September 18th, Field Bibliography

Bernhardt, Stephen, A. "The Shape of Text to Come: The Texture of Print on Screens." College Composition and Communication 44.2 (1993): 151-75.

While dated, Bernhardt still makes a good point when he claims, "Changes in technology invariably trigger changes in the shape of text" (151). He lists nine "dimensions of variation" that help differentiate use of text onscreen and on paper. Onscreen texts tend to be: Situationally embedded; interactive; functionally mapped; modular; navigable; hierarchically embedded; spacious; graphically rich; and customizable and publishable. He believes that as texts change due the constraints of technology, we will develop new skills to process those new texts (173).

Kress, Gunter, and Theo Van Leeuwen. Multimodal Disourse: The Modes and Media of Contemporary Communication. London: Arnold, 2001. In the past, communication was generally conducted in a single mode. People spoke to one another, or they communicated by writing and print. Later, radio provided a mode to communicate by sound at a distance, while television combined both sounds and pictures. Both radio and television, though, functioned because of written scripts. With computers, we are using more modes of communication our social transactions. They argue that "meaning is made in many different ways, always, in many modes and media which are co-present in a communicational ensemble" (111). This stands in contrast to the older idea that communication only happened with words. Sullivan, Patricia. "Practicing safe visual rhetoric on the World Wide Web." Computers and Composition 18 (2001): 103-21. Changes in media technology change the way that people work. Much design advice or "guideline[s]"(104) are the result of trying to force websites into looking and acting like print. Such "safe" guidelines provide structure for designers, especially novices, but do continue to influence web design even after designers develop skills to be more creative in design. Because the web has "some of the characteristics of print, some of television, and some of film," new aesthetics must be established for the medium. For this reason, textual meaning on the internet is impossible to separate from the visual aspects. Wysocki, Anne Frances, et al. Writing New Media: Theory and Applications for Expanding the Teaching of Composition. Logan, UT: Utah UP, 2004. The authors claim that this book "provides rationales for opening a writing classroom to new media in particular ways" (vii). Distinguishing this text are the exercises, assignments, and handouts as well as theory and advice. Wysocki, Anne Frances. "awaywithwords: On the possibilities in unavailable designs." Computers and Composition 22 (2005): 55-62. Under what circumstances can we imagine submitting a piece of literary criticism on a piece of construction paper written in crayon? Wysocki argues that certain materials and designs are not available for certain uses. She argues that Kress's understanding of "image and word" as being "bound logically and respectively with time and space" limits the way that images and words can be understood. Wysocki, Anne Frances. "Impossibly Distinct: On Form/Content and Word/Image in Two Pieces of Computer-Based Interactive Multimedia." Computers and Composition 18 (2001): 209-34. Wysocki argues that much advice for building content online assumes that, "content is separate from form, writing from the visual, information from design, word from image" (210). Using two interactive CDs that feature the work of Matisse, Wysocki compares how the experience of navigating the CDs shapes the user's experience with the content.