Today I drove roughly ninety miles to Caffetto, my favorite cafe in Minne- apolis, an establishme... more Today I drove roughly ninety miles to Caffetto, my favorite cafe in Minne- apolis, an establishment with wireless Internet, rich black coffee, tables with access to electrical outlets, and a ping-pong table in the basement. I sit alone, typing on my MacBook Air, sipping on coffee, and listening to the conversa- tions around me and to the rockabilly playing through Caffetto's speakers. The clientele today is mixed: a few people working alone on their laptops (some with headphones, some without), some reading books silently, and a few small groups chatting lively. I first discovered Caffetto a few months ago when I was driving to Minneapolis and tweeted at a friend who lives there, asking him if he knew any coffee shops that would be good writing environments. He re- sponded with a few suggestions as I arrived in the city; I looked up Caffetto on my iPhone, followed the vocalized directions from my phone, parked, checked in on Foursquare, bought coffee, and began working.I have lo...
In this webtext, we share our experiences in a new media graduate course in which students played... more In this webtext, we share our experiences in a new media graduate course in which students played and experimented with littleBits (modular circuitry designed for easy invention). Students created three-dimensional objects and new media documentation about using littleBits. Modular three-dimensional objects, we argue, provide opportunities to introduce new media to students in ways that disrupt their conventional practices of invention; provide opportunities to explore rhetorical practice as play, failure, and risk-taking; refigure creation as remix and craft; and meet the goals of rhetoric, composition, and technical communication classes in creating rhetorical products that do things in the world.
A book chapter in the edited collection Social writing/social media: Publics, presentation, and p... more A book chapter in the edited collection Social writing/social media: Publics, presentation, and pedagogies, available at https://wac.colostate.edu/books/perspectives/social/
This webtext shares our inventional processes of remediating Joyce Locke Carter's 2016 Colleg... more This webtext shares our inventional processes of remediating Joyce Locke Carter's 2016 College on Composition and Communication (CCCC) Chair's Address as a video to be posted on YouTube. We first historicize remediations of CCCC Chair's Addresses and then provide some context for Joyce's address. The bulk of this webtext shares the invention practices and processes of two students in Michael Faris's 2016 two-week New Media Rhetoric graduate course, Sarah E. Austin and Erica M. Stone, who were tasked with creating a video of the address. This webtext focuses on particular tensions that arose as they remediated the live address, especially tensions between convention and disruption and issues with technological impasses as Sarah and Erica learned to use Adobe Premiere Pro. We conclude with takeaways regarding learning new production technologies, collaboration and mentorship, and new media scholarship.
In this webtext we borrow Kelli Cargile Cook's (2002) concept of layered literacies in techni... more In this webtext we borrow Kelli Cargile Cook's (2002) concept of layered literacies in technical communication to argue that health literacy is an embodied, multisensory experience that is invariably mediated by healthcare technologies. We illustrate this concept through three case studies that describe scenarios in which non-experts and lay experts engage in non-discursive literacy practices: parents caring for an infant in a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), people with type 1 diabetes (T1D) self-managing their treatment, and public audiences reporting symptoms to a crowd-sourced flu-tracking program. We propose that the literacy practices we identify in each scenario--aural, tactile, and visual, respectively--are fundamentally shaped by the use of specific healthcare technologies unique to that scenario: physiological monitors, insulin pumps, and crowd-sourced flu maps. More specifically, we argue that these technologies enable, constrain, and integrate multisensorial lite...
Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 2013
Integrating and using technology in the technical communication classroom is an ongoing interest ... more Integrating and using technology in the technical communication classroom is an ongoing interest and challenge for the field. Previous work tends to focus on best practices and other types of generalized advice, all of which are invaluable to teachers. But this article encourages teachers to also pay attention to sociotechnical forces and dynamics in local settings. It explains how a cartography of affect can be useful in demonstrating how technologies become imbued with meaning and significance in particular pedagog-ical contexts. The authors illustrate the value of this mapping practice through a case study of iPad integration and use in a technical communication service course and its teacher-training course. They also provide examples of heuristic questions that can guide critical cartography projects in local settings.
... intent. It is also worth noting that research on blogs in rhetoric and composition does not e... more ... intent. It is also worth noting that research on blogs in rhetoric and composition does not exist in a vacuum, but is often interdisciplinary and draws from a larger body of work in ... communication research (Ó Baoill), and psychology (Blanchard). Because of this, while I ...
... intent. It is also worth noting that research on blogs in rhetoric and composition does not e... more ... intent. It is also worth noting that research on blogs in rhetoric and composition does not exist in a vacuum, but is often interdisciplinary and draws from a larger body of work in ... communication research (Ó Baoill), and psychology (Blanchard). Because of this, while I ...
This essay considers the challenges of responding to the Sandusky child sex-abuse scandal while i... more This essay considers the challenges of responding to the Sandusky child sex-abuse scandal while in the midst of said crisis. It discusses how the authors chose to respond as scholars and teachers of rhetoric concerned with deliberation.
