Apr

03

bound vs. unbound: a preface, afterwards

writing

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.”

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Mar

30

potential academia

writing

What is this, anyway?

Is this thesis of mine an essay? Is it a blog? What genre does it fall under? What happens when, in a couple of weeks, I use Blurb to turn it into a book? Can it be categorized at all?

One thing that this project has accomplished is the muddling of publishing models, of what we think of when we think “academic research paper.” This was intentional from the beginning, but the process has made clearer the difficulty in moving from something traditional to something digital. Or, rather, in defining that something. There are clear differences in how I write here, in this online space, than how I have written research papers in the past.

I wouldn’t, for instance, say “y’all” in a paper, but I say it here all the time.

I probably wouldn’t cite Google results or Urban Dictionary, but I’ve done that here, too.

There are no chapter headings, necessarily, and it can be read in any order.

Some parts of this project could be skipped entirely, if you were so inclined.

In the coming paragraphs I will cite two books, and in both cases I will link to their respective Google Book entries, instead of giving you a citation in MLA format.

When we move between genres of writing, our writing styles change. Our intentions in writing in different spaces lead to different outcomes, to different types of work. When I write a paper for class, I am writing in a very clear voice for a very specific purpose. When I write something on Twitter, my voice changes, because the point of that platform is not the same. Through his Exercises in Style, Raymond Queneau demonstrates just how changeable voice really is – how you can say the same thing over and over again and sound entirely different. I could have written my thesis in the form of a hard-copy, start-at-the-beginning, 12-point-font, 5-paragraph format essay. The same information that I’ve included in my blog posts over the last few months would have become a very different creature had they been presented in a traditional genre. Then, too, I probably wouldn’t be writing this paragraph at all, as research papers don’t generally lend themselves to reflective entries.

In his essay Brief History of the Oulipo, Jean Lescure writes: “What the Oulipo intended to demonstrate was that these constraints [of literary form] are felicitous, generous, and are in fact literature itself. What it proposed was to discover new ones, under the name of structures” (173). They explored the possibilities of literature through new forms and new genres.

The Oulipo wrote “potential literature,” literature whose form existed only in the imagination.

To borrow from their ideas, I suggest this project as potential academia.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not the first person to write academically in an online space, nor am I the first person to present an academic project in digital form. However, as a part of a traditional English program, what I’m doing exists outside of the norm. When we open academia up to its own potentiality, new things happen. Here, in my blog/thesis/experiment, something new happened. An exercise in style, of sorts, a blending of mediums that has resulted in something of which the academic value remains to be seen, since I haven’t actually turned it in yet (ah yes, value. “value.” more on this next time.). Value aside, however, the point is that classification doesn’t always work the way we think it should. Our preconceived notions of form are bendable, and it is, quite frankly, exciting to bend them.

Heretofore, a thing that was published was a very specific thing. Our day and age, and the potential for different publishing models that come with it, has created a new set of possibilities that weren’t previously available to us. Again, as I’ve said before, when we let ourselves try new things, new things happen. When we drop our ideas of what something like a thesis should be, we discover what something can be. “Should,” ladies and gentleman, is an ugly word. It is a word that I think the Oulipo probably disapproved of, a word that holds us to defined expectations and a narrow belief system.

The world can be our shellfish, y’all, if we let it.

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Feb

22

you got your digital in my traditional!

writing

I don’t think I’ve mentioned explicitly that this blog, in its current form, is the substance of my senior thesis project.

Yes, I’m blogging the cumulative work of my undergraduate career.

If that seems a little weird to you, too, then you may be a traditional scholar, like I’ve been.

When I thought “senior thesis” in the past, I thought: 30-40 page paper. I thought: research, write, edit, write, edit, (etc), submit. I thought of one form of writing and one form of publishing only. Traditional or bust, amirite?

Except, no. My project is on Digital Humanities, and if I’m going to be investigating a highly digital, highly experimental, emergent field of study, well then I better be digital and experimental and emergent myself. My background, however, is not in this area. My degree, when I graduate this spring (gulp!), will be in English Language, Literature, and Writing from what is arguably a pretty traditional English program. Branching out from what I’m used to has been exciting, and complicated, and one hell of a learning experience.

