If an [[ergodic text]], according to Espen J. Aarseth [[(1997)->first citation]], is any work for which "nontrivial effort is required to allow the reader to traverse the text," then I wonder beyond that base of textual analysis what an entire [[ergodic rhetoric]] would look like for composition.
<img src="http://www.edward-knight.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/cybertext.jpg">
^^(book cover of Espen Aarseth's *Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature*)^^
In his book *Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature*, Espen Aarseth [[(1997)->third citation]] discusses what he calls "cybertexts," works in which the "mechanical organization of the text" and "the intracacies of the medium" are "integral part[s] of the literary exchange."
Cybertexts are the subjects of Aarseth's other neologism, this one borrowed from physics: *ergodic*. The word ergodic "derives from the Greek words *ergon* and *hodos*, meaning 'work' and 'path.'"
Aarseth expanded the definition of literature through the application of the ergodic. I take his step forward even further, by proposing my own theory for an [[ergodic rhetoric]] focused on composition which "works" through forking "paths."Aarseth [[(1997)->second citation]] says an ergodic text demands responsibilities beyond just "eye movement and the periodic or arbitrary turning of pages," so I similarly consider that ergodic rhetoric demands a cognitively haptic engagement with writing that extends composition not just beyond [[literacy]], but [[digital literacy]] as well, into what Gregory Ulmer famously dubs [[electracy]].<img src="http://newlearningonline.com/_uploads/orality_and_literacy.png">
^^(book cover of Walter Ong's *Orality and Literacy*)^^
Walter Ong [[(2002)->fourth citation]] discusses, in *Orality and Literacy*, "literate thought and expression in terms of their emergence from and relation to orality." As gleaned from this point, these subjects explore both the differences and relations between orality and writing, for the dimensions are blurred. It is that blur that we must continue to complicate, just as Ong does.
In the blur we find that literacy [[is]] a kind of "written orality."<img src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/410OxpbrW3L._SX298_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg">
^^(book cover of Paul Gilster's *Digital Literacy*)^^
Digital literacy is a commonly used term popularized by Paul Gilster [[(1997)->fifth citation]] meaning the understanding of digital ways of composing. Gilster literally wrote the book on it, the well-known *Digital Literacy*. To adapt a definition of his, "digital literacy is the ability to understand information and—more important—to evaluate and integrate information in multiple formats" of digital technology.
This definition, despite its critical ease of use, too often overlooks just how tied to language the operative word [["literacy"]] is--an especially specific type of language even, which hypertext resembles but outreaches.
I therefore contend that, while helpful, digital literacy ends up a limited term, without the breadth of [[electracy]] as proposed by Gregory L. Ulmer.
<img src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/31ZY3KPPGXL._SX320_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg">
^^(book cover of Gregory Ulmer's *Teletheory*)^^
Electracy, first theorized by Gregory L. Ulmer in his book *Teletheory*, is the most thorough distinction (for the ways it succeeds and acknowledges the playfulness of its failures) of how we can attempt to theorize writing in a culture saturated with electronic media. Not just digital literacy, a phrase which often describes new technology with old thinking, electracy is its own word introducing its own rethinking of the paradigm shift:
Put simply, Ulmer [[(2009)->sixth citation]] explains that "electracy is to digital media what literacy is to print."
Not so simply, he expands, "What literacy is to the analytical mind, electracy is to the [[affective body]]: a prosthesis that enhances and augments a natural or organic [[human potential]]" [[(n.d.)->seventh citation]].
<img src="http://newlearningonline.com/_uploads/orality_and_literacy.png">
^^(book cover of Walter Ong's *Orality and Literacy*)^^
Walter Ong [[(2002)->Ong citation]] discusses, in *Orality and Literacy*, "literate thought and expression in terms of their emergence from and relation to orality." As gleaned from this point, these subjects explore both the differences and relations between orality and writing, for the dimensions are blurred. It is that blur that we must continue to complicate, just as Ong does.
In the blur we eventually realize that literacy [[is not]] a kind of "written orality."
I originally conceived the necessity of this distinction after a conversation with a fellow graduate student, in which he quipped to me, "In that case, why not just call 'literacy'—'written orality?'"
To begin complicating this conversation, we can start with Ong's very subtitle to his landmark book, *Orality and Literacy*: ***[[The Technologizing of the Word]]***.
