Baudrillard “DEW Line ‘09″ Playing Cards

(in homage to McLuhan’s DEW Line playing cards c. 1969)

<RCID 812 seminar tell/e-gram – by Cynthia Haynes>

Forty years ago this month, in November 1969, Marshall McLuhan adopted as metaphor a ‘line’ from the cold war—he re-materialized the DEW line as artistic practice. The DEW line, short for Distant Early Warning system, consisted of a chain of 63 radar and communication stations stretching 3000 miles across Arctic Canada at the 69th parallel.  It was completed in 1957 during the height of the cold war. “The DEW line became a perfect metaphor for McLuhan on the role of art and the artist at a time of rapid technological and social change” (Kuskis) According to McLuhan,  “I think of art, at its most significant, as a DEW line, a Distant Early Warning system that can always be relied on to tell the old culture what is beginning to happen to it” (Understanding Media; Kuskis).

In McLuhan and Baudrillard: The Masters of Implosion (Routledge 1999), Gary Genosko remarks in an end note that Marshall McLuhan’s Dew-Line Newsletters (published between 1968-70) were often accompanied by supplementary materials such as posters, slides, or playing cards (15; see also Trexler). As a complement to McLuhan’s Dew-Line cards (issued with the Nov-Dec 1969 newsletter), students in the RCID 812 seminar on “Cultural Critiques of Mechanical Reproductions” have created a series of Baudrillard “DEW Line” cards to be randomly applied to a critical/cultural/economic/ethico-political problem in the manner McLuhan envisioned playing with his cards.

According to Genosko, the cards served as a “brainstorming device. Each card contained an aphorism in relation to which problems could be discussed, stormed, bounced off, etc.” (15). Given the nomination of Baudrillard as the “French McLuhan,” it is time to play the game of post-cold-war techno/shuffling and deal the Baudrillard cards to the RCID blog . . . one at a time. Here is our first card in the series. What problems do you think it suggests?

[image remix by Curtis Newbold and Sergio Figueiredo] . . .

Works Cited
Genosko, Gary. McLuhan and Baudrillard: The Masters of Implosion. London: Routledge, 1999.

Kuskis, Alex. “The Distant Early Warning (DEW) Card Deck (1969)” McLuhan.ca Global Research Network (3 Nov 2009).

Trexler, Jeff. McLuhan DEW Line playing cards. 2006. (3 Nov 2009).

RCID @ Georgia Tech, Serious Games

The RCID Serious Games Colloquium meeting on Monday, Oct 19, featured a presentation by Josh Hilst entitled “Gaming with Protocol: Control and Serious Games.” Hilst discussed Alexander Galloway’s work in Protocol: How Control Exists after Decentralization and Galloway and Eugene Thacker’s The Exploit: A Theory of Networks as related to serious games and the narratology/ludology skirmish in game studies research.

On Tuesday, Oct 20, a group of 11 RCID students, 2 MAPC students, Jan Holmevik, and Cynthia Haynes, attended the much anticipated reprise of the 1999 Digital Arts and Culture Conference debate between Espen Aarseth and Janet Murray.

Ian Bogost of Georgia Tech organized and moderated the session, which included talks by Aarseth (IT-University of Copenhagen), Murray (Georgia Tech), and Fox Harrell, Assistant Professor of Digital Media in their School of Literature, Communication, and Culture. The debate, billed as “How to Think about Narrative and Interactivity,” revisited the historical conflict between narratology and ludology launched at the ‘99 DAC conference at Georgia Tech. Aside from Aarseth and Murray, Haynes and Holmevik were the only other attendees present at the ‘99 event. View the video of last week’s roundtable session (note how the RCID contingent filled half the room!). See the post on Ian Bogost’s blog about the event.

 

 

 

Photos: Jan with Espen, the GA Tech session, and the RCID people at the event.

Next meeting, Monday, Nov. 2nd, with talk about RCID, Serious Games Colloquium, and WOW …

For additional news and lists of readings see, the Serious Games Colloquium website link to this fall’s schedule.

Nicole Snell attends AnimeExpo(AX)

The AnimeExpo(AX) 2009 Convention: Better than Disneyland and Cheaper too!

