“Natural History and Digital History” in Munster’s Materializing New Media (2006)
“Wonder is a sudden surprise of the soul, which brings it to consider with attention the objects that seem to it unusual and extraordinary” (Descartes quoted in Munster on p. 13).
“Wonder is a sudden surprise of the soul, which brings it to consider with attention the objects that seem to it unusual and extraordinary” (Descartes quoted in Munster on p. 13).
What may be the benefits or drawbacks of writing program administrators (WPAs) viewing themselves from the lens(es) of informational metacenters? How may writers and teachers of writing benefit from acting to create [digital] spaces for informational metacenters of writing across the curriculum (WAC) and writing in the disciplines (WID)? How are we [not] already situating ourselves from this position?
In a broad (and possibly indirect) way, those involved in teaching writing on the university/college level have expressed the same kind of desire to balance wonder and reason. Such a balance seems evident in the “Habits of Mind” (Appendix 1) from The Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing (http://wpacouncil.org/framework). The authors of the Framework are cited as the Council of Writing Program Administrators, National Council of Teachers of English, and The National Writing Project – organization all connected on the university level. While the Framework describes these habits as “both intellectual and practical”, habits like curiosity, openness, engagement, and flexibility could also be seen as encouraging Munster’s proposal of focusing on “the outcomes of the interaction” in the code/body dynamic (p. 7).
While reading this text, I started to wonder how/if Content Curation Projects (CCPs) created by WAC/WID faculty may hold the potential for shifting the traditional hierarchical structure of academia that Munster discusses, making once implicit disciplinary values held with in writing in a discipline explicit. For quite a while now, I have been wondering if/how CCPs could work toward Making Visible the Invisible (Legrady, 2004-2005 in Munster on p. 17). In the context of CCPs, making the visible the invisible may add an additional layer (of sorts) to common disciplinary genres as faculty contribute curations that reveal the rhetorical moves and disciplinary values that are otherwise unarticulated. In this sense, disciplinary genres and writing-intensive instructors are like data or material and informational architects in new media museums: “…knowledge no longer resides in the object alone but must be produced through the differential relations each user’s particularized pathways create while finding and acquiring data” (p. 19).
As I have been interested in object ontology and its affect on writers and writing instructors for a while now (which is evident in a couple of blogging activities I indulged in with friends http://3friends30things90stories.blogspot.com and http://4friends30things120stories.blogspot.com), this article also has me considering what curiosity closets could add to (or take away from) how we approach such faculty development projects. As Munster describes, “The Wunderkammer and its visual assertion of the teeming materiality of the world can act to complicate and end enrich a digital lineage that has often taken its cue from a conception of technology as an instrument of the sanitized operations of modern science” (p. 17). This quote seem to reflect the potential benefits of such an approach in its potential to disrupt certain university norms while adding to the diverse academic culture.
While I have not made complete sense of all of these ideas yet, I am looking forward to trying. J
One more thing of interest: a friend who graduated from NC State’s PhD program, Kevin Brock, did a really cool new media project that he shared at CCCCs a few years ago. It is titled “ID: Entity. Self: Perception + Reality”, and there is some information on the project here: http://www4.ncsu.edu/~dmrieder/embodytext/.
Appendix 1: Habits of mind refers to ways of approaching learning that are both intellectual and practical and that will support students’ success in a variety of fields and disciplines. The Framework identifies eight habits of mind essential for success in college writing:
In a broad (and possibly indirect) way, those involved in teaching writing on the university/college level have expressed the same kind of desire to balance wonder and reason. Such a balance seems evident in the “Habits of Mind” (Appendix 1) from The Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing (http://wpacouncil.org/framework). The authors of the Framework are cited as the Council of Writing Program Administrators, National Council of Teachers of English, and The National Writing Project – organization all connected on the university level. While the Framework describes these habits as “both intellectual and practical”, habits like curiosity, openness, engagement, and flexibility could also be seen as encouraging Munster’s proposal of focusing on “the outcomes of the interaction” in the code/body dynamic (p. 7).
While reading this text, I started to wonder how/if Content Curation Projects (CCPs) created by WAC/WID faculty may hold the potential for shifting the traditional hierarchical structure of academia that Munster discusses, making once implicit disciplinary values held with in writing in a discipline explicit. For quite a while now, I have been wondering if/how CCPs could work toward Making Visible the Invisible (Legrady, 2004-2005 in Munster on p. 17). In the context of CCPs, making the visible the invisible may add an additional layer (of sorts) to common disciplinary genres as faculty contribute curations that reveal the rhetorical moves and disciplinary values that are otherwise unarticulated. In this sense, disciplinary genres and writing-intensive instructors are like data or material and informational architects in new media museums: “…knowledge no longer resides in the object alone but must be produced through the differential relations each user’s particularized pathways create while finding and acquiring data” (p. 19).
As I have been interested in object ontology and its affect on writers and writing instructors for a while now (which is evident in a couple of blogging activities I indulged in with friends http://3friends30things90stories.blogspot.com and http://4friends30things120stories.blogspot.com), this article also has me considering what curiosity closets could add to (or take away from) how we approach such faculty development projects. As Munster describes, “The Wunderkammer and its visual assertion of the teeming materiality of the world can act to complicate and end enrich a digital lineage that has often taken its cue from a conception of technology as an instrument of the sanitized operations of modern science” (p. 17). This quote seem to reflect the potential benefits of such an approach in its potential to disrupt certain university norms while adding to the diverse academic culture.
While I have not made complete sense of all of these ideas yet, I am looking forward to trying. J
One more thing of interest: a friend who graduated from NC State’s PhD program, Kevin Brock, did a really cool new media project that he shared at CCCCs a few years ago. It is titled “ID: Entity. Self: Perception + Reality”, and there is some information on the project here: http://www4.ncsu.edu/~dmrieder/embodytext/.
Appendix 1: Habits of mind refers to ways of approaching learning that are both intellectual and practical and that will support students’ success in a variety of fields and disciplines. The Framework identifies eight habits of mind essential for success in college writing:
- Curiosity – the desire to know more about the world.
- Openness – the willingness to consider new ways of being and thinking in the world.
- Engagement – a sense of investment and involvement in learning.
- Creativity – the ability to use novel approaches for generating, investigating, and representing ideas.
- Persistence – the ability to sustain interest in and attention to short- and long-term projects.
- Responsibility – the ability to take ownership of one’s actions and understand the consequences of those actions for oneself and others.
- Flexibility – the ability to adapt to situations, expectations, or demands.
- Metacognition – the ability to reflect on one’s own thinking as well as on the individual and cultural processes used to structure knowledge.