Conferences

MLA: Dress up. Wear a suit. Every day. (Bring shoes you can walk in.)
CCCC: Casual.
SCMLA: You should dress up for your presentation. Most wear suits. Other than that, business casual.
CCTE: Business casual or a little nicer, for presentations and attendance. Some people do wear suits.
TCEA: Business casual or a little nicer, for presentations and attendance. Some people do wear suits.
PCA: Business casual or nicer.
SWTX PCA: Business casual or nicer.
CEA: More formal than business casual. Could wear a suit easily.
Computers & Writing: Business casual for presentation.
Two-Year College Association- Southwest: Business casual or nicer. Some people do wear suits.
Southwest Conference on Christianity and Literature: Dress up. Wear a suit for presentation. Nice clothes for attendance.
Kalamazoo: Good walking shoes. Nicer than business casual, but not suits.

1. The most important part of any subject is the thesis and supporting evidence. Write your thesis and the argument to support it. Give the most interesting examples you can.

2. Don’t read your entire paper looking at the page. Yes, it is okay at some conferences to read. However, you should be familiar enough with it to be able to look up on a regular basis.

3. Don’t read a paper that was written to be read silently. If there are long, involved, convoluted periodic sentences, rewrite it. Use short sentences, a conversational style, and easily pronounced words. You don’t want the audience cringing in embarrassment for how badly you have read nor do you want them to stare at their watch, hoping you will finish soon.

4. If the work you are speaking on was a paper for a class, you also need to make sure that you polish the writing to be read.

5. If you are using a class paper, make sure you shorten it so that you can meet the time limit. (That, of course, requires that you know the time limit. Find out if you don’t know.) Generally two minutes per double-spaced 12 point font is a fair reading speed. However, if you tend to include asides, make the paper shorter. It is better to be too short than to be too long.

6. If you have not heard someone pronounce a word that you are using in a paper, make sure that you find out how to pronounce the word correctly. Then practice using it.

7. In a related point, make sure you read your paper aloud with at least one person in your field in the practice audience. It can be a practice audience of one, but the person must be in your field.

8. If it is your first (or second–or really your fiftieth) conference, finishing the paper earlier rather than later is better. Yes, I know you have a life. Yes, I know you have classes. But a paper that has been written for a while and then reviewed and tweaked just before the conference sounds much better and is more likely to be much better than a paper for which you stayed up all night right before your presentation.

9. If you are presenting and using a PowerPoint, make sure the titles and information are visible. If they can’t be visible (because it is too much information), then prepare a handout.

10. If you are using a handout, make sure your name and contact information are on the sheet. Sometimes those things get dropped in a colleague’s box. It would be great if they knew how to get in touch with you.

11. Make sure you know the conference dress code. If you do not, it is better to err on the side of being overdressed than the side of being underdressed. You can always take off a suit coat and roll up your sleeves. There is no way you can make a tunic with jeans look like a suit.

12. Have a short copy of your CV to give to the chair of your session. Bring a watch so you can keep track of time. When you run out of time, sit down. There is not a lot more annoying than a speaker who has no time and just keeps going anyway. It is also not fair to the other people who are presenting. They also could have said more if they took another five or ten minutes.

13. It is also good to have business cards. Even a personal business card, with your information and the name of the school you attend, is useful.

14. Despite what the Las Vegas public relations people say, what happens in a place does not stay there. You are out in public with future colleagues, perhaps even the chair of the Search Committee you will be most concerned with putting your CV into the “yes” pile. Do not do anything that you would not be willing to have people talk about for twenty years.

In live blogging this conference, I am following the conventions for conference blogging. (Note: While I wrote the post while in the session, I didn’t post till later.)

Fun beginning with all the three panelists reunited grad students (from ULa:L) finishing each other’s humorous sentences. One of the SF/F panelists said he was excited to see this on the program, as it is a special session.

Chair: Geoffrey B. Elliott, Technical Career Institutes

Michael J. Bernstein of University of Louisiana-Lafayette
“The Legacy of Influence, Appreciation, and Revision for Milton’s Paradise Lost“
Humorous introduction. Graduating in May 2012 and seeking an academic position.

Whole dissertation is on just about every adaptation of Paradise Lost. I will be looking at three:
1. the most recent, John Troutman’s virtual comic strip
2. Lanzara Paradise Lost: The Novel and Paradise Lost in Plain English
3. children’s work The Tale of Paradise Lost by Nancy Willard

Despite Paradise Lost‘s place on the hierarchy, they imprint their place on the ghost of Milton.
Samuel Johnson said not to adapt the work. To adapt it is to reduce it.

Adaptations of PL are collaborative. They indicate a strong connection on the part of the adapter to the original PL text itself.
Every text is an interpreted text, because any time you read, you interpret. –Leech
Reader becomes an author and the text becomes a second text.

PL as an adaptation of the Bible suggests how adaptations can begin.

We resist Milton’s overwhelming allusions and stilted language.

Several interesting new adaptations:
Angel, Broadway musical
Paradise Lost, almost a spinoff, where angels have kids and sneak all their babies away from Satan in the war, but then forgot about the babies.
But I am only going to look at four, two by same author.

Lanzara’s novelization is a clear attempt to encourage reading PL.
L’s version allows “full grandeur of imagery” without language problems.
Some adaptations exist to keep a strong work in the reading stable of contemporary readers.

No real textual core exists.
PL contains undefinable elements that seem to encourage adaptation.
Language, despite difficult layers, entrances.

Lanzara’s attempt uses a language far more Miltonic than modern.
The syntax is not unique, but he succumbs to the fear of destroying Milton’s majesty.
His diction is not modern: sought, spied…
It becomes a stunted adaptation.
Desire to be faithful to the language rather than to the narrative structure. (Movie version coming out in 2013.) Language fidelity brings Milton adaptation an interesting scope addition.
The novelization seeks to preserve the language.

2009 publishes John Milton’s Paradise Lost in Plain English
line-by-line translation into modern English, very different adaptation
“Heaven got dark and fiery. It was a sign of God’s anger.
Equally scary was the trumpet that blew.
All of God’s powerful army came out when they heard it. It motivated them to go to fight…” (56, 59, 61)

Director and producer are using the novelization, not the poem. The movie version will focus on the war of Heaven. Folks today want the plot, not the language.

Willard’s tale sees Paradise Lost as a tale of pride. She recreates Satan as the fallen/tragic hero. The story is Satan’s. His deterioration will guide the force of the story. Readers are left with a lesson of pride, which does exist in Milton.

“Long, long, ago, before the world was, before minutes ticked and seconds tocked, before beginnings had endings, there was a war in Heaven. The most radiant of God’s angels was also the most proud.” –Willard

“jealous of the Son’s glory, [Satan] stood his ground, determined to win or fall but not retreat.”

Satan’s loss is the greatest in the poem, according to Willard.
Michael laments that the world will be corrupted by Satan and that “evil will often triumph.”

Critical interpretation by transforming the meaning and hero of the poem. Alters language.

Troutman decided to approach PL because he is reading the Norton Anthology. He didn’t know it before and he didn’t read the notes or anything else on the poem.
Prefers his own ill-informed conclusions as considerably funnier.

See Strip 16 and Strip 1.

I would actually argue that in terms of narrative structure and theme, he is one of the more faithful adapters, despite his authorial vision of sole entertainment.
He is writing as a parody.

He neglects criticism, but his following of narrative structure shows that even a new reader will see that the plot is well-constructed and strong.
Unlike some of his other strips, in which he parodied multiple scenes, he took time to plot out his parody of PL. Overall he just makes fun of major characters, but when he gets to PL, he realizes that he needs to preserve in media res and every other aspect of the narrative.

Troutman‘s Eve is bored/frustrated with her chores. “Stupid work. Stupid Paradise.”
Satan says eating the apple will make her work either.
“There’s science in my mouth and everyone’s invited! … And I’m naked.”

Similar to a British satirist, PL Illustrated.

Troutman is making fun of Milton’s text. He is not making her fit with modern feminist paradigm.
Eve’s observation that she has science is important.
Her choice to eat the apple is logical, even if selfish.
Concept of seeing nudity as shameful talks about loss of naivete.

Satan looks like a Calvin Klein model look. Not monstrous, but human.
Also enhances familiarity for modern audiences.
Having Satan look more human heightens his dangerousness, since he is not clearly other.

Demons use popular culture for humor.
“Hell ain’t such a bad place to be.”
“Oooh, we should install a water slide now!”
“You constructed the roof of my palace with one of the softest and heaviest metals in the universe?” Is that bad?

extend serious literary works into the area of comedy
Uses comedy to draw attention to more obscure texts. Provides context and direct connection to the work as well. He also uses his commentaries to crack jokes, too. But they educate as well.
Relevant, relatable, and translatable to modern sensibilities.
Thus Troutman promotes literary works.

Every adaptation of PL is a testimony as to its timelessness.
We continue the epic ritual of passing down stories through adaptation.

PL is “a poem of the infinite theater” (?).

In justifying God’s ways to man, Milton composes the ultimate human drama and justifies why two people would abandon God for love. Explains why a man would get rid of God for his wife. Life without God becomes a life that is worth living.