I didn’t know it would happen in exactly this way, but I am, as we speak, restructuring my own ideas about what it means to do academic work.

I’ll tell you a little secret: I don’t know what I’m doing. You’re not supposed to admit this in Academia, I don’t think. At least, not all out in the open where anyone can hear you. But I’m pretty sure it’s true more often, and for more of us, than we would have each other believe. And I don’t think it’s a bad thing. In fact, not knowing what I’m doing is a big part of the reason I chose to do this project in this particular way from the very beginning. I like things that are new, that are experimental. I like to look underneath rocks and see what I can do with whatever I happen to find. I like to explore.

However. Liking =/= easy.

It’s tricky, this opening up of my assumptions and expectations of scholarship. There are lots of questions that I don’t have answers for. Not fully formed answers, at least.

To wit: how do I measure what I am doing? This is not a traditional paper or project, so what is it supposed to look like? Is there a certain post count that is equivalent to 40 pages of linear argument? Do I count words? Paragraphs? Do I set a goal for a certain number of posts, and when I’ve reached that, I’m done? Do I copy and paste my posts into Word to keep track of length? When do I stop? How do I turn it in? Etc.?

To all of these: yes, no, and maybe, we’ll see. Yes, there are parameters. I couldn’t write three posts and call it a day. There are equivalency expectations put forth by the Honors College, and for good reason. A cumulative project has to have some degree of substance to be worth a damn, after all.

But, no, the measurements are not the same. First of all, plugging everything into word and calling it good when I reach 35 pages just wouldn’t fit in with the point of this project. It also wouldn’t take into account the different aspects of digital writing that traditional papers don’t incorporate. For instance: If I link to, say, 25 outside sources (or 60, or 200), and my readers follow those links, what then? Does that hold the same value as a reader looking up a cited reference in a bibliography? I don’t think so. For one thing, the ease of access to outside sources is sure to change the reading experience. A person could read half of my blog post, follow a link, be gone for half an hour, and come back to read the rest. Authorship and citation are interwoven with one another here on the Interwebs. What does that mean for the substance of my writing?

Then, too, is the publishing method. These posts are not edited by anyone but me. They don’t get reviewed by one or two or five people before I put them out into the blogoverse. With a traditional thesis, there are layers of writing and editing that happen by not only the author, but their advisor(s). Of course, I generally don’t hit “publish” as soon as I’m done writing; I let posts sit for hours or days, and re-read/edit them before I make them public. But no one else is responsible for the quality of my work except for myself, which means that my thesis will never be “polished” in the same way that a traditional paper would be, for the simple fact that there is only one of me.

The most fascinating question that I have yet to answer is that of the end point. This is a blog. More importantly, it’s a blog that I created for purposes other than my thesis. Which is to say, this project is not self-contained. When the time comes that I am “done” with my thesis work, I will still be writing here. There’s a good chance that I will still be writing here about the same subjects that I am writing about currently. I have no intention of abandoning the field of Digital Humanities and the question of traditional-meets-digital once I’m finished with my undergraduate degree. How do I incorporate the ongoing and never-quite-finished aspect of my work into something that I must turn in at the end of the semester?

The more I think and read and write, the more questions arise. None of this is simple, or easy. It’s kind of messy, it’s a little strange, and it’s certainly not going to be resolved in this one post. But these are questions that are important, not only to me, but to the myriad of students and scholars out there who will turn to digital creation more and more as time goes on. It may not be traditional, but it sure is fascinating.

(word count: 1,005 – 3 pages, double spaced)

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Jun

08

outside the box: because not everything fits

writing

When I was little, I got a lot of ear infections.

Unfortunately, this problem didn’t stay in my childhood, and I’ve been dealing with chronic ear infections for the last seven years.