Location: Los Angeles Convention Center, CA

Date: July 2-5 2009

Attendance: 44,000 +

Background: The AnimeExpo (AX), the largest convention of its type in the US, is put on by the Society for the Promotion of Japanese Animation SPJA (known more commonly by its entertainment property Anime Expo) which is a non-profit organization with a mission to educate and encourage interest in the American public about anime, manga, and the culture from which they stem, while also providing a forum to facilitate communication between artists and professionals within the Japan animation/manga field and their fans. In addition to the Anime Expo, SPJA has sponsored and facilitated several different projects over the years such as but not limited to:

1) The publication of the Anime Reference Guide (ARG) which provides information about current anime series.

2) Ex.org a website that contains information about new series, reviews, and artist interviews – a popular site back in its hey-day.

3) Fandom Industry Management Reception, an event that serves as a “meet and greet” to facilitate collaboration between professionals within the Japan animation/manga circuit. Past attendees include representatives from Anime Boston, ComicCon, and Sakuracon to name a few.

The Convention:

For some it was simply a reason to get dressed up, a second Halloween if you will. But, for the majority of attendees at the AnimeExpo it was an opportunity to express and cultivate their loyalty to manga/anime by stepping into their favorite character’s shoes, attending panels about their favorite series, and celebrating their interest and involvement in a culture that more often than not coasts beneath the mainstream’s radar.

During the four day convention, attendees were provided numerous panels, lectures with keynote speakers from the industry such as Seiji Mizushima (Appleseed: Ex Machina), trading card tournaments, guest of honor signings (one of which was “Afro Samurai’s” Takashi Okazaki!), game rooms for the gamers, and even a Masquerade Ball. Aside from the organized events, attendees had access to a floor of over 100 vendors with merchandise to sell ranging from original artwork from popular series and new anime/manga DVD releases yet to hit the American market to fetishwear. In addition and the most appealing to me, aside from the Takashi Okazaki signing of course, were the life-sized models of weaponry on display and handled by their corresponding characters. Add to the above the creative displays of attendees such as a female manga character playing a violin in the hallway, several series specific processions of anime/manga characters, and dated Power Rangers striking old school hip-hop poses and the convention as a whole is a fun-filled time that amounts to an experience much more exciting, memorable, educational, and cheaper than say … a trip to Disneyland.

http://www.anime-expo.org/ http://www.spja.org/

~ Nicole Snell ~

Intermedia Meeting of the Minds

A ‘Serious Play’ Day

iMM_2009 Inaugural Event, November 11, 2009, Clemson University MATRF, 9:30 am – 3:30 pm

Call for Participation, Submission deadline: Monday, October 19 to Cynthia Haynes, texcyn@clemson.edu

Students in the Master’s of Art in Professional Communication (MAPC) and the Rhetorics, Communication, and Information Design (RCID) programs invite proposals for brief presentations to be given at the inaugural “Intermedia Meeting of the Minds: A ‘Serious Play Day’ for User-Experience Professionals.” iMM_2009 is a celebration of World Usability Day, and thus seeks to bring people together to consider tools and issues central to user-experience research and design. The event will be held in Clemson University’s Multimedia Authoring and Teaching Facility (MATRF, 409 Daniel Hall) on Wednesday, November 11, 2009 from 9:30am – 3:30 pm. The purpose of this industry-academia consortium is to explore how social media, serious gaming, and related rich media techniques can inform and improve user-experiences in Web 2.0 environments.

iMM_2009 will include two sessions. In the morning, invited user-experience professionals will give brief presentations on interfaces that they believe utilize Web 2.0 technologies to an exemplary degree. After the presentations, an open-ended discussion of the interfaces will attempt to articulate patterns or best practices that attendees can take with them and refer back to when making or evaluating their own designs in the future.

The afternoon session will feature the invited speakers serving as consultants or mentors to the accepted graduate students. In a format similar to CCCC’s Research Network Forum (RNF), students will be paired with UX professionals.  Beginning with a brief account of the student’s research and ending with tips, insight, and a widened frame of reference, these round-table discussions will offer students a unique opportunity to collaborate, network, and learn from some of the best and most experienced UX professionals in the southeast.

Graduate students are thus invited to submit 250 – 350 word abstracts regarding on-going or proposed research situated at the intersection of social media, serious gaming, and related technologies and that is engaged in significantly applied research of these realms. Acceptance is limited and highly competitive; students are encouraged to submit work for consideration before the October 19th deadline. Please email proposals to Cynthia Haynes at texcyn@clemson.edu

Retrospection: From Spring 2008 to Spring 2009

‘Tis time to recollect, to turn back to see how we have moved forward in the RCID doctoral program. Here are the events of students’ various achievements toward completing their degrees:

Mac McArthur, Ph.D., Spring 2008,
successfully defended his dissertation and has taken a tenure-track assistant professorship in the School of Communication, at Queens University of Charlotte, in NC.

