island to University of California, Santa Barbara, University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire to University of Central Florida. A half-dozen staff members have taken new academic jobs this year, and we're so pleased they've stayed with us to continue Kairos work at their new institutions.
Among the movings, we've also had some changes to the staff. In May, Reviews Editor (and previously Reviews Assistant Editor) Wesley Venus stepped down to pursue the editorship of a new journal that his institution, Gordon College, was starting for undergraduate research. This is a strong area of interest for many Kairos staffers, and we are glad to see folks put their editorial prowess to use helping other journals! May also saw Tim Lockridge, a Topoi Assistant Editor, step down to take on the big role of Project Editor at Computers and Composition Digital Press. Tim was a real asset to the journal's staffing base, and we're sorry to see him go but know he'll be an equally impressive asset for CCDP.
To fill these gaps in our staff, we've added five new assistant editors and promoted three other assistant editors. We were pleased with the large response to our call for applications for assistant editors last winter, and those who've been through the rigorous interview and testing process know that Kairos expects a high editorial standard for all its staff. (For those who want a leg up on the next round of hiring, which usually takes place every two years, see our old job ad at http://kairos.technorhetoric.net/jobads.html and read through our Technical and Style guide manuals under the Submissions section.) We welcome Tim Amidon, Michael J. Faris, Ashley Holmes, Scott Nelson, and Kristin Prins as assistant editors. We hope they're enjoying their time with Kairos as much as we are enjoying having this wonderful group of editors on staff!
In addition, we promoted three assistant editors to fill the Reviews Editor slot. Although many of our sections have moved from being co-edited to being singly edited, we've found that the Reviews section is special in that it usually requires more one-on-one work with authors, and across many more webtexts, than most sections require. So we added exponentially with three ladies who've worked with Kairos for several years already: Elizabeth Fleitz Kuechenmeister, Jill Morris, and Stephanie Vie. They've been doing a grand job since May and we look forward to their go-get-em initiative, which will see the journal adding video and podcast reviews and more reviews of multimedia and non-book materials. If you have a review idea, please contact them at kreviews@technorhetoric.net. (Note, we do get spam quite a bit, so if you don't hear back from us within a week, try again or email Cheryl directly at s2ceball@gmail.com, and she can make sure your email gets to the correct section editor.)