It goes like this: I get a bad cold. It’s moves around my head and chest for a while. It clears up. Bam! Ear infection. I am lucky in that ear infections do not usually cause me a lot of pain. I am unlucky in that instead of pain, I lose significant hearing, usually in both ears.

It is a total pain in the butt.

About six weeks ago, this cycle started once again, and about four weeks ago, I started on antibiotics. The first round didn’t work and I had to switch to a stronger medication. I thought (hoped!) that the second round had fixed everything, but no such luck. Today I woke up with a good deal of pain in my right ear – a sure sign that this infection is still kicking around inside of my ear space.

So, Antibiotics Round #3 and an appointment scheduled with an ENT.

Since I am not used to having pain associated with my ear infections, I am a total wimp when I do. There is nothing worse than ear pain, except maybe tooth pain, and my ear pain just happens to be radiating down into my teeth, too.

Blah blah blah, poor me.

My plan for this blog post was not about my middle ear drama. It was about my totally kick-ass time at the Ann Arbor Mini Maker Faire this past Saturday. But as life often goes, plans change, and I am decidedly distracted by the annoyance of this ongoing infection.

As I mentioned in my last post, my main goal here is to focus on writing and technology. But, I also mentioned that I’m a lot of things. Today, The Thing That I Am is slightly-cranky-and-ear-infected-yet-dedicated-to-writing-every-Tuesday. Focus is good. But too much focus means Erin Cranky Pants might not write when she’s sick. So, compromise.

I consider this blog to be somewhat “Under Construction”. I’m working it out as I go, y’all. It’s an experiment of sorts, by which I mean I simply don’t have it figured all out yet. I like it that way, because it gives me a chance to grow and change and shift and move. But, I’m also a sucker for consistency and structure. I get a real sense of relief when I have a plan in mind and a way to achieve it.

From these dueling values, “Outside The Box” is born.

Outside The Box is my new tag for things that don’t fit under the writing and technology umbrella that I have perched under. It’s my place for all of those other Things That I Am that take up brain space and demand to be written. It gives me a chance to write about whatever the heck I need to write about that particular day, and it gives you a chance to know when you may be embarking upon an ear infection or – gasp! – cat post. I’m hopeful that this will mean writing more often, which is definitely exciting for me, and hopefully for you, too. Only time will tell how it may move and shift and change and grow.

And in the meantime, I’m going to go wimp out on the couch with my cats and wait for these antibiotics to kick in.

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May

20

do or do not, or: just do it!

writing

There’s a time of the year for us students (and I imagine some professors, too) that I like to call the Anti-Motivation. It starts immediately after your last final, and generally stays a few weeks. It is exactly what it sounds like – a period of time with an almost negative capacity for usefulness.

I don’t know about you, but when it comes to school, I’m all-in. For eight months out of the year my brain is in hyper-drive, and I’m doing whatever it takes to get my work done. It feels great to be productive, but the flip side is that when the A-M comes, it hits hard. All of a sudden, I find myself with an abundance of time and no deadlines in sight. It’s amazing how quickly I can go from spending an entire day writing a paper to spending an entire day watching reruns of Real Housewives of Wherever. It feels good to relax, to unwind, to decompress from the stress of constant pressure. But there’s some danger in it, too.

If you let it, the A-M can last indefinitely. It will suck you in just as quickly as you can say “CSI marathon,” and it will refuse to let go. For some, I’m sure a summer-long period of Nothing is exactly what you need. For me, it sounds like torture. I’m at my best when I’ve got a lot going on. I’m a productivity junky, y’all. And so although I do need a good few weeks of A-M to shift my mindset out of academia, anything longer than that feels, well, yucky. The funny part is, as yucky as I know it feels, the allure to stay there is often strong. I really, really like HGTV. And since it’s a whole damn channel, it’s on all the time. But, unfortunately, watching other people remodel their bathrooms does not actually translate to a remodeled bathroom of my own.