Justin Hodgson, Ph.D., Spring 2009,
successfully defended his dissertation and has taken a tenure-track assistant professorship at UT-Austin, in the Department of Rhetoric and Writing.

Amanda K. Booher, Fall 2009,
successfully defended her dissertation (with graduation in Fall 2009) and has taken a tenure-track assistant professorship at Texas Tech U, Department of English, Technical Communication.

—

Michelle Dacus Carr, Spring, 2008,
successfuly defended her exams and is currently writing her dissertation.

Keith Morton, Spring, 2009,
successfully defended his exams and is currently writing his dissertation.

Jason Helms, Spring, 2009,
successfully defended his exams and is currently writing his dissertation, 3 chapters completed.

Josh Hilst, Spring, 2009,
successfully defended his exams and is currently writing his dissertation, 3 chapters completed.

Mark Ward, Spring, 2009,
successfuly defended his exams and is currently writing his dissertation, 3 chapters completed.

Steven John Thompson, Spring, 2009, successfully defended his exams and is currently writing his dissertation.

~ RCID Rocks …

Venturing to EGS, some a’more

This past summer Anthony Collamati and Sergio Figueiredo had the opportunity to spend three weeks in Saas Fee, Switzerland, studying at the European Graduate School (EGS). Continuing the tradition forged by Justin, Jason, Amanda, and Josh Abboud, they attended six intense seminars in the Philosophy, Art, and Psychoanalysis track of study. Each of these sections parallels RCID’s triad: Knowing (theoretical), Doing (practical/pedagogical), Making (productive). …

We began with ‘knowing’ in our first course with Victor Vitanza: “Jean-Francois Lyotard: Hesitating Thought.” As we “eased” into the program with Just Gaming, the students experiencing Vitanza’s performative teaching approach for the first time had Anthony and me (Sergio, I’m telling this story) recalling our first encounters in a Vitanzian classroom. As we ate lunch with the students during our mid-day break, we found that some students were unsure what to make of the “show,” but were excited about the passion Vitanza put into the course. Over the next two days, we worked our way through Lyotard’s Libidinal Economy and The Differend.

In a change of direction, we moved on to Wolfgang Schirmacher’s course, “Media Culture; Artificial Life.” An introduction to Schirmacher’s own philosophical work, this course was a mixture of an interpretation of other philosophers’ work and a grounding in the function that EGS’s PhD in Communication serves in the wider culture. The key term in Schirmacher’s philosophical ethical thinking is “Homo Generator,” which is defined as a human being that needs no certainty/truth and functions as a body politics treated as artifacts. After three days of “The Wolf’s” perspectives on life, the universe and everything, we were treated to a day of rest.

On our seventh day, we joined Victor and Diane Davis for a leisurely walk up one of the mountains on the ‘south side’ (I’m not really sure of compass-itorial direction). Anthony, with video-camera in-hand, filmed parts of our adventures that were later used to produce a video-adventure for his young son, Hugo. (The video, or part of it, is below.) On our way down the mountain, we discovered a human-made spa where we submerged our arms and legs in cool mountain water, and walked around a path with four different surfaces (the description said that this would help relieve stress and increase blood flow).

The next day, we were back to work in a split session with Sylvere Lotringer and Chris Kraus. In his course, titled “Jean Baudrillard,” Sylvere enlightened us with stories and escapades he shared with Baudrillard and other French theorists of the time. This introduction to Baudrillard was invaluable to situating his thinking in the overall work of media philosophy. Where Lotringer provided a practical (i.e., “doing”) understanding of Baudrillard’s contribution to critical theory, Kraus’ “Performative Philosophy” asked each of us to perform (engage in “making”) work similar to Lotringer’s lecture style. As a creative writing instructor, Kraus’ writing and style, combined with the EGS experience, provided a basis for re/thinking how theoretical work develops – in this case, through personal and social experiences.

Two weeks into the program, we left for the “Venice Biennale.” At midnight we hauled ourselves into two buses and prepared ourselves for this ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ event. Once we arrived (about 7:30am), we hopped onto a vaporetto (waterbus) and headed to the section of the city where the exhibitions are situated.  The ticket booths were closed when we arriveed, so we sat down at a local café and enjoy what was, without a doubt, the best espresso ever. Then, after spending a day with a survey of art from around the world, we returned to the buses and got ready to begin the third and final week of our time at EGS.