Today I drove roughly ninety miles to Caffetto, my favorite cafe in Minne- apolis, an establishme... more Today I drove roughly ninety miles to Caffetto, my favorite cafe in Minne- apolis, an establishment with wireless Internet, rich black coffee, tables with access to electrical outlets, and a ping-pong table in the basement. I sit alone, typing on my MacBook Air, sipping on coffee, and listening to the conversa- tions around me and to the rockabilly playing through Caffetto's speakers. The clientele today is mixed: a few people working alone on their laptops (some with headphones, some without), some reading books silently, and a few small groups chatting lively. I first discovered Caffetto a few months ago when I was driving to Minneapolis and tweeted at a friend who lives there, asking him if he knew any coffee shops that would be good writing environments. He re- sponded with a few suggestions as I arrived in the city; I looked up Caffetto on my iPhone, followed the vocalized directions from my phone, parked, checked in on Foursquare, bought coffee, and began working.I have lo...
In this webtext, we share our experiences in a new media graduate course in which students played... more In this webtext, we share our experiences in a new media graduate course in which students played and experimented with littleBits (modular circuitry designed for easy invention). Students created three-dimensional objects and new media documentation about using littleBits. Modular three-dimensional objects, we argue, provide opportunities to introduce new media to students in ways that disrupt their conventional practices of invention; provide opportunities to explore rhetorical practice as play, failure, and risk-taking; refigure creation as remix and craft; and meet the goals of rhetoric, composition, and technical communication classes in creating rhetorical products that do things in the world.
A book chapter in the edited collection Social writing/social media: Publics, presentation, and p... more A book chapter in the edited collection Social writing/social media: Publics, presentation, and pedagogies, available at https://wac.colostate.edu/books/perspectives/social/
This webtext shares our inventional processes of remediating Joyce Locke Carter's 2016 Colleg... more This webtext shares our inventional processes of remediating Joyce Locke Carter's 2016 College on Composition and Communication (CCCC) Chair's Address as a video to be posted on YouTube. We first historicize remediations of CCCC Chair's Addresses and then provide some context for Joyce's address. The bulk of this webtext shares the invention practices and processes of two students in Michael Faris's 2016 two-week New Media Rhetoric graduate course, Sarah E. Austin and Erica M. Stone, who were tasked with creating a video of the address. This webtext focuses on particular tensions that arose as they remediated the live address, especially tensions between convention and disruption and issues with technological impasses as Sarah and Erica learned to use Adobe Premiere Pro. We conclude with takeaways regarding learning new production technologies, collaboration and mentorship, and new media scholarship.
In this webtext we borrow Kelli Cargile Cook's (2002) concept of layered literacies in techni... more In this webtext we borrow Kelli Cargile Cook's (2002) concept of layered literacies in technical communication to argue that health literacy is an embodied, multisensory experience that is invariably mediated by healthcare technologies. We illustrate this concept through three case studies that describe scenarios in which non-experts and lay experts engage in non-discursive literacy practices: parents caring for an infant in a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), people with type 1 diabetes (T1D) self-managing their treatment, and public audiences reporting symptoms to a crowd-sourced flu-tracking program. We propose that the literacy practices we identify in each scenario--aural, tactile, and visual, respectively--are fundamentally shaped by the use of specific healthcare technologies unique to that scenario: physiological monitors, insulin pumps, and crowd-sourced flu maps. More specifically, we argue that these technologies enable, constrain, and integrate multisensorial lite...
Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 2013
Integrating and using technology in the technical communication classroom is an ongoing interest ... more Integrating and using technology in the technical communication classroom is an ongoing interest and challenge for the field. Previous work tends to focus on best practices and other types of generalized advice, all of which are invaluable to teachers. But this article encourages teachers to also pay attention to sociotechnical forces and dynamics in local settings. It explains how a cartography of affect can be useful in demonstrating how technologies become imbued with meaning and significance in particular pedagog-ical contexts. The authors illustrate the value of this mapping practice through a case study of iPad integration and use in a technical communication service course and its teacher-training course. They also provide examples of heuristic questions that can guide critical cartography projects in local settings.
... intent. It is also worth noting that research on blogs in rhetoric and composition does not e... more ... intent. It is also worth noting that research on blogs in rhetoric and composition does not exist in a vacuum, but is often interdisciplinary and draws from a larger body of work in ... communication research (Ó Baoill), and psychology (Blanchard). Because of this, while I ...
... intent. It is also worth noting that research on blogs in rhetoric and composition does not e... more ... intent. It is also worth noting that research on blogs in rhetoric and composition does not exist in a vacuum, but is often interdisciplinary and draws from a larger body of work in ... communication research (Ó Baoill), and psychology (Blanchard). Because of this, while I ...
This essay considers the challenges of responding to the Sandusky child sex-abuse scandal while i... more This essay considers the challenges of responding to the Sandusky child sex-abuse scandal while in the midst of said crisis. It discusses how the authors chose to respond as scholars and teachers of rhetoric concerned with deliberation.
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Papers by Michael Faris