Wendi D. Wilkerson of Bronx Community College, CUNY
“Permutations of Lilith: Change and Consistency in the Contemporary Myth Creation Process”
ethnographer and editor

Myth has been a great exploration of history, but now it is seen as a compelling part of psyche.
What is missing is how myth has been reclaimed by modern oral tradition.
Myths tend to evolve in the same way as traditional oral experiences.

This refiguring of Lilith has transformed her from a vicious child-killing demon into a strong, loving goddess.
For her followers, she serves as a symbolic element that encourages human-divine connections.
Further transformation into Adam’s first wife and then evil, dark goddess.
Now: queen of Hell and a vampire

She is an enigmatic figure. There is no single narrative that defines her.
Kless, priestess for 20 years: Lilith was the demon who lived in the tree in Gilgamesh.
Sumerian and Babylonian myth also showed her as a demon endangering childbirth.
Jewish myths around the 13th century.
Misdrash texts attempt to reconcile the two creation stories in Genesis.
Lilith was conscripted into the story as a rebellious wife. Adam insisted that she lie beneath him in sex. Lilith refused and flew up. Took demons as her lovers and went to a cave to live with her hundreds of children.
Three angels came from God and threatened to kill 100 children a day unless she returned to Adam. She said no.

One key role of a later passage aligns her with both Satan and the serpent in the garden.

Most shocking story takes Lilith as the wife of God, who has left him sad.

1974 Lilith appeared as Dracula’s daughter in Marvel.
1996 vampire-role playing game gave rise to new Lilith stories.
Stories revolve around her experience with Cain.

One culturally specific reason: unsubstantiated personal gnosis
The powerful notions that people experience regarding their deity.
But new myth is made possible by peer-corroborated personal gnosis (pcpg) and unverified shared gnosis (usg).
Pcpg has folks who don’t know each other have the same ideas and eventually share them and meet each other.
Usg is when folks in worship experience another gnosis that is a group situation.

Shy(?) dreams about Lilith from childhood. A male child dreaming of a child-murderer. He dreamed he was carried away by a demon. He was terrified. The demon took him to a cave. Woman in cave yelled at the demon and told him to let the child go, because he was awake. The demon let him go. Woman sat next to edge of cliff on an animal skin. Boy remembered how excited the woman was to see the boy in the cave.

Common education or understanding brings associative elements into the narrative of the myth.
Emerging myth becomes integrated by performance.
Lilith followers are highly positive towards new narrative of the myth.
Changes or permutations must match what the folks who are following expect.

One such myth is from Canton, Ohio who refer to themselves as lilitu.
Group had accumulated a large oral narrative about Lilith. The myth drops pre-Hebraic material, but adds Misdrash information.
Lilith and Adam had been one homophradiphic person whom God divided. Lilith was the life and equality of woman. Lilith wanted to name some animals, but Adam had already named them. So Lilith sought out to name things that Adam had not given names. She gave names to the things that Adam was afraid of. She named the night and the moon and the stars of the heaven and all animals that were scary.
She refuses to have sex in the manner Adam wants, but she just goes to the other side of a garden.
Instead of three angels, God comes to talk to her. She says she is no beast to be lain upon.
God curses her and sends her out. “Your desire will be for the comfort of man, but his existence will pain you… You will thirst for the blood of your hymen…”
Other part of myth is that she was already pregnant with a male and female child and has the babies at the caves.
Cain’s rejection by God, Cain believes is because he did not have any blood in his offering. So he slew Able and gave God the blood as a sacrifice.
Cain took as his wife as one of Lilith’s daughters. Their son was named Enoch.

Implications of this myth are astonishing.
Creates a parallel for them to claim.
She is a compassionate mother.
Only time will tell how well this oral tradition will survive or spread.
But the personal insight into deity influences the creation of new myth.

Geoffrey B. Elliott of Technical Career Institutes
“Which Way I Fly is Middle-earth, Myself am Middle-earth; Miltonic Resonance in Tolkien”

Much of scholarly attention has focused on Northern European reception of Tolkien, because of his own work and experience (scholarly, etc) in The Hobbit, The Silmarillion, LOTR. Some of the work is written in OE.
There is significant relation of Tolkien’s work to northern pagan mood.

Some folks argue that it is more Christian, and Tolkien’s letters indicate that it is in fact more Christian.
Milton’s PL and Tolkien’s Silmarillion –especially in presentation of evil
concepts and even wording that is strongly reminiscent of PL
If Silmarillion has PL as a source, then it is even more Christian.

Tolkien’s valar Melchor “the mightiest of those ainurs who came into the world” and the brother of someone very important.

Both Lucifer and Melchor draw together as they call their own forces.
Lucifer says he is calling his folks together to serve Jesus.
Melchor does this same thing, calling folks together, when god is encouraging singing. He begins to bring things into his own creation and his melody changed the music of the ainurs.
Melchor’s disobedience ensnares some of his own kind.

Both L and M first bring their partners away from God without clear, set out evil.

When L says he is going to go against commander (God), angel is not happy.
Adviel? also is said to have been in service to God before the war of Heaven (kind of like Lilith).
Assi, a lesser power of Morgath, but later returns to his original allegiance. Assi has a love of violence. Does echo that of going from service of good, to evil, and back to good.

Satan and Morgath are both shown as northern invaders.
Both attack from an incomplete garrison.
Both attack with never before seen weapons.

Defense against both is mountains.

Defeats are both foretold by stars in the sky.

Even with their ultimate failure foretold, they still cause problems.
Satan->tempts Eve
Morgath->has the elves turn against humans
Neither enjoys full success, but both get some of what they seek against their makers.

Rafael says he ought to call Lucifer Satan, delegitimizing his celestial name.
Melchor becomes Morgath (dark evil of the world) to the elves.

Satan and Morgath both change from beautiful to ugly.
Milton: “how fallen, how changed”
Satan recognizes he must alter his normal form, so that there is no doubt of his alteration.
Milton: says he had awesome majesty, but darkened and scarred on his face “excess of glory obscured”

Tolkien’s Morgath takes on the form of a dark lord, tall and terrible. “in that form he remained ever after”
Retains outward evidence of power.
Also has facial scarring. An angel descends on him and attacks his face.
The pain of his wounds could not be healed.

Association of both figures with darkness are unsurprising.
A specific presentation of darkness
Milton hell = flames of darkness
Tolkien = as Morgath rapes trees of light he uses “unlight” “darkness with a thing with being of its own”
The two darknesses are visible, powerful, evil.

Supernatural orders are the same.
Worlds are circular.
Trees with magic fruit.

Tolkien sourced PL for much of his foundational points.

Don’t forget to sign in for the sheet.

Questions:
Wendy, where does Upg come from? 2003 Wiccan article

Do you have a sense of upg as invited through ritual practice?
Yes, usually. Almost always.
Sometimes an individual ritual but sometimes a group ritual.

Notion of heterotopia, luminality
Luminality is precursor.
Sense of otherness.
Time moves from chronos to kairos.

Comments for everybody:
Have you read George McDonald’s Lilith?
Yes.
How does that fit?
As a lit scholar, it fits.
As a polytheistic scholar, not so much. They don’t care. They don’t look at it. They go to the older texts. They either go very far back in time or to specific pop culture references.
Zokar is the preferred text.
Nephilim, children of angel of man, is covered in Midrash. (idea from first speaker that children of angels were taken away from the war in Heaven)

Second you read anything, you adapt it. You are interpreting and it is an adaptation.
The only way we can read is that we have some sort of relation to other experiences/knowledge.

Inter-text fits with reading. The idea that we interpret as we read is very important and that we in lit were re-appropriate the term for other experiences.

Medieval studies are adapting inter-text as language.
Much of medieval studies adapt.

Mark Hall worked on Victorian adaptations in dissertation, so used inter-text.

Calvin Miller: Symphony in the Sand, retelling of PL

Elliott:
Work of Geoffrey Elliott is an older paper that is reworked. You might want to look at the letters and a pub out of Wheaton might be interested in this.
Elliott addressed archetype issue. Think it is more than archetype?
Yes, there is archetype, but Tolkien who said he wanted to create a myth for Britain that was in line with trinity doctrine of Catholicism.

Bernstein:
Does Troutman make money?
Not really.

So he is less motivated by money?
Yes.
He loves doing this. It is his passion. Less motivated by money.

So does that lack of financial motivation create part of the different take on the adaptation?
Somewhat.
Willard can’t be faithful to the language, because for children.

Does the incredible interpretability of PL make it easier or more difficult to be faithful to PL?

Bernstein:
Difficulties of writing about someone who is easy to be reinterpreted:
Bloom Anxiety of Influence
Double-edge sword, because it is so vast, we can pull beautiful scenes (Dore) or story parts.
What do we do with Eve? That’s a hard question for PL.
As an adapter, it is liberating to be able to only use parts of the work of PL.
Dryden says he is a little anxious for adapting PL.
A lot of adapters feel liberated, not feeling anxiety of influence.
I’m going to take on a work that is great and has a marketable niche and I will have a marketable niche.