What matters here is that it almost isn’t wrong, yet we must still acknowledge the implicit shift. According to Ong [[(2002)->eighth citation]], it is the "thingness" of the word that begins that shift. Written text turns the signifying sound patterns of orality into the meaning carrying symbols of [[literacy->digital literacy]]. Hypertext has been an academic and literary fascination since Michael Joyce's landmark hypertext novel <a href="http://www.eastgate.com/catalog/Afternoon.html" target="_blank">*afternoon, a story*</a> debuted in 1990. Written through the pioneering hypertext environment [[Storyspace and published by Eastgate Systems]], *afternoon* was seen as a revitalization of writing in an era vegetating in front of the television.
Interactivity became the new ideal as Joyce [[(1996)->twelfth citation]] threatened, "Hypertext is the revenge of text upon television."
Today, Twine has updated the impetus for the interactive from *afternoon*'s golden era of hypertext, as the language surrounding these texts changes with the times. Given the active participatory model instantiated by Twine’s narrative capabilities, its products are today often considered [[games]]. This tension between terms—the [["story"]] versus the [["game"]]—is played out by Twine’s literate representation: its productions consist of and progress through text. Twine stories could be said to unfold just like print literature, as hyperlinks jump from web-"page" to web-"page."
In fact, according to Ted Nelson, creator of the forever-in-progress alter-net project Xanadu:
"Conventional electronic documents were designed in the 1970s by well-funded conventional thinkers at Xerox PARC, who asked, 'How can we imitate paper?' The result is today's electronic document—Microsoft Word format and the printout format PDF. They imitate paper and emphasize appearance and fonts" [[(n.d.)->thirteenth citation]].
Even granting that Twine's digital "paper" is jumbled into non-linear order, its contents are still read like [[book-bound text]].
Same thing, different [[medium->games]].Twine compositions are more like games, instantiated by the reader/player motivated choices of non-linear storytelling.
As much as Twine unfolds across "pages," its text mobilizes those pages into sites of interactivity.
According to Twine game designer [[Porpentine]] [[(2012b)->fifteenth citation]], "Twine is the closest we've come to a blank page. It binds itself and it can bind itself along an infinite number of spines extending in any direction."
On that blank page, the electrate appears literate. In that infinity, the literate becomes electrate.
I argue then that Twine games play on that tension between literate alphabet and Ulmer’s new apparatus in ways that show how electracy's "language" of our ongoing media shift is culturally derived from its ancestral mode.
Still text-centric, but differently text-motivated, Twine's storytelling capabilities are not limited to just what the static words tell us, but where the hyperlinked words [[take us]].By analyzing the interactive storytelling hypertext editor [[Twine]] as a pedagogical tool, I want to explore how ergodic rhetoric is an electrate step forward that does not disavow literacy, but does build outside of its constructs.
Then via discussion of my own pedagogical methods, I discuss how ergodic rhetoric can create a nonlinear pedagogy that thrives within our electrate moment in ways streamlined beyond former [[literate modes]]. In a haptic update of Ong's "Technologizing of the Word," Twine's games distribute narrative across interactions with ideas as confined within hyperlinked words, sentences, and even punctuation, turning the building blocks of literacy into the doors of electracy.
To best understand this reading of Twine composition requires the facility of electracy, not just digital literacy. I claim that conceptualizing Twine composition via electracy best prepares us to construct our own Twine games. This platform is not simply meant to accommodate the simplification of "digital literacy"—organizing text through computerized word processing. It more complexly allows users to shape text itself by turning it into a haptic mechanism of progression: [[you must click to proceed]].This manipulation is an electrate innovation, and to capitalize upon it, you must understand the workings of its apparatus, not simply the flash of its effects.
In an interview for Jacob Greene and Madison Jones's “Augmented Vélorutionaries” [[(n.d)->sixteenth citation]], Ulmer had [[this->(transcript)]] to say for [[digital literacy:]]
<iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/157501143#t=28s" width="640" height="480" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen></iframe>
<p><a href="https://vimeo.com/157501143#t=28s">
So if to reduce science to "nature magic" is to never attempt to understand it, Ulmer seems to posit that digital literacy implies a misunderstanding of the electronic apparatus. Approaching Twine then as an electrate platform, powered by text but not by the trappings of literacy, better conceives of [[its tension between modes]].<img src="https://emshort.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/screen-shot-2012-10-07-at-3-22-56-pm.png?w=584&h=233">
^^(first page of Porpentine's *howling dogs*)^^
To illustrate this tension, I turn to [[Porpentine]]'s [[(2012a)->seventeenth citation]] <a href="http://slimedaughter.com/games/twine/howlingdogs/" target="_blank">*howling dogs*</a>, a game which thrives between dimensions of delivery and narrative.
