Last week, I had the good fortune to attend the Fourth Biennial Feminism(s) & Rhetoric(s) Conference, hosted on my home turf of OSU--the conference hotel had me worried initially, owing to the road construction, but those worries were allayed once I set foot inside. Nice digs, good eats, and a packed house (over 400 attendees, which was a sight greater than the last conference held at Millikin University in IL). Having had some hand in organizing the conference, it was a relief to see it unfold with grace, dignity, comraderie, and more than a wee dram of spunk and pluck.
What did I see?... well, there was one spectacular featured panel on the question of feminist historiography featuring the likes of Win Horner, Pat Bizzell, Cheryl Glenn, Laura Gurak, Kathleen Welch, and Jan Swearingen (chaired by Nan Johnson). I walked away from that session feeling that the real point of the question is that it's never settled, that the writing of history is a constant merging of marginal and dominant narratives, resetting the map after each iteration, staking claims in hitherto uncharted territory (example: Gurak's mention of the importance of archiving data contained on media that can presently only be read by long-obsolete computers found in the Library of Congress). I also chaired a witty, energetic one-woman play by Sandee McGlaun. "What a Doll" was a 9-scene reflection/critique/lauding of perhaps what is feminism's most enduring whipping girl (and occasional mascot), the Barbie doll. Discussion afterwards was intense, both at an academic and a personal level. Seems like everyone had a Barbie story from their childhood to share: cutting her hair, sexual experimentation, bondage-play with GI Joe (the safety word is "tomato"). . .
Wendy and I presented on Saturday to what initially looked like it was going to be only 2 people, but after the session began, that number bumped up to around 10 or so. Our presentation, both a call to the field to begin looking at video games as a serious site of rhetorical inquiry and a reading of the problematic female body throughout the history of video games (entitled "From Ms. Pac-Man to Lara Croft and Beyond: Mapping Representations of Gender in Gaming Culture"--to be posted to my website in the near future), was well received. In fact, most of the comments and questions afterwards were directed specifically to our presentation. Good times were had by all.
Here's a random picture of Metroid Prime's cyborgian protagonist Samus Aran in the meantime (arguably the most interesting character over the span of gaming history with respect to gender representation):
don't mind me; i'm simply testing the page...apparently i botched something in the template and can't for the life of me figure out what. ahhh--the beautiful headaches of technology. :)
and now for a pair of shoes:
PS--expect a real post soon.
A quick post this time around. I'm boarding a plane in a couple of days in order to make my way back up to OSU to present at the Fem/Rhet conference. A post-conference report should be expected.
In the meantime, let this tide you over (who is "you," incidentally? have I started talking to myself...again?). A paint mod I made on an old PowerBook 170 (ca. 1991) has made its way onto the applefritter website, located here.
Our last ePed meeting (October 8) found us exploring various takes on hypertextual fiction. The meeting was a somewhat refreshing show-and-tell moment; we conducted something of a genre/formal analysis of hypertext based on the examples we brought to the table (or, rather, to the digital projector).
Non-linearity, reader-centric textual navigation, the integration of image and alphabetic text, the presentation of narrative as space rather than time, repetition as theme...these are the hallmarks of hypertext, and while I take issue with some of these characteristics (the notion of readerly choice, I think, is still heavily inscribed by the author, and is therefore more "deceptive" than conventional print; as well, many of these attributes are not necessarily affordances of electronic writing exclusively), i still think we pretty much nailed the aesthetic. Way to go, us!
Here's a few of the examples we discussed.
Geoff Ryman's hypertext novella "Two-Five-Three," about a menagerie of London train-crash victims (subsequently remediated in print form):
[http://www.ryman-novel.com/]
Shelly Jackson's "My Body"--a feminist-flavored exploration of fleshly autobiography and other musings organized by an illustrated map of the author's body:
[http://www.altx.com/thebody/]
My own contribution, from comic art theorist Scott McCloud's site; a hypertextual comic strip entitled "Choose Your Own Carl" (where, incidentally, the nominal protagonist always meets his untimely demise regardless of the path):
[http://scottmccloud.com/comics/carl/3b/cyoc.html]
Of course, there were others as well, only I forgot to write them down...The rub to all of this, of course, is how to incorporate these monstrosities (or the conceptual apparatuses that undergird them) into the practice of teaching writing. Indeed, a question for the ages.
Let it be Pronounced on this Day, the Eighth of October, 2003 in the Year of Our Lord, and indeed Forever After, that radiohead is the Supreme Band of the Universe, and they shall be granted all benefits associated with said title. Furthermore, this fact shall be deemed henceforth irrefutable.
Carry on.