Elliott:
For Tolkien it is not nearly so problematic an experience.
Partly because of the time he was composing, many of the issues were not on the scholarly radar.
Since he was after creating a British mythology, PL was a perfectly situated work to adapt.

Bernstein:
Fidelity is only an issue with audience.
Only an issue if the audience has read the work.
The differences between Twilight book and movie are seen as fun.
Gone With the Wind the movie was exactly following the book, so it was thought to be absolutely perfect.

BladeRunner and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
reach the same level of truth in very different ways
Not just how faithful, but how well it speaks to a truth.

Elliott:
Tolkien fanboys hate Tolkien movies, because of the songs and Tom being missing, etc.
XMen comic fanboys hate XMen movies.

Bernstein:
Audiences love the XMen movies, except the third one. (It was awful.)
Depends on what is important to that audience.

Elliott:
Shakespeare was the most successful plagiarist (adapter) in history.

Question:
Why now?
Why is Lilith exploding now?
Why is PL being adapted now?

Wilkerson:
Not just Lilith.
What it is: elucidating a spiritual experience that is not following the rules.
John Gardner, pagan ideas.
fairies on the West Coast.
Polytheists are embracing worship and ritual. “Yahweh is real, but Zeus is my god.”
Adaptation.

Question: Acceptance of Greek gods?
One friend I know is doing a reconstruction of Canaanite polytheism, from which Hebraic monotheistic religion sprang.

The polytheism is fascinating and a discussion of how monotheism arose from it is interesting too.
Polytheists have communities that are pantheon specific, community-based practice and devotion.

They are looking to recreate traditions because they want the devotional practices within a community context.

In live blogging this conference, I am following the conventions for conference blogging. (Note: While I wrote the post while in the session, I didn’t post till later.)

Chair: Suanna H. Davis @ Abilene Christian U
Secretary: Linda Gray @ Oral Roberts U

David L. Major @ Austin Peay State U
“Voices of Collaboration: Integrating Styles Separated by Time, Writers, and Purposes”

lit on tech writing and collaboration: does not deal with long term experience
“voice”
The possibility of vocal disjointedness increases over time.
Problems with time are not common, but are not rare either.

Temporal aggravation of vocal disjointedness.
Study for discussion with the writers.

What are the conflicts?
How can the conflicts be minimized?

Voices that different writers bring to a document are very elaborate constructions.
“magical herd quality in writing”

Voice is what allows folks to read in silence and hear the author speaking.
Style implies something that can be easily imitated and tone is limited to one within a work. –Murray

A writer can know and use, and therefore learn and adopt, different voices, this is important for writers. Voice is not inherent nor invariable.
Voice can be analyzed and imitated. Otherwise no collaborative document would ever appear whole.

Voice:
–style: combination of grammatical structures, embodiment of writer’s attitude, etc.
sentence structure (short and choppy, long, periodic, etc)

–tone: emotional quality or degree

–diction: level of language and formality

–point of view: person and whether or not opinion is included, the perspective the author chooses

–person: first, second, or third

–design
Easier to spot and regularize.

Problems with Collaboration:
conflicts with schedules
unfair distribution
shyness
members drifiting away
members excluded
domination
fiction between members
socializing too well or not well enough
conflicts in style
expectations based on solitary writing
protective attitude toward writing
disagreements on revision
expectations for perfection
conflicts between spontaneous and generational writing
–David L. Major gathered this list of 30+ problems for an article he was writing. It is the result of research.

Asynchronous collaboration in clock time is good. Keeps too many cooks out of the kitchen at the same time.
Asynchronous collaboration in calendar time is much more problematic.

Generationally asynchronous writers may write without paying attention to previous choices or problems.

Ideally an editor should still ghostly voices, taking out old tech for example, and create coherency.

Alred, Brusaw, Oliu Handbook of Technical Writing
–Designate one person as the team coordinator
Editor needs official permission to change work over time.
Sometimes someone will take over a project. If there is invested power, the editor can give oversight and avoid this.
Past writers can’t easily vote. They must be assimilated. An actual authority who gives editor power recognizes the past and gives time and approval to work.
–Create a project plan

–Use agreed-upon standards for style and format

The simple part:
gets editor selected
agrees to revise
accepts unifying the voice
gains responsibility
overhauls the whole document
Not so simple: Crafts a new voice

Style Guide
Companies are designed by their documents.
Creating a style guide that shows previous writers’ choices.
If there is a style guide for the organization already, then probably the document has less difficulty.
If there is a style guide, it should be used.
A style guide should be created, if the organization does not have one.
A clear and user-friendly style guide will help the work stay coherent over time.
To avoid having to document everything, then a general handbook would be good to.

A common problem is how to address folks involved.
“The employee may submit reports weekly.” can become “Please submit your reports weekly.”

“An employee who has attended a training orientation may create notes for others to use.” doesn’t become “Having attended a training orientation, create notes for others to use.”

Don’t just search and replace.

The editor of multigenerational asynchronous document must be
analytical
critical
historical

Linda Gray @ Oral Roberts U
“Making the Most of New Technologies”

Have iPhone as timer, computer for Powerpoint, and iPad for paper.

Tech writing profs try to keep up with technology.
Often it becomes overwhelming for a busy prof.
Statistics verify more applications, many of which are free.
iPhone has 365,000 apps available.
In 2010 Apple sold nearly 16M iPads worldwide.
Neverending pursuit = keeping up with tech

Students can help professors learn about new tech.
Professors can help students learn how to apply them readily, reasonably.

Students like DropBox better than Google Docs.

Tech writing students can post on Instructables website, thus turning coursework into instructions.

New tech can serve as a teacher’s new best friend.
We need to learn about the new tech from students and adapt it to the students’ needs.

Web Resources
–YouTube
Web 2.0- theoretical concept
The Machine is Us/ing Us
“Text is linear.”
“Text is said to be unilinear.”
“Text is sometimes said to be somewhat unilienar.”

Pardigm shift
in Norwegian, with English subtitles
It’s folks trying to figure out how to use a book instead of a scroll and calling the helpdesk.
Younger students don’t think about the shift, because they didn’t shift. Older students really appreciate this and the younger students learn about what the shift is like.

Note: Naming conventions need to be specified.
Get it right from the get go.

–Publishers’ Resources (used Prentice Hall, interactive exercises)
Resumes to Revise
Analyzing and Revising Websites
Writing and Revising Proposals
Revising Progress Reports
Writing and Revising Formal Reports
etc.

–University resources
Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL)
They don’t like the layout or the colors, but they do like the wealth of information.

–Other resources
Wridea- http://wridea.com
a free online idea mgmt service that is designed to help writers brainstorm, organize, and improve their ideas
W3- http://www.w3schools.com/default.asp
tutorials for building websites, hexcodes, color pickers, for HTML
BibMe- a bibliography template/generator http://www.bibme.org
(compared EasyBib to BibMe– students all preferred BibMe)

http://www.businessballs.com/freeonlineresources.htm (and other things)

Dropbox http://dropbox.com If students forgot their flashdrive, but their work is here, they are good to go.
Writemaps http://writemaps.com Can adapt to their own particular website. Creates a nice looking sitemap.
Students brought these in.

Instructables http://instructables.com
Students love this. It is fun to look through the site. There are step-by-step instructions with pictures. We look at various of these.
We do process analysis in tech writing and this is a real-life application option.
Beta tested in class.
They post this.
Real audience. They really like this.
If the pictures don’t turn out right, Instructables will take the instructions down. That happened to two of my students this semester.

Social Media
Facebook – http://facebook.com
for contacting students
for alumni fundraising
Linkedin- http://linkedin.com
required in writing internship course
Academia- http://academia.edu
site for CVs and professional links

Hardware iPads
Students at George Fox U chose between MacBooks and iPads. 10% of the iPad recipients were excited; the majority still take notes on paper.
All students at Seton Hall received iPads and use an ebook app allowing them to make marginal notations that professors can read and assess.

Texting and Tweeting
Study by Kirsten Johnson at Elizabethtown College revealed that most students surved “rated the personal professor the highest on measures of competence, trustworthiness, and caring-which adds up to credibility”
Students preferred the prof who tweeted personal info, like “went to movie last night.”
“undergraduate students want to make a connection with their professors that goes beyond knowledge.”

Welcome what the students bring in and try to find uses for them in the technical writing classroom.

Shuwen Li @ U of Arkansas- Little Rock
“Constructing Visual Arguments”

Used prezi, Adobe Flash Player.

I have been studying about visual arguments.
Digital revolution is more and more visual.
All the homepages of major websites use visuals with verbal rhetoric as support.
“Making Sense of the Visual in Technical Communication” by Tiffany Craft Portewig of Texas Tech U in J of Technical Writing and Communication, 2004.

give choices to audiences
promote critical thinking

Visuals are better because words have to be clarified across time and often even by the authors. Words limit people’s interpretations. Context involves a wide range of prior knowledge, historical literacy, etc. However words alone are unable to contain all the necessary contextual clues.
Apparently words are full of meanings, but actually words constrain meanings.