The game begins with an epigraph by Japanese author Kenzaburo Oe, but then moves into direct second-person address. This shift mirrors what Ulmer [[(2011)->eighteenth citation]] calls in "Avatar Emergency" the descent of the avatar. We have moved away from the reader/writer of literacy to begin [["playing one's avatar"]] in electracy.
While Porpentine's game resembles and requires text, it is already doing something different with it as a delivery technology.<img src="http://graememitchell.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/porpentine_thumb-246x246.jpg">
^^(Porpentine)^^
Porpentine is an indie game designer who works primarily with Twine as her gamemaking medium. She is a trans woman who explores powerful counter-cultural themes through her works. She sees Twine as the purest form of creation in a capitalist society, because [["No one owns Twine. It belongs to everyone."->Storyspace and published by Eastgate Systems]] All the while, she acknowledges that her creative works are marginalized.
About her own work, Porpentine [[(2012b)->citation I missed]] states, "[[Some people don’t read my stories because they’re games, and some people don’t play my games because they’re stories.->games]]"
It is this revolutionary marginalization of Twine as a medium on the periphery that makes it so exciting to interact with as an artistic platform. [[Porpentine->its tension between modes]]'s compelling work can be modeled as a jumping off point, for the ways it [[warps]] what we expect from stories, games, and writing in general.You furthermore realize that *howling dogs*'s narrative structure also straddles narrative strategies.
You read in "Twinescapes, or The Rise of Spatial Hypertext" that Reed Underwood [[(2016)->nineteenth citation]] says, "Twine-based interactive fiction…straddles the very threshold between game and literature." Its extension into game mechanics, according to Underwood, is based upon its use of hypertext as a spatial storytelling device, not just a temporal one. You agree with his analyses, as he explains, that the "act and activity of clicking links serves as a metonymy for active motion between one place and another."
You begin to wonder just how this very project's own shift into second person perspective straddles genre strategies as well. Are [[You]] "I?" The [[I]] making this?You now argue that *howling dogs*, however, conveys space most extensively as a limitation. Set in some sort of vaguely implied sanitarium/asylum/etc., the game structurally and cognitively emulates various feelings of imprisonment. You claim that this affective confinement mirrors our fixated entrapment in the older literate mode that even confines the digital to the conceptual cell of literacy.
In order to escape into electracy then, you as the avatar within howling dogs put on a type of virtual reality device and live through immersive visions. If you guide the avatar through these virtual experiences just right, it is possible to “win” the game, escape the imprisonment of the game’s story and its mechanics. If you can beat howling dogs and break free from its narrative trappings, then how can we [[break free]] of digital literacy and into electracy?*howling dogs*, however, conveys space most extensively as a limitation. Set in some sort of vaguely implied sanitarium/asylum/etc., the game structurally and cognitively emulates various feelings of imprisonment. I claim, within the context of this space, that this affective confinement mirrors our fixated entrapment in the older literate mode that even confines the digital to the conceptual cell of literacy.
In order to escape into electracy then, the avatar within howling dogs puts on a type of virtual reality device and lives through immersive visions. If the player guides the avatar through these virtual experiences just right, it is possible to “win” the game, escape the imprisonment of the game’s story and its mechanics. If a reader/player can beat howling dogs and break free from its narrative trappings, then how can we [[break free]] of digital literacy and into electracy?Through ergodic rhetoric, we can utilize a nonlinear pedagogy that requires instructor and student alike to engage more fully with the composition process in [[electrate fashions]] that are no longer "nontrivial" or "arbitrary."
Following after Ulmer's own work in Internet Invention,
<img src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41%2B7epxBDBL._SX332_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg">
^^(book cover of Gregory Ulmer's *Internet Invention*)^^
I have aimed to, as Alan Clinton says of Ulmer, "level the playing field between student and teacher" [[(n.d.)->twenty-fourth citation]]. Therefore, my concept of nonlinear pedagogy first of all [[decenters]] the typical relationship of teacher imparting knowledge to student, from [[on-high to down low.]] What does a Derridean pedagogy look like?
In "Structure, Sign, and Play," Jacques Derrida [[(2001)->twenty-fifth citation]] presents his famous dictum that in some power structures, the center is not the center.
