Piecing Things Together

Thinking about Sherri’s post, as well as the last third of this edited collection, I was curious to know where the authors were writing from, and where they’re situated in the field (or outside the field). Although I normally skim through the author bios for collections like this, I was particularly interested in seeing what areas of study the contributors were writing from given the situation of this text within Composition. In particular, it strikes me as a little funny that Bogost is contributing to a collection like this, despite the fact that Georgia Tech’s Digital Media program doesn’t offer courses in writing or written composition (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing by itself), and it makes me wonder about his intentions. I also attended the CCCCs presentation he refers to in his chapter (I believe Sam was on that panel as well), and from what I remember, the question from the audience was slightly out of place, but it also wasn’t surprising that someone in Composition hadn’t read his work (at that time, and given the broad audience that CCCCs brings together). So in that context, I’m wondering how we fit all these people together (not just with their ideas, but with the situations they’re teaching in, researching in, and who they’re ideally targeting). Furthermore, this collection of authors from different disciplines writing towards a narrower audience makes me consider how I’m currently situating my own work within composition, and what that means for what I take from this class. This book seems different from other edited collections in Composition I’ve encountered, which tend to be a bit more homogenous in their representation of scholarship within the discipline. That is, I wonder how to situate hacking as play, alongside multiple ways of constructing realities and applying principles of digital media to creating tangible media (and whether/how that’s [still?] Composition), or if the fact that I acknowledge writing in the sense of words on a “page” is part of the process is what’s tying things together for me. I’m not sure if that makes any sense, but that’s what these readings lead me to think about.

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