I am not sure I agree that visuals are better. I can see how a student who is in her second language (or third or fourth) studying for a PhD could think that visuals are better than words. But, while I agree that visuals allow for a wider range of reactions, that actually makes words better because the purpose of communication is to communicate and you want to make your meaning clear. Images are less clear, since they are subjective and constrained by context (of both text and the audience’s experiences) while words are constrained by a socially constructed meaning and are thus more likely to accurately communicate what the author or creator of a work was going for.

Visuals allow multiple understandings. They encourage reader to think and see.
Contextual clues are included in visuals. Santa Claus = Christmas
Emotional clues are awakened through color, symbol, etc.
Quick revelation of author’s thought pattern in visuals. Visuals quick revelation accelerates communication.

Visuals help conclude in a universal way.
Good visuals have universal signals such as emotion. Abstract but united. Those signals help folks make interpretations. Visuals become medium for readers.
Went to workshop for international students to present their culture to elementary students.
They were told not to use a lot of words.

Emotional cue could also be used.
Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design

photo of a Chinese student looking straight on at camera (Not the photo at the top of this section.)
writing at a school
dirty face or perhaps simply shadowed
pencil in hand, over paper, desk is blurred but highlighted
Visual helped raise lots of funds in a short amount of time.

a skull of a cow in the bottom half of the picture, with a shadow creating a face
a gaze is created through the eyes of the cow
Demand is not as strong as the gaze of the person.
The dry land says the death of the cow is a result of the drought.
Use of high angle gives the viewer power to draw their own conclusions.
Some viewers think the photo reveals facts. It was investigated. There was indeed a drought.

From the analogical reasoning part, bring in Perelman and XXX approach to argumentation.
argumentation begins with what the rhetor believes the audience will accept: analogy, metaphor, examples
Then move to paradox and dissonance. Then finish with logic.
Focuses on using symbols to create argument.

Assignment done for class.
Hunan Province online. (Where Shuwen Li comes from.)
The map reflects accurate geographic information.
But makes the different cities and places equivalent, even though there are places that are better or larger or more interesting.

Someone in the “Ideology of Making Map” propose fragmentation to break down homogeneity and to make the map interactive.
I tried to make my map a sign system and give the viewers control of the map.
Picked 9 places to highlight and included images pointed to by arrows from the map.
Viewers jump out of the framework of the map and can look at the places individually.
I added textual information. The choices for these were made based on popularity.
I added one video. “A Tourist’s Experience.” Go along with a tourist on a mountain trip.
Another video added for something else that did something else.
Added references from different historical periods.

Equality, democracy, accessibility all were really pushed by Shuwen Li for visuals.

Questions:
??? I haven’t had many students know how to do many computer applications. Is this pervasive for you?
Few students who have not experienced a lot of things.
I make them have the invisibles on in MSWord, because it helps them learn to use Word properly. I give them gold stars for having them on.
It may be that they are majoring in the technical writing.
Some are far more tech savvy than others.

??? WriteMaps? Is that a program where they can design the website?
No. It’s a way to create a site map. It is stored online.

??? Two pictures you had. They were black and white. Is that something that has more appeal? Is the black and white more effective? Why did you pick these two?
Intentional design is black and white.
Colorful is high modality. Gives realistic. Want folks to think about the picture.
So black and white causes people to stop and think more.
Color requires less brainpower.

Gaze is particularly effective to make the audience think.

??? Do you know the psychological study that takes a neutral expression of a man and then in a context?
People will interpret his expression based on the context clues of the surrounding picture.

Visual Language by Kostelnick
Supratextual

Lincoln portraits were always made in a particular way.

In China the photo grabbed everyone’s attention and was positive.

The audience here (at SCMLA) felt the picture was more sad, not as positive.
They also said: Beautiful photo. Compelling.

Do you think it was the gaze that made it compelling? Yes.

??? In collaborative writing, two clients off campus, send them things to revise. One is a medical doctor who has a medical information website. He does webinars with guest speakers. We get them to turn them into short articles. We are dealing with a different genre. Lots of people contributing to the website. We need a uniform style. The students work in groups of three to turn a webinar into an article. We find that looking at participles or infinitives or gerunds for frequency is helpful. It helps the students see how to manipulate the text to make it more consistent.

Yes, that approach is good. Same way we would have literature students finding the style of the author, we have the writing students analyze and determine.

Structure class, structure of English class, The students take a 500-word excerpt of one person’s writing to determine style. Look at some characteristics.
Person
informal v. formal
prepositional phrases
analytical structures

I was thinking of something as simple as a report where everyone writes separate chapters but the editor revises to make it a single style.
Many of the modern recommendations have the final editor enforcing the style guide (or revising the works to match the style guide) at the end.

Out of the top ten things, employers want interpersonal communication. Use collaborative software.
Have students for each group write out a list of responsibilities and the penalties for those. Initial plan.
That helps keep them on track and working.
Students evaluating each other is sometimes seen as a good idea. I (David L. Major) don’t do that because students don’t want to rat each other out.
I ask them to talk about where they are in the process, not at the end.

In live blogging this conference, I am following the conventions for conference blogging.

Chair: Bonnie Noonan at Xavier University
Secretary: Joe R. Christopher, professor emeritus, Tarleton State University

Joe R. Christopher (retired) from Tarleton State University
“JRR Tolkien’s Literary Influence on Narnia”

Michael Ward’s Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens of the Imagination of C.S. Lewis
casual dismissal of Christopher’s (speaker’s) Tolkien’s influence on Narnia

Lewis’ indebtedness

Tolkien told Lansling Green “Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe just won’t do”

parallel situation: When Lewis wrote his Ransom trilogy, Tolkien pointed out some borrowings in a series of letters. Suggests that several names are from his own unpublished works. Lewis’ references to Tolkien’s character in This Hideous Strength–Tolkien says it was plagiarism.

“Lewis was a very impressionable man…” Tolkien is regretting that Lewis was borrowing from Williams.

Critics:
Ward was discussing works that influenced the structure of Narnia.
Christopher said “internal chronology” was probably indebted to Tolkien.
Also influence of Nesbitt in plot patterns.
Tolkien influenced Narnian cosmos (is speaker’s point).
Hutter said Narnia is a biblical parallel.

Tolkien’s structure: (not reading proper reading order)
ch. 8 Narnian creation story The Magician’s Nephew
singing is creating the world
from book of Job “when the morning stars sang together”

The tuneful Voice was heard from high,
Arise ye more than dead.
Then cold, and hot, and moist, and dry,
In order to their stations leap,
And MUSICK’s pow’r obey.
From Harmony, from heav’nly Harmony
This universal Frame began;
From Harmony to Harmony
Through all the compass of the Notes it ran,
The Diapason closing full in Man. (“St. Cecilia’s Day” by John Dryden)

Ainur made first.

Spoke to them of themes of music.
…
It came to pass that he called together and unfolded a mighty theme. The ainur sing together. The creator brings them to see the model of their song, a flat-world universe.

In Tolkien ainur = middle earth cosmos.
In Narnia creation account is from singing.

Is there something unique matching Tolkien in Lewis?
In the creation, Uncle Andrew is “two half sovereigns, two half crowns, and a sixpence” fell from his pocket. The larger pieces created gold and silver tree. Similar to Tolkien’s angelic figures’ tree, caused to grow by her song in a limited recapitulation of her song.

Tolkien is creating a myth and Lewis is writing a children’s story. The trees are both destroyed. Lewis is punning on the names of the coins (sovereigns and crowns) since the trees are smithied into crowns.

Tolkien’s Silmarrillion becomes an adventure. Lewis’ works are a series of adventures.

Killing of Aslan and return to life is a retelling of Jesus. Why does he think he can get away with this retelling?

Could the story be both Jesus and Gandalf (death and resurrection)? Tolkien’s work was not yet published when Lewis’ Narnia story is published.

Gandalf the Great was sent back by a spiritual entity.

Geographic references are very similar.
African and places (such as those with elephants, Two Towers)
Lewis echoes something in Tolkien’s geography
Lewis sent the ship east in Prince Caspian, so he didn’t have to follow actual

Prince Caspian has trees coming to war. (Shakespeare uses it in Macbeth about a medieval poem that gives a discussion of the battle of the trees: Cad Goddeu or The Battle of the Trees.)
Tolkien uses the word for giants, applying them to trees.
Lewis calls the trees by the classical discussion: wood goddesses and wood gods. When they march they are birch girls, etc. accompanied by Bacchus.
In the Silmarillion, voyages go west (as in England), not east.
The end of the world and Aslan’s country are beyond the island of the star, just as Tolkien’s spiritual realm is beyond the western star.

Narnian part begins on top of tall mountain and ends there, the mountain of Aslan.
Tolkien’s cosmos, when it was flat, had the highest mountain west and the folks looked over the world there. Tolkien’s mountain has ice and snow.

Giants live in north in Lewis.
Tolkien mentions stone mountain giants in north.

1st group in Narnia throw rocks as a game.
In Hobbit throw rocks as a game.

