The Gayle Morris Sweetland Center for Writing, the University of Michigan Press and MPublishing are pleased to announce the launch of the Sweetland Digital Rhetoric Collaborative (DRC). The Collaborative has two dimensions: it is a book series that will publish born-digital and digitally enhanced texts focused on the intersections between technologies and communications (teaching, writing, reading) and the social, aesthetic, and political contexts where these occur; it is also a community web space by and for scholars and teachers working in computers and writing and digital rhetoric.
Created from conversations over the past 12 months with many members of the computers and writing community, guided by the diverse perspectives of its eight talented board members, and developed and hosted as part of a collaboration between MPublishing, the University of Michigan Press, and the Sweetland Center for Writing, the Collaborative presents a wide range of activities and opportunities to participate:
An annual book prize — the DRC will award an annual prize of $5,000 for the best book published in the DRC Book Series. DRC Board members Jonathan Alexander, Cheryl Ball, Kristine Blair, Douglas Eyman, Troy Hicks, Derek Mueller, Jentery Sayers, and Melanie Yergeau, along with DRC Directors Anne Ruggles Gere and Naomi Silver and UM Press Editor-in-Chief Tom Dwyer, will make the selection. The Prize competitions will be announced this month at the 2012 Computers and Writing Conference in Raleigh, NC, and the winner will be honored at C&W 2013 and at each annual C&W conference thereafter.
A collaborative web space — the DRC website will feature, among other things, reviews of sessions at the annual Computers and Writing conference and other related events, a curated blog, and blog carnivals on a range of topics. Check out Doug Eyman’s post for the inaugural blog carnival on the topic “What does digital rhetoric mean to me?” Be a participant and offer your perspective on how writing is and is not transformed in digital environments, what rhetoric means in this realm, and what the future of digital rhetoric may hold.
A resource clearinghouse — the Resources section of the DRC website is a place to ask questions, share information, and test out new ideas about teaching strategies, new technologies and software, along with other issues important to scholars and teachers in digital rhetoric. Post your latest syllabus or book list, your favorite new app, a link to an article that’s making you think, and more.
A wiki — the DRC Wiki aims to create a compendium of information and wisdom about digital rhetoric, computers and writing, and their digital relations near and far. The wiki will have entries on key persons, institutions and organizations, concepts, and texts, developed by the digital rhetoric community.
To see the Collaborative in action — and to contribute, publish, and participate — visit http://www.DigitalRhetoricCollaborative.org.
For additional information, contact DigitalRhetoricCollaborative@umich.edu.