Upon our return, the village of Saas Fee welcomed our return with a parade which included a musical ensemble accompanied with sheep and cows. Initially, we were appreciative of the very thoughtful offering, but then we realized that this was a part of the build-up to the August cow-fights. Nonetheless, we enjoyed the show as we made our way to Bracha Ettinger’s course “Art, Psychoanalysis, Philosophy: The Matrixial Border-Space.” Grounded in Lacanian psycho-analysis, Ettinger introduced her views of aesthetic practices as a way to rethink ethics, particularly from a feminist perspective, but applicable to other theoretical practices as well.

After Ettinger’s theoretical course, we again shifted paths to “doing” with Larry Rickels and “making” with Diana Thater in the co-taught course: “Haunted Thought and Art.” Rickels started by introducing his current work with philosophical studies of animals, including readings by Derrida (The Animal That Therefore I Am) and Freud (Totem and Taboo), among others. On the third day of the course we turned to Thater’s installation art (usually video and photography), with a focus on animal-rights activism, such as “The Dolphin Project.” As our three-week expedition in Saas Fee came to a close, Thater brought the theoretical, practical and productive elements of media philosophy together with a visually theoretical art installation.

Finally, on June 18th, we made our way to the bus depot once again. Anthony and I left at the same time, but we parted our ways in Visp, Switzerland. Anthony continued on the bus to Bern before jumping in a train to meet his family in Milan. From there, they joined Anthony’s extended family for a wedding in southern Italy. At Visp, I took the rail line to Laussanne where I also caught a train to meet my extended family living in the outskirts of Paris.

As we look back to this summer’s trip, we find ourselves fortunate to have interacted with such wonderful people and to have had the chance to unwind with our families after three intense, but fun, weeks talking with world-renowned thinkers. Here are a few more images from our time at EGS.

The last photo above of dinner (avec Sergio, Diane, Anthony, and V) is a bit out of focus because the owner of the Ital restaurant as well as amateur photographer sat down with us and had a bit too much vino. But really, What is too much of some a’more!

~ Anthony Collamati and Sergio Figueiredo

– Cuts from Anthony’s film….

Amanda Booher successfully defends …

The RCID program is now four years into its history-making events. We are proud to announce that our third Ph.D. student, Amanda K. Booher, has successfully defended her dissertation:

Title: Prosthetic Configurations: Rethinking Relationships of Bodies, Technologies, and (Dis)Abilities

Chapter 1, Unprecendented Matter
Chapter 2, (Un)Fixing the Body: Oscar Pistorius, Olympic Definitions, and Dis/Super-Ability
Chapter 3, Docile Bodies, “Supercrips,” and the Play of Prosthetics
Chapter 4, Breaking Bounds
Chapter 5, Prosthetic Configurations: New Stories of Bodies

ABSTRACT

This work rethinks configurations of and relationships between bodies and prosthetics, emerging from a gap between three particular theoretical perspectives. The first perspective builds from Gender and Disability Studies theories; the second operates within the frame of post-humanity and cyborgean theories, specifically though Bernard Stiegler, Katherine Hayles, and Donna Haraway; the third is a practical/medical perspective, demonstrated through the experiences of people with amputations and medical prosthetics, as well as through the influence of medical visualization technologies. While offering productive and compelling means of complicating and deconstructing boundaries of bodies and prosthetics, these perspectives often operate independently; an integrative perspective provides new grounds from which to reconfigure prosthetized bodies.

From these grounds, this work examines social and historical anxieties about body-technology relationships, considering how binary oppositions of “natural” versus “technological” are constructed and discriminatorily employed against people with prosthetics. Through the story of Oscar Pistorius’ 2008 Olympic attempt, ideas of norms and norming are contextualized, historicized, and deconstructed. Metaphors of bodies as docile machines are problematized through examination of public representations of women with prosthetics.

This work situates bodies and prosthetics within historical perspectives created through the technological gaze of medical visualization technologies and nuclear medicine; the effects of ubiquitous and participatory communication technologies; the perception of the body as a malleable technology; and the effects of technologically-advanced prosthetics. Working particularly from the theories of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Michel Foucault, and Georges Canguilhem, this work posits a new epistemology of the prosthetized body as a historically-situated phenomenological somatechnic.

We are also happy to say that Amanda has accepted a tenure-track Assistant Professor position in Technical Communication and Rhetoric at Texas Tech University.