Both use “land of giants.”
Gnome = dwarves
The Silver Chair uses classical view of gnomes, miners.
Tolkien uses the mining gnomes.
Narnia: “dragon-like salamanders swimming” like Tolkien: innocent barnards (?)

Second Prophecy of Nandis similarity (from Tolkien)

4 references to “day of death” in Lord of the Rings, evil will be cleared in “the last battle”
Narnia has the Last Battle.

Most of references are not conclusive individually, but taken together there is an impression of Tolkien.

Bonnie Noonan says she is convinced. (I was less convinced.)

Mark Hall at Oral Roberts University
“‘Carrying the Fire’: Images of Light and Darkness in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road”
co-editing a work on science and science fiction

Most in the room had already read the book. Many had seen the movie.

Paper prepared for those who had not read the work prior. (Full disclosure: I have not read the book.)

The tale is set in a post-apocalyptic world, bleak, barren, few humans remaining.
There is little punctuation (doesn’t like semi-colons, he told Oprah).
Only done three interviews in life and only one television interview with Oprah.
few contractions
unnamed main characters: boy and his father

disturbing and unforgettable tale as folks struggle to survive

carrying the fire is a central motif in the novel
The Road is essentially a spiritual journey.

Morning:
first gray light
gunmetal gray light
swirling ash
birdless
dead trees
barren

Father and boy
Father realizes he has one sacred responsibility.

“He knew only that the child was his warrant. If the child is not … God, then…” never God.

“You wanted to know what the bad guys look like. Now you know. … I will kill anyone who touches you. I have been appointed by God…”

“Are we still the good guys?”
“Yes, and we always will be.”

Father talks to God. Whispers. “Are you there? … Have you a neck to throttle?”

Father is sick the entire journey. He is trying to do everything for his son to prepare his son.
When they meet an old man Eli (who says it’s not his name later), he marvels at the boy.
(Similar to The Book of Eli.)

“When I saw that boy, I thought that I had died… I never thought to see a child again… What if I said he is a god? … Where men can’t live, there is no god. … To be on the road with the last god would be a terrible thing. … There is no god and we are his prophets.”

Boy realizes the future is in his hands.

“Yes, I am (the one who has to worry about everything). Yes, I am. I am the one.” (Reminds you of The Matrix.)
Boy seems to exhibit a messianic consciousness.

Observe all kinds of human depravity, especially cannibalism.
So vivid on the imagery. It is quite shocking.
See people holed up in a basement, being kept there as food for other humans.

Man struck by lightning.
Boy wants to help, but Father doesn’t.

A discussion about how to kill themselves and if the father would ever kill the boy.

Both father and son near starvation.
But the boy continues to want to help others.

“carrying the fire”
1. security for boy
2. hope to find another family
3. deathbed of father, encouraging son to go forward
4. son questions a new-found family’s beneficence

Cannibalism must be abjured.

“We wouldn’t ever eat anybody, would we?”
“No.”
Not even if we were starving?
No.
Because we are the good guys?
Yes.
And we are carrying the fire?
Yes.
Okay.

The man and the boy reach the beach, would they ever see a ship again?

“What’s on the other side?”
“Nothing.”
“Maybe there’s a boy and his father and they are sitting on the beach. They could be carrying the fire, too.”
“Yes.”
“But we don’t know so we have to be vigilant.”

Where is the fire? I don’t know where it is!
Yes, you do. I can see it. It is inside you.

Father confirms that son is the good guy.
“You’re the best guy. You always were. The best guys carry the fire.”

Carrying the fire: What does this mean? Some options include:
1. carrying seeds of civilization
2. intentions towards others
3. civility as honorable behavior
4. hope for the future

Hall does think McCarthy tells us what he means by carrying the fire.
As father faces impending death, he gives his final words to his boy.

“Do you remember that little boy? … Do you think that he’s all right? … Do you think that he was lost?”
I don’t think he was lost.
I think he was lost.
No, he’s all right.
But who will find the little boy if he is lost?
“Goodness will find the little boy. It always has.”

This revelation of the father to this little boy gives credence and meaning to the hopeful conclusion of this little boy. Goodness will find the little boy and give him a future.
Carrying = goodness motivated by human decency

People of the fire don’t eat other people.
They reach out to others, even when they are dangerous.

Boy stayed with his father for three days, after his dad dies.
arises out of the ashes of his father’s death
looks down the road

Meets a benevolent family who are willing to take him in.

“How do I know you are one of the good guys?”
“You don’t…”
“Are you carrying the fire?”
“Yes. We are.”
“Do you have any kids? We do.”
“Do you have a little boy?… You didn’t eat them?… And I can go with you?”
“Yes, you can.”
“Okay then. Okay.”

Bleak and terrible book and a hopeful ending.
Kennedy says: “The father was right about goodness. It arrives on cue as a deus ex machina that has been following …”
“redemption of the father and his child… holy”
“will bring goodness to the next generation”

The woman put her arms around him when she saw him.
She talked to him about God.
He didn’t talk to God, but he did talk to his father.
The woman said that was all right.

“He walked back to the woods beside his father. He was wrapped in a blanket as the man had promised. … I’ll talk to you everyday and I won’t forget no matter what. … Then he rose and turned and walked back out to the road.”
(end of book)

Jonathan Himes at John Brown University
“On Lewis’ The Dark Tower“
produced the critical edition of The Old English Epic of Waldere

CS Lewis’ work less familiar to those than Tolkien.
The question of whetehr Lewis wrote The Dark Tower is a posthumous discussion. It was not published until 1977.
Men use chronoscope to see across universes.
Handwriting is indistinguishable from Lewis’, so it is not fake.
One may conclude that he worked on it in stages. Lack of polish and crudity is reasonable, because it was a draft and abandoned.
Himes said he was trying to write an allegory against sexual addiction.
Abortive attempt by Lewis to portray deviant and self-centered sexuality.

Notorious episodes of “stinging man” or “unicorn lord.”
Butting his head into the minds of victims.
McFee character (from That Hideous Strength, statements from both are the same) plays a major role and assists Lewis afterward in narrating them.
Scudamore is the assistant to the chronoscope’s views. He sees a double in another dimension and gradually grows a sting of his own. He has a headache in sympathy while waiting for his fiancee. The double of S- sees the double of his fiancee (admirable, old fashioned double), who tells what happened. They grew up together until he went to become a stinging man/unicorn lord.
People could either become a stinging man OR a minion.

The stinging man looks through his chronoscope at the Cambridge man.
Watches Lewis, Ransome, and McFee “while stroking his forehead’s appendage” for ten minutes
“They’ve got one of our buildings and hundreds of our people… It’s all mixed up with us somehow.”

Ransome: “contains these replicas… there may be any number of others”
McFee: “It’s long odds against particles … in the same body… got the boy and the girl…”

Lines of dialogue explains how they can find themselves in another universe.

Sting used to produce more replicas, while observing, and creating minions.

Lewis says the many-bodied idol can’t be described without endangering others…
Idol matches with the unicorn’s stinger
Scudamore finds that human brains are powered by chronoscopes in their alternate/evil universe.
Exchange twisted minds with happy, normal people.
Decent earth folk have their psyches erased while the evil folks have taken their place on our earth.

Near the end of the fragment McFee and Ransome realize that it is another time and it is coming closer to us. Eventually they won’t need a chronoscope to corrupt our world.

“deviant solitary” = masturbation

Lewis’ interpretation might be “just say no to sex.”
Spenser and others say Christian chastity is beautiful married sex. Not the absence of sex.

Lewis’ conservative view of normative sex: “full of goodwill, not forgetful of God… embraces…” and then next time may regard the person as a thing, a way to get a feeling

Radcliffe equates stingings with sex warned against.
BUT private sexual fantasy uses the other person as a sexual object without the other person’s permission, thus breaking their relationship in the masturbator’s psyche.
The stinging man is at the mercy of his own horn, but it grows wearisome and doesn’t want it.

Radcliffe believes Scudamore may castrate himself “handing over their stings”
BUT Lewis’ presentation introduces the option of sacrificial release
Stings are objectification, but

Warning against dangers of totalitarianism and sexual addiction.
Both have in common treating other people as objects.
In Dark Tower the semi-obscene literature is too crude to discuss totalitarianism and sexual addiction.
Scholars in Cambridge are watching Scudamore play with his sting.
Male or female victims– Their sex is immaterial to the unicorn man. “I am your son and your daughter,” says one of the drones/jerkies/minions.
Scholar is older and a bore. He sees the alternate universe as art. He isn’t shocked or titillated anymore by watching the unicorn man.

Thomas Hubbard’s Homosexuality in Greece and Rome
Plato has Socrates refer to their life as “much to be pitied”
Homosexual promiscuity and heterosexual XXX were similar.
Hubbard adopts word “pervert.”
Stoic philosophy was profoundly against any sexuality against nature.
refers to Romans

Lewis was well-read in these texts.
His ideas were influenced by the texts.
Long term vices, indulged without restraint, are worse.
If Christianity is true, an individual is very important because his vices are stronger, more, and thus become hell. (So a pederast becomes even more pederastic. How would that happen in Hell?)