<img src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51XPMO1xV1L._SX331_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg">
^^(book cover of Jacques Derrida's *Writing and Difference*)^^
The power structure of the typical college classroom would indicate that I am its center as all eyes look to me as instructor. I, however, turn that center outward onto my students [[performatively->electrate fashions]]: through technologies like Twine and classroom practices incorporating its structures. Therefore, by Derrida's estimation, I have decentered my classroom.
We all learn [[alongside one another]].<img src="http://www.casnik.si/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/weaver.png">
^^(Richard Weaver)^^
As classic as they came, early champion of college composition Richard Weaver [[(1985)->twenty-sixth citation]] once said:
"There are two postulates basic to our profession: the first is that one [person] can know more than another, and the second is that such knowledge can be imparted. Whoever cannot accept both should retire from the profession and renounce the intention of teaching anyone anything."
And to a degree, it's hard to deny that he's wrong—that's how the university works. Even so, in classes that engage with emerging digital platforms, we have to also confront the fact that we often end up learning [[alongside our students->alongside one another]]. To paraphrase a fellow graduate student: rather than feign authority, we should treat the classroom as a [[makerspace]] where teacher and student end up helping each other in the composition process. It is this model that I have attempted in my [[Writing through Media]] courses I have taught at the University of Florida.
The eventual products my students composed fascinated me in how innovative they were and in how their fellow students received them. Though I readily admit they may seem a little "rough," I would argue that what they managed to learn about some of Twine's capabilities in a short amount of time still displays nicely in their efforts.
Here, I exhibit briefly a few of my students' works to demonstrate what each highlights about [[ergodic composition.]] By preparing Twine presentations instead of PowerPoints or Prezis, I can create lessons that include branching paths which leave what students want to learn somewhat up to them in my class.
As a basis, when we would read through high profile examples of hypertext fiction, we would sometimes do so again as a class to see how different the experience can become when each link clicked is put up to a vote.
I can do the same for my lesson plans to involve the students in the shaping of those plans in action. Therefore, in the classroom according to nonlinear pedagogy, the makerspace does not just make stuff—it crafts [[the discussions we have->nonlinear pedagogy]].By having them prepare Twine presentations instead of PowerPoints or Prezis, I can offer my students the opportunity to prepare their own lessons through the platform that necessitate classroom choice.
As a basis, when we would read through high profile examples of hypertext fiction, we would sometimes do so again as a class to see how different the experience can become when each link clicked is put up to a vote.
Putting this model into action regarding a class presentation encourages students to prepare for more than what they get to teach (an experience most teachers know well), and to think quickly on their feet in public speaking situations.
The classroom as directed by nonlinear pedagogy puts teacher and students on the same plain and lets both work together to choose which nonlinear path the class will take to [[traverse that plain->nonlinear pedagogy]]. Nonlinear pedagogy, as structured around media possibilities like Twine and other new technologies, moves the composition classroom beyond classical confines of rhetoric that require writing to play by the rules of narrative into modes of interaction that, while guided, can unfold in a freshly socratic structure of new media that we can teach and that teaches us.
Electracy continues to predict the way writing can be taught in our media moment, so I want to extend the concept into the ever-newer apparatus of interactive technology that can help us imagine fresh ideas like ergodic rhetoric and nonlinear pedagogy. These notions as proposed here could not function within a writing still defined by literacy, textual or digital, so I challenge the way we can teach writing with a new strategy for action composed of new media platforms that can act back upon us[[.]]Writing through Media is a course series within UF's English Department that cultivates writing in modes outside of the traditional word processer essay format, such as video production, augmented reality, web comics, and in my case, hypertext composition.
Since the course was heavily motivated by multimedia composition, one of the class's major writing assignments was of course to compose a story through the hypertext editor Twine. While the students spent time writing their Twine compositions, I dedicated class time to tutorials in how to use the software to its fullest potential. As I taught my students how to use Twine and mostly looked like I knew what I was talking about…I was very honest when I didn't at all. This dialogue even created opportunities where my students [[taught me]] something about Twine as well.
Writing through Media works best as an experimental class that privileges Writing alongside [[Students]].One class period consisted of me explaining the "simplest" way to create the appearance of returning to a room in a Twine story. My explanation was actually very tedious, and one of my students kindly informed how the actually easy way was done.
