Letter from the guest editors

Computers and Composition 20 (2003) 219–220

Letter from the guest editors

With this letter Joyce and Maura have the opportunity to guest edit an exciting collection of articles in this last issue of our term as joint associate editors for Computers and Composition. We appreciate the opportunities we have had to work with leading scholars in computers and composition and learn so much about the field, about editing, and about academic professionalism. We are both moving on – Joyce to be an assistant professor at the University of South Florida – St. Petersburg, and Maura, having just finished the comprehensive exams at Michigan Technological University, to begin work on her dissertation project. The innovative, engaging articles in this issue of Computers and Composition represent new perspectives in computers-and-composition research. In “Writing about Cool: Teaching Hypertext as Juxtaposition,” for example, Jeff Rice at the University of Detroit – Mercy offers a new perspective on using hypertext in composition classrooms, incorporating the work of Marshall McLuhan, Amira Baraka, and Robert Farris Thompson. Rice suggests that attention to the logic of juxtaposition, through hypertextual writing assignments, may be one way to address the Conference on College Composition and Communication call for repurposing the relationship between course content and writing processes. In “Reveal Codes: A New Lens for Examining and Historicizing the Work of Secretaries,” Liz Rohan, from the University of Michigan – Dearborn, combines feminist research on technology with her personal narratives and those of her grandmother about their secretarial experience. She offers a fresh perspective on the relationship between women and their workplace literacy skills. Rohan argues that academic research may lack effective language for describing low-status, gendered, and classed work. Craig Stroupe from the University of Minnesota – Duluth in his “Making Distance Presence: The Compositional Voice in Online Learning” also turns to personal experiences – Stroupe’s work as an online course designer and as a composition and English studies scholar. He argues that the design of online teaching and learning environments must also attend to the aesthetic, linguistic, and performative processes provided by literary methodologies and compositional pedagogies. Diana Calhoun Bell and Mike T. Hübler, both from the University of Alabama – Huntsville, present another aspect of online interactions, moving from the classroom situations discussed by Stroupe to the computer-mediated environment of a university writing center listserv. Their article, “Computer-Mediated Humor and Ethos: Exploring Threads of Constitutive Laughter in Online Communities” analyzes the way that humor on this listserv functions as a strategy for building constitutive group ethos. 8755-4615/$ – see front matter © 2003 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/S8755-4615(03)00032-X

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Letter from the guest editors / Computers and Composition 20 (2003) 219–220

Finally, Blakely Duffelmeyer at Iowa State University offers a well-developed argument regarding computer classroom training for new teaching assistants. Her research indicates that adding another layer of information in the shape of intensive training in computer-mediated teaching may be counterproductive to the general training of new teaching assistants. Instead, she recommends a more gradual process of learning and adaptation consistent with Etienne Wenger’s theory of communities of practice. This issue’s book review by Nancy G. Barron, from Northern Arizona University, takes a close look at Writing Hypertext and Learning: Conceptual and Empirical Approaches (2002), a collection edited by Rainer Bromme and Elmar Stahl. Barron emphasizes that this collection focuses on research from European and U.S. sources, thus including interesting sources not commonly found in North American rhetoric and composition publications. The book investigates using hypertext as a visual aid for the thinking process, providing language for considering the technology as a tool for thinking rather than producing or presenting text. Overall, scholars of hypertext and researchers in language formation, knowledge gain, and corpus findings will find this book useful. We also take great pleasure in congratulating winners of the 2003 Computers and Composition awards. The awards were presented at the 19th Computers and Writing Conference on May 23, 2003, at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. The winner of the Hugh Burns award for best dissertation of the year is Warren R. Longmire, whose “Using Learning Objects in Critical Thinking Pedagogy to Facilitate Entry into Discourse Communities,” represents an important contribution to computers and composition. The Ellen Nold award for best article or chapter went to Jonathan Alexander for his innovative work in “Digital Spins: The Pedagogy and Politics of Student-Centered E-Zines,” published in our own journal, Computers and Composition. Our heartfelt congratulations also go to Pam Takayoshi and Brian Huot, editors of Teaching Writing with Computers: An Introduction (Houghton Mifflin, 2003), for winning the 2003 Distinguished Book award. We are also pleased to announce that in honor of Charles Moran’s retirement, a new award, the Charles Moran Award for Distinguished Contributions to the Field, will be presented in 2004 for exemplary scholarship and service. And finally, we would like to note an upcoming conference of the Association of Internet Researchers, “Broadening the Band,” which will be held in Toronto, Canada, October 16–19, 2003 (see for more information). As a final, personal note, we will both miss working on Computers and Composition, where we have had much fun working with authors – North American and international – investigating a diverse range of issues about communication technologies. We would also like to welcome the next two associate editors, Cheryl E. Ball, from Michigan Technological University, and James R. Purdy, from the University of Illinois – Urbana-Champaign. And, of course, we wish most of all to thank the editors of Computers and Composition, Gail Hawisher and Cindy Selfe, who have been our invaluable mentors during our terms as associate editors. We will carry with us Cindy and Gail’s generous academic guidance, good humor – and occasional box of Kleenex – as we take up the next stage in our own academic futures. Thank you, Cindy and Gail! Joyce and Maura