Adjectives applied to The Dark Tower by Bonnie Noonan:
violent
obscene
crude
atrocious
heinous
lascivious
repugnant
smutty
pornographic
sickening
unwholesome

Questions:

For Himes, some answered by Christopher and some by Himes.
Dark Tower was abandoned earlier in Lewis’ life? Yes.
Surpised by Joy was written in 1944. Is it the fact that he is getting married that causes him to abandon him?
He re-wrote the bulk of the Dark Tower in This Hideous Strength.

There are corrections on the Dark Tower in blue ink and the blue ink didn’t come into existence until after 1944. It came in later. So if Lewis’ work, he definitely worked on it two different times.

Alistair Fowler was shown a typed version when he was working under Lewis. We don’t know what that looked like, but it was in existence.

Dark Tower is poorly written. A bad rough draft.
Lewis normally wrote good first drafts.

Christopher thinks that Lewis wrote something like this. But Dark Tower was probably changed/padded by Hooper. (Had the tumult of his editing died down in the US? Hooper asked recently. Supposedly Lewis’ work was burned and Hooper took it out. The man who supposedly burnt the papers said he doesn’t remember any fire.)

Fowler said he doesn’t remember the white riders at the back, but they aren’t as interesting as the things in the first part, so he might not remember. (In letter to Christopher.)

Was Lewis reacting to any kind of Freudian psychology?
Yes. Says Scudamore has read his Freud.
Narrator admits this could be read in a freudian way.
Narrator says they would have been appalled to see this depravity in a back alley too.

Idea of depravity of man and yet the books are hopeful. Lewis is making a moment of critique. McCarthy is offering a possibility of hope.

For Hall
No Country for Old Men the sheriff has a dream where his father is carrying the fire.
Is there some kind of arc on carrying the fire in all three novels? Is there a McCarthy reaction against modernism and postmodernism in this?

Answer: I almost put that in. Do you think it has the same meaning as it does in this book?
Response: Maybe not a meaning, but insistence upon a functioning moral order.
Answer: He is interested in something that is worth carrying on in humanity.

For Christopher
Mentioned the story of resurrection in cannonical gospels, curious of how Lewis would have viewed that and how it might have shaped his thinking.

Answer: Lewis makes negative comments on the whole de-mythologized thing.
Hall says: Myth “dying god who without ceasing to be myth comes down from heaven to earth. … This myth is fact. It actually happened.”
Lewis saw myth and fact coming together in birth and resurrection.
Myth is fact.
Christopher: That is what Tolkien was arguing. B/c Lewis responded to myths where gods were reborn and Tolkien says “the Christian story is a myth and a fact.”
Lewis later stated that the resurrection myths were earlier prefigurings of Jesus. (responding to The Golden Bough.) They are marvelous myths and one time myth became fact.
Hall: Baldar the Beautiful is dead. That is one thing that attracted him to Christianity.

For Christopher
Are you advocating creative plagiarism?
So Lewis was plagiarizing from Tolkien?
Christopher: Yes, Tolkien would have thought it was plagiarism.
Tolkien children had the books. But Tolkien must not have read them, because he would have been writing to Lewis or others complaining of Lewis’ use of his work. Lewis was a magpie. At the end, Tolkien decided that no one should borrow or have ideas from others and so he denied all the influences on his own work.

In live blogging this conference, I am following the conventions for conference blogging.

Brian Blackburne at Sam Houston State University
“An Xtra-Special Use of New Media in the Technical Writing Classroom”

motivation:
We use it in our own lives: blogs, fb, Google Docs, YouTube, social media…
Students are using social media but not using it in a good way.

Industry follows popular trends:
Geico and Toyota used Xtra.
Toyota let them “make your own story.”
6-8 companies have asked Blackburne to spearhead their social media campaigns
relevant in field of tech comm

Employers seek “social media” experts:
1000+ jobs
83 looking for social media in marketing

Students need us to:
bridge gap
encourage them in how to practice rhetorical analysis
apply traditional rules to new media

overview of software:
What is Xtranormal?
text-to-video
all online
non-linear
3-D modeling
100+ actors
multilingual
socially integrated- can post to YouTube, Twitter, etc
Hundreds of characters. Can have one or two characters.

Flash-based
Can do your own cuts or let them do

Why use Xtranormal?
Serves as an icebreaker
Teaches students new skills
Remediates typical writing
Engages students as creators, testers, and editors (Software doesn’t cooperate with everything they do.)

Use it as:
Introductory assignments
rhetorical analysis and audience awareness
team development
in-class workshop early on (great way to get them excited about the class)

What are the goals?
Involve students in everyday business scenarios
Use “fun” tech in a meaningful way
Foster team work
Engage students as critics and evaluate

The assignment:
One assignment: Had them create the plagiarism policy for the university.
In a possible scenario
work for the university
teach a policy to incoming students
competition
They choose the winner.

Challenges (& fun):
synthesizing information
professionalizing the tool: tone, idiom, and formality
managing roles: writer, editor, and evaluator

Outcomes:
knowledge (define the policy)
comprehension (understand the meaning of the policy and be able to rephrase/reframe it)
application (translate writer/editor/manager into group work)
analysis (what parts of the plagiarism policy are most important, do the students not understand)
synthesis (putting the plagiarism policy into a coherent discussion between two characters in an interesting and informative way)
evaluation (how well was the video done)
Note: The parts in the parentheses are my additions.

New version launched Oct. 26th.
Just launched yesterday.
“The New Teacher’s Pet”
$10/mth and $.50 a student in each class
Allowing grading within the version
Use it focusing on teachers teaching students, but I use it the other way.
Learning can be hard (the studetns realize).

What’s next with the research?
working with students
collecting data: perceptions and performance
sharing research

Deb Williams at Abilene Christian University
“To Google Docs or Not: Making More Informed Choices with Technology”

Students leave classroom without an understanding of when to use what and exactly how to use it.
I am using business writing because tech writing is not being recognized by university.

Business Writing Issues:
thoughtful use of tech
application of course principles and theory
rhetorical issues

Our Issues:
knowledge of or willingness to learn the tech
appropriate assignments
appropriate pedagogies

Premise:
A combination of pedagogies, especially service learning when used in learning teams frames the classroom with a “work-place” perspective, helps students to have a stronger sense of how to use what kinds of technology, how to generate documents, etc.

Part of the problem is the delivery system.
Apple-focused university.
Not everything they can do in their workplace.
WebX account- for distance education program, but can’t present work of English. Excellent, expensive.

Free trial sections. But they often use credit cards.

One of best sites is “the vyew” for team work. Free option. Don’t have to put in a credit card.
Students and teachers can work together, especially to work with teams. Can carve out time online for group meeting.
You can make different folks the main presenter, with uploading capabilities.
They can take this into the workplace.
helps write collaboratively
easier version of WebX
team running

Google Docs
Employers are saying students don’t write together well.
We have Gmail and Google Docs (PowerPoints, spreadsheets, documents). Share with a few a lot, give different levels of accessibility.

Google Docs is still clunky, doesn’t support a lot that their documents are going to have to do.
Spacing is set by Google Docs.

Or do you email around a Word document with reviewer toolbox?
That works very well within academics and workplace.

Students need to understand when to use the technology.
Students need to think about
audience (do they know, will they understand, can they access)
purpose: needs for the document

Why should students care?
Service learning
–prepares students to be responsible citizens
–offers a course-based service experience that produces the best outcomes
We want them to have sensitivity about constraints. They get that with service learning.

Problem with service learning:
If you send them to the client, they will often take lots of time the client doesn’t have and not create something that the client can use.

Quality control:
Learning Teams (Larry Michaelsen; Dee Fink)
Individual accountability for tehory (occurs outside class)
Individual accountability to the team
Teacher-observed application of theory/principles creates more learning opportunities

Go with an entire fiction in the classroom, creating a technical firm that is being hired by the various nonprofits. Present professor as senior writer and students as teams of other writers. This helps establish the pattern of approval and questions tend to go to the professor rather than the client (and thereby helping the client rather than overwhelming them with a rash of student requests for information).

Teams must be thoughtfully formed and managed.
Students must be made accountable.

The Keys
No technology for its own sake. There must be a reason for its implementation.

Offer rhetorical context(s) through pedagogy(ies) and assignments. Make these explicit.

Learn from/with students. Don’t isolate yourself from the learning experience your students are having. As you try new things, you can learn as well. Share that learning experience with the students.

Michael Charlton at Missouri Western University
“One Font, Two Fonts, Red Fonts, Blue Fonts: Teaching Design Software to Technical Communications”

Claims
1. Tech comm has long recognized doc design choices matter.
2. Tech comm students need to understand and apply basic principles of doc design as part of professionalization.
3. Students often don’t see design as important.
4. Sometimes they resist because of the design of the software itself.