Justin Hodgson successfully defends …

Justin Hodgson, RCID Student, successfully defends his Dissertation

The RCID program is now four years into its history-making events. We are proud to announce that our second Ph.D. student, Justin Hodgson, has successfully defended his dissertation:

Title: Rhetorical Inventions/Inventional Rhetorics: Opening Possibilities

Introduction — Exigence: Naming/Inventing the Problem
Chapter 1 — Conduct(Ion) Unbecoming
Chapter 2 — Logos: Inventing (with) Logoi
Chapter 3 — Ethos: Ethea of Inventing
Chapter 4 — Pathos: Inventing (with) Catastrophe
Chapter 5 — Pedagogy: Inventive (Un)learning

ABSTRACT

This work seeks to open possibilities for rhetorical invention, or perhaps more accurately, to indicate how changes in technology (and the essences of technology) are opening radical possibilities not just for rhetorical invention but also for how we speak, how we think, or even how we live in our worlds. It traces shifts in rhetorical invention: beginning from primary oral cultures, which made linkages via a process of “AND” or divine inspiration, represented by the +, to literate cultures (or print-cultures), which predominantly invent via analogy and discovery, represented by the =, and to electronic cultures, which revel in the avant-garde art technique of juxtaposition as inventive strategy, represented by the /. Working then with this / as guiding inventional strategy, and turning to Gregory L. Ulmer’s conductive logic, puncepts, and choragraphy as / possibilities, this work attempts to re-envision classical rhetoric concepts logos, ethos, and pathos in order to open new considerations and complexities for rhetoric (and for the university) as we move out of 19th century academic traditions (print-culture dissertation) and unfold into the 21st century possibilities (electronic-culture multimedia dissertation).

More specifically, using the / as inventional process, and working with Ulmer’s corpus, this work attempts to open radical possibilities for rhetorical invention by seeking to move it out of restrictive economies that limit inventive potential and into more generative (general) economies of possibilities. In doing so, it opens the conversation to issues of absence and “absencing” (in counter-distinction to Martin Heidegger’s notions of presencing), to unstable electrate schizo-nomadic “sub/ject” possibilities (which become generative, in nomadic/tourism fashion), and to the catastrophic (introducing radical possibilities for restrictive economies).

Additionally, what this work does, aside from reconstituting rhetorical invention as a mix of Ulmer’s conductive logic, Jean-François Lyotard’s paralogy, and Leibniz-Borges-Deleuze’s vice-diction, is that it works with an inventive methodology. This print-culture product sits on one side of the slash, and an/other, an alternative, rendered in the electronic assemblage platform Sophie2, sits on the other side of the slash. In their juxtaposition, this dissertation and its digital/electronic other, they perform the very possibilities of rhetorical invention being critically offered in this work.

We are also happy to say that Justin has accepted a tenure-track Assistant Professor position at the University of Texas, Austin, the Division of Rhetoric and Writing.

Some scattered pix of the moments:

ATTW & CCCC presentations, 2009

Students and Faculty in the RCID Program combined presentations @

the Association of Teachers of Technical Writing (ATTW) conference and

the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC)

Both in San Francisco, March 2009

* * *

Abboud, Joshua. Presenter, Research Network Forum. CCCC.

Booher, Amanda K. “Communicating With/In Technologized Bodies.” ATTW.

Ding, Huiling. “Genre Analysis of Case Definitions of SARS: Is Medical Knowledge Culturally Contingent or Universally Applicable?” CCCC.

Dinolfo, John. Presenter, Research Network Forum, CCCC.

Figueiredo, Sergio. “acCOMICating Science.” CCCC.

—. Presenter, Research Network Forum. CCCC.

Fishman, Teddi. “Wii Wave: Riding the Waves Shaping our Digital Communicative Acts.” CCCC.

Hodgson, Justin. “Writing with Light: Surfing Electronic/Digital Wave (or particle) to Scholarship.” CCCC.

Hatter, Alicia. Presenter, Research Network Forum. CCCC.

Hatter, Alicia, Tharon Howard, and Randy Nichols. “Composing, Communicating and Evaluating Digital Scholarship in 21st-century Contexts.” Panel. ATTW.

Haynes, Cynthia. “Casuistic Code.” CCCC.

___. Serious Games SIG Leader. CCCC.

Helms, Jason. “Figure, Discourse: Postcritical Comics.” CCCC.

Hilligoss, Susan. “What Are Students Really Learning from Textbooks? Creating Effective Pedagogy Through User-Experience Design.” CCCC.