All this is just to say I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox* that I’m climbing my way out of this year’s A-M as we speak. Summer productivity has meant something different every year. Last year, I spent four months researching, buying, moving into, and setting up my first home. The year before that was filled with bike rides and camping trips and good books. This year, blogging. And bike riding, camping, reading, and home improving, too. Oh, and Daria. Because watching a whole series of cartoons in one sitting totally counts as productive when it’s Daria. That wasn’t sarcasm, y’all, it’s just plain fact.

Awesome 90′s television aside, I have found that the best way to combat the Anti-Motivation is to just do. It’s a common misconception, with myself at least, that motivation is a feeling. “I don’t feel motivated,” she said. Hogwash! The root of the word motivation is motive, which is the thing behind the action. It’s the reason we do what we do.  Sometimes, I do what I do because I feel like doing it. But often, it’s something else. My house, for instance, does not clean itself. And although that’s a cliché most often identified with parents yelling at their kids, it’s also sadly true. I am motivated to clean my house not because I always want to spend time cleaning, but because I really like having a clean home.

And so I must remind myself, when I’m fighting to get out from underneath another year’s wicked A-M, that feelings just aren’t facts. That as much as I like couching, I like writing more. That the pay-off from blogging (or biking, or cleaning), is about a billion times more satisfying than whatever drama the ladies of Orange County or New York have going on this week. That doing feels better than not doing.

That Yoda and Nike were totally on to something.

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* Fifty Internet Points for catching the reference!

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Apr

27

blogs change lives (a true story)

writing

I love blogs.

Like, I really, really love blogs.

Blogs are my primary source for pretty much everything (okay, maybe not everything in the world, but you know). I read upwards of forty on a daily basis, from LOLcats to serious news sites. In fact, I get almost all of my news from blogs. I don’t read the newspaper, or traditional news sites, or watch local at 10. I listen to a little radio in the car – mostly NPR – but half of the time my radio isn’t even on. I tend to be quite skeptical of and/or critical of and/or bored by traditional media sources.

But I will read the hell out of some blogs.

If you twisted my arm and made me pinpoint the one thing I value most about blogs, I would tell you that it’s impossible, because there are just so many things. But if you twisted a little harder, I’d yell “Uncle!” and say that, for better or worse, it’s that blogs give a voice to people that may not otherwise have one. Anyone can start a blog. And anyone can start a blog about anything they want and say whatever they want in that space. Sure, there are downsides to this – tons of crap to filter through, plenty of hate speech, lots of things that maybe shouldn’t be made public. But they also provide a platform for otherwise marginalized people. Things that are not often broadcast in traditional media - feminist discourse, anti-racist pop-culture critique, fat fashion – get a chance to thrive in smart, hilarious, and even heartbreaking ways. And people listen. They listen, and they join in, and sometimes, their lives change because of it.

Three(ish) years ago, I stumbled across a blog called Shapley Prose. Founded by Kate Harding and written by her and a few other brilliant women, Shapley Prose is, in very simple terms, a body acceptance blog. Three(ish) years ago, I was decidedly not accepting of my body. My relationship with my body was more like a constant state of denial and anger and desperate desire for change. I had, over the years, cultivated such an intense dissatisfaction with my own physical being that I was pretty sure I would never be happy with myself. I needed a change, for sure, but not the physical kind.

Three years later (and twenty pounds heavier), I can say that my entire way of thinking about myself and about bodies in general has been turned completely upside down. I’m happy with myself, y’all. And more to the point of this post, that happiness is a direct result of blogs. Shapley Prose and a plethora of other body acceptance sites have given me a freedom I’m not sure I could have achieved otherwise. Because in the “real world”, in traditional media, in my day-to-day life, body acceptance is not the norm. But here in the pixelated realm of online writing, where anyone can say anything, there is a vast array of life-altering information and communities of people talking about things that will totally and completely blow your mind.

You may not need body acceptance, or anti-racist pop-culture critique, or even LOLcats (although, seriously, who doesn’t need LOLcats?), but I’d say there’s a good chance that there’s something in the blog-o-sphere for you. It’s just that immense.  And if there isn’t, you can start your own blog, find your own voice, speak your own mind. Because anyone can say anything here. And I can’t think of any other place in the world where that is so true.

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