Teaching Desktop Publishing
EPR 326 (English Public Relations)– required
BS in Speech Comm with a public relations concentration
also master’s in Public Relations
taught spring semester (20-25 students) All the computer labs can hold.
is a design class
Required software: Adobe Creative Suite, mostly teach in design

textbook: Robin Williams The Non-Designer’s Design

Learn professional grade design software:
applicaton of commonly accepted design choices
practice working for a “real world” client
making connections between the visual document and its overall meaning
professionalization

Major assignments:
Business stationery (business card, letterhead, envelopes)
newspaper (later web-based)
flyer
postcard and brocuhere
newsletter (client project)
poster (ethics assignment: poster offering credit cards to freshmen)
final assignment:

Problems:
tech comm students were struggling with the class–
particular signal error problem
Look of doc would be sloppy
Students had difficulty making initial choices in graphics, colors, etc
When asked to defend choices, would concentrate on words, the verbal text.

Pressed to use “white space” or “eye relief” in defense, didn’t do that. Contextually they use different words to explain their texts:
cohesive (visual) v. coherent (verbal)
arrangement (visual) v. paragraphing (verbal)
proximity (visual) v. sequence (verbal)
etc

Survey:
How important is the look of doc to the reader?
How do you think you did with the look of the document?
There is bias. I’m the “visual rhetoric nerd.”
Only 12 students.

All but one said:
doc design choices are unimportant
OR
doc design choices are separate from the text

Unimportant:
“I take care of the words”

Separate:
“Everybody knows what really matters is what you have to say”
“I’m good at words, not pictures.”

Students enjoy the class but do not understand.

The only outlier
“I get the feeling that what it says and how it looks are kind of the same thing.”
An improvement on a simple form/content binary.

Causes:
Tech comm students don’t connect at least partially because of the software.
Preconceptions and cultural bias toward text as more “meaningful.”
Problems with structure and instructure
Lack of scaffolding in the degree as a whole.
Need to serve multiple audiences and disciplines.
Problem with the software itself.

Software:
CS4 (In design’s menu)
Content choices separated from design choices.
Little attention paid to copy. Everything is about layout and design. That would be fine, except it is supposed to balance layout and composition.
Stressed (by menus) = spacing, font choice, color choice
5 color backgrounds, can create your own color
BUT very few ways to edit text.
A text box and that’s all.
Even in that, there are font selection, emphasis of font, weight of font. No spellcheck in the software.
–Adobe has completely ignored the textual component.
Something else: no review menu (no preview), no overall check.
Menus are all visual issues.
Software reinforces their idea that text and visuals are separate.

Software reinforces their idea that text and visuals are separate.

Everything in the program is about layout.

Conclusions:
recognize the limitations of software and communicate the RHETORICAL effects of doc design
explain how the software exacerbates problems
ironic programs of bad design
Stress the software as something STUDENTS use.

Elizabeth Tebeaux from Texas A&M
“Technical Writing and Social Media: A Contradiction of Terms and Realities”

Honors: about half class cannot write a good squeaky clean sentence

In groups, bad habits get reinforced.
Classes are enormous so lots of collaborations are being done.
I’m trying to make sure they are ready for the workplace– mostly engineers.

Essentials of Technical Communication: Nobody Wants to Read What You Write
little book by Elizabeth Tebeaux and Sam Dragg
5×7, fits in backpack
less than $50 on Amazon (why we haven’t revised)

Students think people want to read what they write.
Teachers are the only people who read what they write.

Security
One of my real concerns is security.
Social media is not safe and not secure.

Collects news on security issues.
Talk about them in class.
Students don’t understand or get security rules.
They can get fired for fb over lunch.

A teacher in Texas gave the answers to the TAKS test and put that on fb.
She was out of a job within a week.
You never know who is looking at what you write.

Secure social media is a contradiction of terms.

Third world countries are looking at fb as much as US.
They are looking at and paying attention to stuff.

Out there and stays there:
No telling who is going to read what they upload.
Bright students, but they have never thought about this.
I tell them to stop spilling your guts on fb. Think about it: 20 years from now, do you want this out there?

Remind students that if they violate security protocols, that is a major crime.
The same rules that protect us (FERPA) protect everybody else.
Sometimes we are only 8 hours ahead of the hackers.
You know about the breeches the Chinese have done with our Dept of Defense computers.
“Anonymous” is the group of hackers that give things on the cloud to EVERYONE.
Students need to be careful.

Rhetoric of fear
Need to think about the audience…

HIPPA won’t let you fax or email your health information.
Because the information can get out if they are sent over the net or the phone.

The intellectual property of the firm IS the organization.
You cannot separate it.
“If somebody gets hold of this, what can they do with it?”
Don’t ever talk about your company online.
There will be rules about what you can do with telephones and computers.
If you have a company cell phone, your phone discussions.

Google: Detroit mayor and text messages
They are online.
Lurid text messages between mayor and his aide

Every text message you send can be used legally.

Use a separate credit card for online.
Only one card for online stuff.
W/ City Bank. (They are the best for hinky stuff.)

Our students have to use company browsers appropriately.
A&M fired a guy for his lunch-hour browsing of porn sites.

Spend a lot of time on the security and safety issues.

Pair in Mexico sent out tweets with false information about murders.
Some people died because of that false tweet.
30 years prison sentence for those tweeters.

More and more companies (police organizations and towns) are tracking what people are doing on facebook.

That’s a rhetorical situation.

We can take several papers and look at them.

—What if we went on facebook and looked at someone’s information? What could we find out about them? What if we were someone who was looking to hire them? What if we were someone looking to smear them?

HomeDepot.com The ad goes out to 15 companies, if you click on something 15 folks know what you are clicking on.

Maine:
email sent about “not going to waste money on that little town”

Social media thing from town.

Read your paper… Or ask students to bring things to class about breaches. … We have 20 minutes between classes and several students bring things to class.

“Rhetoric of Fear”

Discussion:
Fb pages for employers. Brian gives out a list of questions that the students have to answer using their own social media.

FB: Student groups have been shut down, unfunded, or suspended for inappropriate actions.

One prof every semester: “How many of you would like to share your facebook page with us?”
No one has ever said yes.

The engineering firms have someone who checks the social media specifically.

Teach hardline graphics, because there is a need for this.
Work on basic, foundational correspondence.
Email etiquette.

Set up a case:
Students had to write a group of people and tell them they weren’t going to have jobs.
The president agreed to look at them.
The students don’t know how to be tactful.

FBI didn’t like fb because of security level.

When I teach tech writing, the students love the visual design things, but not on the words. I teach graphic designs students.

Having students do it on MSWord helps students focus on design and yet words are strong.

Newsletters are often taught in Word because that is common and available.

Service Learning: Must connect to course. So you could have them work in food bank, but then they write a reflection page about their experience.

How would someone who is teaching first year comp adopt the principles of writing for a client?
FYC students could write the inquiry letters.
Newsletters could be written by the first year students. Data is gathered, but a matter of arranging it. So perhaps they could take on the writing.
Fund-raising letters.
Gather and write info for grant writing, if nonprofits could articulate ideas.
One thing I had them do was to rewrite the materials for student orientation. (They worked with HR and it changed.)
Look at the work your university is doing and how to improve the docs.

Looked at websites as visual and verbal rhetoric. Websites had a huge impact on my applying there.
Need a rhetorically appropriate website. Otherwise people will be turned off.
Technical design and rhetoric websites specifically should have excellent websites.

Working in industry keeps you fresh and current.

Teach Humanities classes, so many future graphic artists and animators.
Have students who devote their lives to graphic design and a lot of times they are sad that it is already out there.

Look for the gap.

We are not developing technical writers at A&M but they know how to write so they end up writing it.

Troubled personally and professionally about my senior English majors who could not write a grammatically correct sentence.

Will pull the awful sentences out of the paper, put them online, and we edit them together.
The students’ sentences get better.
Part of the problem is that our colleagues lack abilities to mark.
People quit teaching grammar.

Contextualization of grammar.

I have presented 33 conference presentations in the last three years. But I’ve learned a new term: “lightning shorts.”

Apparently “lightning shorts” are the humanities equivalent of the social science poster presentation.

The Digital Humanities Caucus of the XXX solicits conference attendees to present their newest digital projects or related work in “lightning shorts”. These 3-5 minute presentations, held XXX from 10-11:45 am at the annual conference at the XXX, allow any attendee to present their on-going or completed work in the digital humanities, receive community feedback, and participate in a culminating discussion of issues raised by the presentations.
…
We are seeking participants to offer lightning talks related to current projects, papers, proposals, publishing, teaching, or related activities: just about anything digital in XXX. We want to know what you’re working on–but briefly! There’s no need to write a mini-paper. Extempore speaking from PowerPoint slides, a Web site, or your own memory are all encouraged. We will have a computer/projector in the room with PowerPoint loaded and live Internet access available.

In live blogging this conference, I am following the conventions for conference blogging.

Travis Frampton
Hardin-Simmons University

“Dueling Discourses: Spinoza’s Contribution to Biblical Interpretation, Literary Criticism, and Scientific Methodology”

early modern science brought new theological problems
Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo took apart Platonic and Aristotelian science

Was the biblical world the same as what was unfolding?
What would tribes in the Americas and Africa, not listed in Genesis, mean?
How would a heliocentric worldview change?

Three monotheistic religions: Judaism, Catholicism, and Protestantism… Really?