Here, I had the choice to protect my ego and reinforce the linear top-down progression of teacher teaches student. I opted instead for my [[nonlinear pedagogy->Students]] and told the class how grateful I was that the student corrected me. The experience of seeing my students adapt to Twine's platform in an innovative, fully electrate fashion leads me to my other aspect of my nonlinear pedagogy. If Twine games give their players the empowering choice of which narrative path they elect to take, I wonder if [[an ergodic rhetoric class]] can do [[the same]]. This first student's game, titled <a href="http://philome.la/TheBryaninator/memory-loss/play" target="_blank">"Memory Loss"</a> followed after the model set forth by Porpentine's *howling dogs*. Similarly set in a confined space, with vague plot details, and a way out at the end.
From the very first page, this student's game shows the nonlinear nature of Twine storytelling and the empowering choice that affords to the player. One of the more narratively complex of the games turned in, the [[other classmates]] were impressed and openly complimented the student, taking the [[competitive grade culture]] out of the room completely. I have to ponder whether Porpentine would appreciate this homage or not.
She adamantly opposes what she considers capitalist gatekeeping, and actually lumps college in with that model. In her estimation, academia breeds the kind of elitism that reinforces "the few making for the many" as opposed to a purer alternative in which everyone makes for everyone.
Porpentine [[(2012b)->twenty-eighth citation]] does not mince words when she states, "Under our capitalist system, to accept other ways of communicating is to devalue the cash value of the communication style learned in college."
Seeing it as a way to foster an inclusive community outside of cutthroat capitalism, Porpentine looks to Twine as this "other way." I only hope by teaching this [[other way->an ergodic rhetoric class]] myself, I've extended that [[community into the college classroom->football game]], instead of colonizing it for college communication.
This next game, created by a female student with extensive years of ballet experience, is called <a href="http://philome.la/taylortrache/dancelife/play" target="_blank">"Dance Life"</a>.
Inspired by the “eat/drink/shower” ritual built into the gameplay of howling dogs, this student followed the old adage to “write what you know”—and she was not alone, just the best at it. I also received games about softball practice, waking up for class, etc.
What this student utilized well in her game about a typical day going to ballet practice is the implementation of [[consequences]] for choices through Twine’s branching story infrastructure: one can be on-time or late, stretch or talk with friends, then, as a result, dance well or pull a muscle and have to sit out. When a text reconciles choices with their consequences, it has become a cybertext. Aarseth [[(1997)->twenty-seventh citation]] concurs,
"A reader, however strongly engaged in the unfolding of a narrative, is powerless... He cannot have the player's pleasure of influence: 'Let's see what happens when I do this.' The reader's pleasure is the pleasure of the voyeur. Safe, but impotent.
The cybertext reader, on the other hand, is not safe, and therefore, it can be argued, she is not a reader. The cybertext puts its would-be reader at risk: the risk of rejection. The effort and energy demanded by the cybertext of its reader raise the stakes of interpretation to those of intervention. Trying to know a cybertext is an investment of personal improvisation that can result in either intimacy or failure."
Therefore, the cybertextual participant in ergodic rhetoric joins in the game, as opposed to "a spectator at a [[football game]], [who] may speculate, conjecture, extrapolate, even shout abuse, but... is not a player." Finally, a game with nothing but the worst of consequences, <a href="http://philome.la/jimmytinthemorn/the-muschamp/play" target="_blank">"The Muschamp"</a>, was created by another of my students as a playable lament of Will Muschamp's tenure as UF's football coach. Using Twine's randomization engine, the game is intentionally pockmarked with fumbles, interceptions, penalties, the occasional field goal, but mostly bad or worse outcomes.
What I love most about the game, other than how fun and funny it is, is the compelling community it immediately created in our classroom. As this student demoed his game for the class, there was a class-wide acknowledgement of how bad their team was that past year, and how funny that is now. His game then, built through Twine, built camaraderie in the class. At a football school, of course sports bring people together, but I was privileged to get to see that rendered digitally true as well, even when the game is to lose.
Overall, the games my students created were rich and compelling in different ways for people with no experience [[using Twine]] before. Ong [[(2002)->ninth citation]] makes it clear throughout *Orality and Literacy* that writing is a technology, indeed "the most momentous of all human technological inventions." Bringing the technology of writing into contact with this technology I am [["writing"]] through, he argues:
"Writing and print and the computer are all ways of technologizing the word. Once the word is technologized, there is no effective way to criticize what technology has done with it without the aid of the highest technology available."
Thus, literacy meets the digital in a [[compound word->digital literacy]].
[[(Though a portmanteau may work better...)]]
