today is a good day
Jul
12
Apr
03
bound vs. unbound: a preface, afterwards
This is an experiment.
It is a thesis, a research project, a survey of Digital Humanities.
Also: a blog, a digital archive of thoughts.
It will be a printed PDF, and a bound book.
What happens when you take something meant to be traditional, something that fits neatly inside of the Academic Box, and execute it on a different platform? What happens when you smash together old-school and new media? Where do you end up when you play with the limitations and possibilities of bound forms of scholarship and unbound mediums of production?
Because I am writing on a field that is intersectional – digital + humanities – it seemed only fitting to work the digital into my humanities project. Working within a medium that we are studying allows us to understand it better, to get a deeper feel for how things play out in practical application. Blogging is only one small aspect of the digital world, but it can shed insight into what differences exist between writing a conventional essay versus writing piecemeal for the public eye.
For ENGL328 last year, where the seeds of this project were born, we read Anne Frances Wysocki’s awaywithwords: On the possibilities in unavailable designs (2005)*. She starts her essay by asking: “Under what conditions would you accept a [graduate research] paper handwritten in crayon on colored construction paper?” (I rendered a part of the subsequent assignment for that class in crayon, of course.) Wysocki ends, in part, with the following:
As we analyze and produce communications, we need to be asking not only what is expected by a particular audience in a particular context but also what they might not expect, what they might not be prepared to see. It is in the apparently unavailable designs … that we can see what beliefs and constraints are held within readily available, conventional design. (59)
Blogging, of course, has constraints – every method of authorship does. But these constraints are different from a traditional essay. The reading experience, too, is different when we choose alternate platforms. Different is something I’ve sought to highlight throughout the project. Our expectations of a word like “thesis” come apart when we choose these unavailable designs, when we try something new. It is with these ideas in mind that I have presented my thesis on my blog, in hopes that doing something different may lead us to question what we’ve been doing all along.
Enjoy.
*Wysocki’s lack of spacing in her title is intentional and meant to get her reader to question the constraint of word spacing and what effect it has on our reading experience. When I typed this out the first time, I accidentally put the spaces in – apparently my reading of it is “away with words.”
Posted by erin | 0 commentsApr
01
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Here is the typical method of publishing: research, research, research, write, edit, write, edit, write, edit, publish, full stop.
Here is the blog version: research/write/edit, publish, research/write/edit, publish, research/write/edit, publish, ad infinitum.
Over the last few months I’ve written a number of posts that have been published quickly upon finishing. Some I wrote over the course of a week, some in a few hours. Some contain higher volumes of outside content, some contain no links at all. Some I read numerous and varied sources to formulate, some came strictly from my own thoughts.
My writing and reading have been distributed over the course of months, as opposed to compartmentalizing them neatly into beginning – middle – end. Because this is a blog, it would make no sense to do all of my research at the start of the project, spend a month or two writing and editing, and then publish all of the posts in rapid succession at the end. That’s just not how the medium works.
Too, there are expectations of readers here that are different from an academic paper. A blog is a place from which people expect consistent content production. Whether that consistency is daily, weekly, monthly, or something more loosely defined, what is not expected is a one-shot deal, a blog that is written all at once and never updated again. Constant content (say that three times fast), not final product, is the game here.
What that also means, in regards to a project that must be turned in, is that there exists an ellipsis at the end of my thesis – a place where it “ends,” except, not really.
I am wrapping this project up because I have to – because deadlines exist - not because it is ending. It might be more appropriate to say that I’m “wrapping it up.” My future work in this space and my future investigation of / participation in the Digital Humanities will not be classified under a CRN number, but it will exist, and in the very same format as my project thus far. This is yet another thing that the muddling of publishing models achieves: a tension in value status of “complete” vs. “ongoing.”
When we complete undergraduate papers, they get turned in, graded, and handed back. They exist to be read by one and only one person: our professor. If we’re working on an especially large project, perhaps other professors or advisors will read them. Maybe if we’re proud of something we’ll send it to a friend or family member. That gives us a grand total audience count of, what? Six? Maybe eight, if we’re ambitious? I’d say that’s generous, even for our bigger papers. The more standard audience count is exactly 1, plus whatever filing cabinet or trash bin they end up in once the semester is over.
This blog, in contrast, will likely (and hopefully) be read by many people, over many years. Its digital form will last as long as I want it to, and its content will show up in any number of different Google searches or ping-backs on other sites. The ellipsis at the end of my thesis and its digital nature ensure that five or ten years from now, someone may read this very entry. Or they may read future entries, and scroll through the archives to see what I’ve said in the past. The point is that blogs are not linear or constrained to a certain timeline and a certain audience, at least in comparison to academic publications.
Which leaves me wondering: what’s the value in that?
What I mean specifically is: to what end is the ellipsis at the end of my project a valuable part of my project? What is the value of continued and unaffiliated exploration after a grade has been given? In most cases of undergraduate work, our research ends when our classes end. We put things down and forget about them – publish, full stop. But when we explore new arenas of publishing models, ones that a) are read by people outside of our classroom, and b) lend themselves to continued production, our work never really ends. It shouldn’t, at least, if we’re committed to the form.
So the ellipsis dangles. It begs of me: “You’re not finished. You can’t be.” And I’m glad it’s there, because I’m pretty sure I’ll have plenty more to say…
Posted by erin | 0 comments
