Electracy

The paradigm shift from traditional print literacy to the postmodern fragmentation, nonlinearity, and multimodality of writing for the Internet is realized in Gregory L. Ulmer’s electracy theory. Ulmer’s open invitation to continually invent the theory has resulted in the proliferation of relays, or weak models, by electracy advocates for understanding and applying the theory. Most relays, however, remain theoretical rather than practical for the writing classroom, and electracy instruction remains rare, potentially hindering the theory’s development. In this dissertation, I address the gap in electracy praxis by adapting, developing, and remixing relays for a functional electracy curriculum with first-year writing students in the Virginia Community College System as the target audience.

I review existing electracy relays, pedagogical applications, and assessment practices – Ulmer’s and those of electracy advocates – before introducing my own relays, which take the form of modules. My proposed relay modules are designed for adaptability with the goals of introducing digital natives to the logic of new media and guiding instructors to possible implementations of electracy. Each module contains a justification, core competencies and learning outcomes, optional readings, an assignment with supplemental exercises, and assessment criteria. My Playlist, Transduction, and (Sim)ulation relays follow sound backward curricular design principles and emphasize core hallmarks of electracy as juxtaposed alongside literacy. This dissertation encourages the instruction of new media in Ulmer’s postmodern apparatus in which student invention via the articulation of fragments from various semiotic modes stems from and results in new methodologies for and understandings of digital communication.

Published originally as the  foreword for Rhizcomics, by Jason Helms, this essay contextualizes Helms's innovative text-image scholarship relative to  the apparatus of electracy, extending inquiry beyond conceptual discourse into drawn thought.

For all teachers, and composition instructors especially, the technological, cultural, and conceptual shifts of recent decades create both necessity and opportunity for innovating-if not merely "updating"pedagogy for the post-literate age. Like the challenge to facilitate practical skills and rhetoric for the digital age, we must also cultivate students' capacity for invention and expression beyond merely using technology and applications as "tools" for mediated literate practices, constrained especially by the design of prevalent interfaces and popular software. Indeed expanding new conditions of possibility, instead, certain pedagogical methods might enhance students' agency while updating the rhetorical canons, for example, in electracy.

An introduction to curriculum and pedagogy framed within the principles of Electracy (apparatus of digital technology): Section One is on Electracy; Section Two describes an undergraduate upper-division course on Internet Literature; Section Three describes a graduate seminar and collaboration with the Florida Research Ensemble.

Gary Hink, Ph.D. "Protocol Rhetoric, Electracy, and the Aesthetic Paradigm"
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Rhetoric Society of America Conference 2016 | Session C27: Rhetoric and Aesthetic

Full issue available at: http://issue011.thecine-files.com/
This issue of The Cine-Files emerged from a year-long collaboration focused on the possibilities of the video essay. It was initially sparked by a series of sessions at University College Cork (UCC), where Vicki Callahan was in residence as a Fulbright scholar, and quickly expanded to transatlantic venues. The conversations included faculty and graduate students at multiple universities, across numerous classes, and located on two continents. There were multiple points of entry: hands-on workshops, Skype sessions, a RealtimeBoard of curated work and resources, a shared Scalar book with works in progress and spaces for feedback, and a variety of shared documents on the possibilities of the form.

The essays represented here—both textual and video—are but a portion of what was produced as a result of the collaborative effort. While these pieces fall under the category of the “video essay,” differing approaches guided their construction. Unsurprisingly then, the videos vary greatly both in form as well as content. For example, while some works address specific historical or theoretical concerns in film and media, others speak to the expansion of the creative palette with essays that comment on how the form itself spurred a reflective turn, offered a new venue for personal expression, or presented the video as one component in a multimedia piece. Time and again, the boundaries between theory and practice and the creative and critical were challenged in exciting and unexpected ways. Indeed, in the only exclusively text-based essay included here, Jools Gilson explores these shifting boundaries and the processes of discovery gained by adding the video essay to her creative writing class.

Although there are many overlaps, the video essays featured here fall into three types: Videographic Criticism, Digital Argument, and the MEmorial. This emergent taxonomy is exemplified in the first three videos, each of which provide a brief description of the process or issues at stake in the category.

[ENGLISH] In the last decades of the twentieth century, Theatre Studies underwent a major paradigm shift under the drive of the powerful, but also contested, concept of performance. Alongside traditional approaches centered on Western notions such as theater and drama, the interdisciplinary and multi-cultural field of Performance Studies emerged. Aim of the paper is to elucidate some paths along which the so called “Toronto School” (M. McLuhan, H. Innis, E. Havelock, W. Ong, among others) influenced this shift and to suggest how these two intellectual traditions can productively meet and cooperate in the theoretical framework of the post-disciplinary Humanities of the twenty-first century. A key fact, whereby these approaches can be put in relation, is that both were triggered by the awareness of belonging to a period of rapid metamorphosis in the human sensory apparatus from the age of literacy toward a new set of communication skills and tools supported by electricity. The main difference (which, after all, is probably the reason why their paths have never actually crossed so far) is that many extensions of the “Toronto School” have investigated especially the world of electric and electronic media; while Performance Studies have addressed especially live embodied practices and behaviours (either artistic or not). However, in a comprehensive “media ecology” approach, this gap is anything but unbridgeable, the linking ground being orality as a cognitive skill.

[ITALIANO] Nelle ultime decadi del ventesimo secolo gli studi teatrali sono andati incontro a una significativa trasformazione del loro paradigma disciplinare grazie alla spinta del potente e controverso concetto di performance; così che al fianco dei tradizionali approcci centrati sulle nozioni occidentali di teatro e di dramma è emerso un campo di indagine interdisciplinare e multi-culturale denominato Performance Studies. Il saggio ha due obiettivi: primo, delucidare alcuni percorsi attraverso i quali la cosiddetta “Scuola di Toronto” (tra gli altri M. McLuhan, H. Innis, E. Havelock, W. Ong) ha influenzato questo cambiamento; secondo, suggerire come queste due tradizioni intellettuali possono incontrarsi e cooperare proficuamente nel quadro teoretico delle discipline umanistiche post-disciplinari del ventunesimo secolo. Un punto decisivo grazie al quale questi due approcci possono essere messi in relazione sta nel fatto che entrambi sono stati innescati dalla consapevolezza di appartenere a un periodo storico di rapida transizione nell’apparato sensoriale umano dal predominio della scrittura a un insieme di capacità e di strumenti di comunicazione supportati dalla tecnologia elettrica. La principale differenza (forse la ragione stessa per cui i loro percorsi non si sono fin qui incrociati) consiste nel fatto che la gran parte dei continuatori della “Scuola di Toronto” ha indagato specialmente il mondo dei media elettrici ed elettronici, mentre i Performance Studies si sono rivolti quasi esclusivamente allo studio di pratiche e comportamenti dal vivo (artistici o meno). In ogni caso, in un approccio esaustivo alla “ecologia dei media”, questo scarto è tutt’altro che insormontabile: il terreno comune è infatti l’oralità in quanto facoltà cognitiva.

While technology has cycled through novel methods of teaching and learning, so too does the learning process cycle through on an individual level. ... International Journal of Learning, Volume 11. Article: Print (Spiral Bound), ISSN: ISSN 1447-9494, LC04-0039-2004. Article: ...