Spinoza said:
Bible spoke of God imaginatively. Prophets wrote according to their own understanding.

Wanting to study the text with fresh eyes, wanted to show that Bible was historical and contingent. That it was a canon. Very core was rooted in and formed by history. A compendium of works from different vantage points, languages, cultures…
Created the Bible as a natural thing.
Protestant view that Bible would interpret itself was false.
Reader passive or active?
Bible, authors, readers, interpretation were all caught in the web of history.
Reading history was a thoroughly human affair.
No reader can escape history.
Interpretation must appeal to universal reason.
Revealed knowledge is possible, but it cannot be spoken to or about. (Gorgias again)

Those who made use of reason could not be called prophets.
Their form of communication allowed audience to accept or reject what they read.
Accepting the meaning of another = dogma
Adopting views of others (Aristotle, Calvin, etc) is bad.
Reader must engage the text itself.

Circular reasoning (Bible true b/c God’s word. God’s word b/c true.) bad.

Biblical writers had a lack of understanding about nature. Natural knowledge poor.

Spinoza’s method= “Since Bible is concerned with things that cannot be seen in nature, Biblical meaning must be seen in the Bible alone.”

Secularized the study of Scripture.
Chapters 7-12, does a Biblical study.
Rejected Mosaic author of Pentateuch.
Genesis through II Kings—late date.
Saw Bible as one historical work among many.

Called one group of interpreters skeptics. They were cautious about reason’s ability to understand Scripture. Word of God was over reason.
This was the most common and orthodox during 17th C.

Dogmatists= Accommodated Scripture to reason.
No conflict between faith and philosophy, both were true.

Reason and Scripture might not be in harmony.
Reason = truth
Scripture = meaning
Those are not necessarily the same.

Philosophy should not interpret the Bible. (philosophy = natural science in the 17th C, metaphysics and/or natural studies)
Truth is the way you see the world operate. It is what it is. You don’t have a text explaining it. Nature never explains itself.
Before the Protestant Reformation, Nature was a way of giving meaning to human lives. (What would this do with OE works?)
Truth is modernistic, reason able to arrive at based on nature and human mind.
Meaning is not from philosophy.

Meaning is the way people might talk about things: hearsay evidence, historical studies, culture.

Spinoza was afraid that commoners would not be able to read the Bible if philosophy gained a foothold.

“The rule of interpretation must be nothing other than the natural light of reason that is common to all men…” –Spinoza

Sometimes a passage might not make sense just because it did not make sense.

Two different forms of discourse: theology and philosophy.

Revelation of God = book of Scripture and book of Nature (common belief for centuries)

For Spinoza, book of Nature was true.
Book of Scripture was a historical, cultural, imaginative work to discuss the world they saw.

Scripture and theology described God’s work with a beginning and an end.
Spinoza does not think Nature has a beginning and an end. Has no purpose.
Humans speak anthropomorphically.

By loving God and loving one’s neighbor…

Philosophy = reason, the way to speak about the world as it is, explaining nature
Theology = speak about the world metamorphically, the world as it could be or as it ought to be

Theological discourse needed to be kept separate from philosophy.

Not confident in social progress.
Not everyone thought rigorously and soundly about the world.

Moral thinking contributing a great service to society. Truth was not a final end or goal for society. Ethics were.
For Spinoza to suggest as much, how one lived was more important than why one lived that way. Actions were better than beliefs. (This is a common sci fi/fantasy belief system. Valdemar/Lackey does this.)

True religion is a reasonable religion.

17th C context
Lot of people speaking on God’s behalf.
Trying to find out true matter of God on earth was bad, because was leading to war, etc.
Deeds prioritized over talk (from book of James).

Questions and answers:
His most famous work is The Ethics.
His work is very awkward.
Trying to write ethics as math.
Worth reading because a lot of his final principles that he believed could be arrived at in the same way that Jesus’ understanding of the way we should act. Jesus’ text show how we can get along best period. Can also find this same example from nature and social relationships, if you have more time.

Spinoza sees salvation here and now. A good Sadduccee.
Not a good Jewish person, excommunicated because he denied the immortality of the soul.

How might he be used to critique worldview thinking? Truth isn’t the final end.
Jamie Smith at Calvin College—cognitive limited

Understanding Midrash is key to understanding Jesus’ parables. Really need to get this.

Fascinating idea. Look at the Jewish translations.
Robert Alter on Biblical Language
These two things don’t quite line up but very generous reader to the background.

*SWCCL = Southwest Conference on Christianity and Literature

In live blogging this conference, I am following the conventions for conference blogging.

Philip Mitchell
Dallas Baptist University

“realistic biography… reveals about a man the precise points which are unimportant” (G.K. Chesterton)

In the early persons, he began to develop an unsystematic approach to biography. Rejected historiography. Without a sense of the emotional tone, the purposes of bio were aborted. Picturesque, comic, and heroic show the person.

Discovered that a life can sum up an era or an attitude.

Nothing of the formalist fear of the ______ fallacy. Told what a person was thinking and why.

It’s a call for sympathy from the readers’ part. (1895-1905)

Has an arresting strangeness in each biography.
Coins counter-intuitive terms to explain the periods.
Written originally for newspapers.
Particular order in books shows care.

Opening essay presents the ideas.
Next five are aesthetic.
Three are prophetic.
Sandwiched by essays on normal.

Essays on humor (Bret Harte)
Then heroic v. weak national memory
Then four Victorian cases

12 Types, starts with Charlotte Bronte and ends with Sir Walter Scott.

Point/counterpoint pattern.

Model Chesterton’s wisdom methodology.

Critic: Don’t put all the folks together the way he does.

Instead, Mitchell says, it’s a presentation. Positive and weak power. Chesterton’s judgments have a powerful immediacy.
1. awaken reader to other worlds worth arguing with
2. reader gains wisdom by joining with

Bronte:
The real that is worth recounting is the “indestructible germ,” even when it is minor.
Locating the essence of someone is the important thing.
Can’t concentrate on the comic or shocking.
Life is invested with sweetness.
All houses are houses of joy and terror.

Chesterton extends an argument for narratives, not fiction, but human narrative sets.

Extends this principle to William Morris, “Wm Morris and His School.” Rightfully forced Victorians to face up to their ugliness. Morris did not understand the “human figures in the round.” Could not love the “fabulous monster of industrial London.”
Art did a world of good for Victorian homes, but not for humanity.

Morris, the lover of fairy tales, should have known better.

Experience sympathy with past eras that they would be tempted to slough off.

“Optimism of Byron” unconscious buoyancy v. real pessimism
Everything has once belonged somewhere, including the affective pessimism.
True pessimism is different.

“Pope and the Art of Satire” is on the nature of true wit.
Challenges readers for the lack of their understanding of the 18th C.
What the modern reader lacks is what Pope possesses.
True hatred requires full awareness of what is hated (thus satire is better).

St. Francis essay.
Hopes to awaken audience to “sensual excitement that is present in the practice and goals of the Franciscans.”
Asceticism, too, is staggering optimism, fit to put all people capering.

Rostand essay.
Heroic comedy, Cyrano de Bergerac, love of love and love of death are two passions of humanity.
Poetry is great.

These four historical pieces, psychological and spiritual centers of the world view.
“romance of civilization” (see list on handout)

More nuanced historical judgment.
Charles II is open to and not engaged with religion and science.
Aspects of human beings remain unaccounted for in every system.
Charles II gains sympathy, but more pity. Epicurean of a lesser type in a protected polity.
“Strange unreality broods over the period.”
“Our restraints are larger than their liberty.”

Robert Louis Stevenson:
Critics are unable to see optimism of heroic violence.
Love of the good and the beautiful for its own sake. This includes an imaginatively lived experience.
Loyalist to the world’s physical goodness and humanity’s dramatic explorations.

Carlyle, able to love God and the great, but not the regular person.
“cosmic irony”
To understand Carlyle you must distinguish him from later philosophers.
Says he comes close to Christianity when he sees a leader who is loving and magnanimous.
Seed of Carlyle’s madness (which lead to Nietzche) came from his inability to recognize the evil of slavery.

Tolkien

Savonarola as an iconoclast was needed to cleanse them to aspire to something beyond taste.

Sir Walter Scott- romantic imagination to tell us what life really is
Loves oratory. But a poor person’s voice can speak well.
Modernist realism cannot imagine attributing good speech to the poor.
“false cosmos, a lying and horrible perfection” = what others say (biographies?)

Hopes to open contemporaries to the past.
Not in distance, but in empathic manner.

Romance and adventure, and other genres, to make sense of other lives.

Question:
How did idea for this paper develop?

Chesterton’s approach to history. In middle of a book on…
Broad model for the thing.
Looking at individual texts more closely.
Each essay has the pattern.

Was curious if this happens in the book too.
Not just getting the audience to look at the past but also a pattern to build a case.

The only real difference is the second part (twenty total) is humility and inaction.
Queen Victoria’s strategic inaction gave her the strength to influence the masses.
He calls her attitude a raging humility, made it possible to keep the excesses of the British system in check until Edwardianism.

*SWCCL= Southwest Conference of Christianity and Literature