Hilst, Joshua C. “Gutter Talk: Another Idiom of Rhetoric.” CCCC.

Howard, Tharon. “Evaluating 21-Century Digital Scholarship.” ATTW

___. “How Students Really Learn from Textbooks: A 50,000′ View of Four Usability Studies.” CCCC.

Katz, Steve. “The Evolution of Technological Relations: A New Ethics?” ATTW.

—. “The Ancient Hebrew Bible as Rhetorical Propedeutic: The Hermeneutic Principles of Rabbis and Mystics in Ancient Judah.” CCCC.

Li, Xiaoli. “Making waves in the age of globalization–alternative approaches to teaching intercultural communication in an upper-level writing class.” CCCC.

Newbold, Curtis. “Reframing the Creative Process for Technical Communication.” ATTW.

Nichols, Randy. Presenter, Research Network Forum. CCCC.

Vitanza, Victor J. “The Curious Case of Rhetorics of Histories.” CCCC.

___. Table Discussion Leader, Research Network Forum. CCCC.

Walwema, Josephine. “Composing argument: what comics can teach the composition scholar.”

___. Presenter, Research Network Forum. CCCC.

Wang, Lin. Presenter, Research Network Forum. CCCC.

Ward, Mark, Sr. “The Ethic of Exigence: Information Design, Postmodern Ethics, and the Holocaust.” ATTW.

___. “Revisiting ‘The Ethic of Expediency’: New Perspectives on
Technical Communication and the Holocaust.” CCCC.

___. Presenter, Research Network Forum. CCCC.

Williams, Sean. “What Can Technical Communication Learn From a Good Conversation?”

Wu, Dan. Presenter, Research Network Forum. CCCC.

Alicia Hatter, Josephine Walwema,

Joshua Abboud, Sergio Figueiredo

RCID … ROCKS!

2009 Douglass Award

RCID Students are Teachers, Too!

Second year RCID student Alicia Hatter was named the recipient of the 2009 Douglass Award for excellence in teaching English 103. Dr. Cynthia Haynes, director of the Accelerated Composition program, noted,

We received five excellent nominees, and the decision was excruciatingly tough! We wanted to give it to all of them! Alicia had several nominations, has been conducting research in teaching ENG 103, presented about teaching ENG 103 at conferences, and contributed many outstanding ideas for our curriculum and teaching methods.

Clemson’s Accelerated Composition curriculum is noteworthy for its multimodal approach to the genre of argumentation. The pedagogical model underlying the course is process-oriented, and students are mentored through a series of drafts which, when “finished,” comprise the bulk of a polished portfolio. The movement from major assignment to major assignment not only covers traditional “deep revision” strategies which help students move beyond sentence-level changes, but also shifts in terms of the students’ mode of production. For example, the first assignment is a visual rhetoric project which can involve the actual creation of a rhetorical artifact, in addition to a formal, written analysis of that artifact. The course culminates in a full multimedia/ted argument which is collaboratively rendered and produced.

Alicia’s research explores specific ways in which students compose multimodally. At the 2009 ATTW (Association of Teachers of Technical Writing) conference in San Francisco, CA, Alicia delivered a presentation on Pecha Kucha, a method of delivering PowerPoint presentations in which the presenter is limited to a total of 20 slides, each displaying on the screen for only 20 seconds. Alicia argued that the form’s constraints can force composers to lose the textual defaults and embrace the power of (moving) images and visual narratives as powerful ways of evoking pathos and, ultimately, persuasion. Alicia’s ENG 103 students compose two Pecha Kucha presentations during the semester: one at midterm (which is turned in as a video using the Adobe Presenter plug-in for PowerPoint), and the other for the final (which is performed live). Alicia also enjoys introducing her students to composition methods which involve digital video and image-manipulation as a way of discovering how to elicit particular rhetorical effects. She also likes a good MLA research paper, too. :]

All are welcome and encouraged to attend the Architecture, Arts, and Humanities’ Honors Ceremony on April 6th, at 3:30 pm, at the Brooks Center for the Performing Arts as we celebrate and honor outstanding students. The ceremony will feature performances by the Clemson University String Quartet, the winner of the Eaton-Freeman Piano Competition, the vocal ensemble TakeNote, and the Clemson University Steel Band. The guest speaker is writer and Clemson alum Ron Rash. Ron is the John Parris Chair of Appalachian Studies at Western Carolina University and the author of books of poetry, short stories, and prize-winning novels.