Gilster was the first to directly coin the term "digital literacy." But he was not the first to conceptualize it, as more rigorous scholars had been broaching the e-merging topic several years before Gilster published *Digital Literacy* in 1997.
Nor has he been the last to attempt the best way to discuss digital composition. Richard Lanham suggested "[[multimedia literacy]]", Stuart Selber more recently offered "[[multiliteracies]]," and it has been bandied about as a "[[new literacy]]" by many others for years before and since. All of these conceptualizations reveal worthy critical facets for understanding parts of it further.
Yet what **it** is, best described, is Gregory Ulmer's [[electracy]], for the purposes of my argument. A new word for new media.Ong [[(2002)->another Ong citation]] makes it clear throughout *Orality and Literacy* that writing is a technology, indeed "the most momentous of all human technological inventions." Bringing the technology of writing into contact with this technology I am **typing** through, he argues:
"Writing and print and the computer are all ways of technologizing the word. Once the word is technologized, there is no effective way to criticize what technology has done with it without the aid of the highest technology available."
Thus, literacy meets the digital in a [[compound word->digital literacy]].
[[(Though a portmanteau may work better...)]]
I argue that digital literacy (like many other phrases appending literacy practices onto new media) is too simplistic a term to encompass what it means to understand electronic media. Its shortcoming is built into the disconnect of how widespread a concept "digital" can be vs. how tied to language "literacy" is.
Gregory Ulmer's portmanteau of electronic and literacy--[["electracy"->electracy]]--better conceptualizes how we must learn to adapt and compose in new media, because it highlights the prevalence of the image in its definition.
Ong [[(2002)->tenth citation]] speaks ahead to Ulmer's apparatus theory by specifying that the word itself is an image:
"Encoded visible markings engage words fully so that the exquisitely intricate structures and references evolved in sound can be visibly recorded... far surpassing the potentials of oral utterance... [Writing] is not a mere appendage to speech. Because it moves speech from the oralaural to a new sensory world, that of vision, it transforms speech and thought as well."Twine allows users to create interactive stories that unfold through the clicking of hypertext links. <a href="http://twinery.org/"target="_blank">Its website</a> describes Twine as an "open-source tool for telling interactive, nonlinear stories" [[(n.d.)->eleventh citation]].
Originally created by Chris Klimas in 2009, Twine has since become a thriving platform for a wide variety of text-based [[games->literate modes]]. [[The advantages of Twine->literate modes]] and its products over Storyspace's hypertext editor and Eastgate's published work are entirely financial, especially in an era where open-access, open-source, and the more troubling (truthful) word "free" now drive academic culture.
They are all free.
Indie game designer [[Porpentine]] [[(2012b)->fourteenth citation]] dissects the ivory tower issue of Eastgate's price-driven output with subtle digs:
"I'm thinking, no wonder hypertext fiction had a lull—they hid behind middle-upper class literary pretensions, acting like it was some kind of avant-garde science. I'm seeing academic essays on hypertext buried behind passwords, I'm seeing a hypertext editor like Twine for $300, I'm seeing stories selling for $30. How many people are buying those?"Or are you the reader reading? The player playing?
Astrid Ensslin [[(2014)->one last citation]] tells you in *Literary Gaming* that you are both: "the reader-player (RP)." RPs like you are invoked through what she calls "textual *you*," "as the second person pronoun and directive utterances are used...to construct the storyworld via RP address."
<img src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/410IY62RNAL.jpg">
^^(book cover of Astrid Ennslin's *Literary Gaming*)^^
The storyworld of Twine games employ "textual *you*" to create the effect of immersing RPs in their very [[interface]]. You are interfacing with this text; therefore you are a part of it.
I argue that the "you" avatar of most Twine games is what creates their invoked space.
To refine Underwood's terminology, I differentiate from Lev Manovich's [[(2002)->twenty-second citation]] spatial montage as discussed and distinguished from film technique in *The Language of New Media*:
<img src="https://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/9780262632553.jpg">
^^(book cover of Lev Manovich's *The Language of New Media*)^^
"whilst twentieth century film practice has elaborated complex techniques of montage with different images replacing each other in time, the possibility of what can be called a 'spatial montage' of simultaneously co-existing images has not been explored as systematically."
I, rather, play with his term to redefine it. Spatial montage in Twine does not resemble Manovich's "simultaneously co-existing images" but instead evokes a filmic 2.0 of [[creating space by traversing images]].Works Cited
Aarseth, E. (1997). *Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature*. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University.
Butler, J. (1988). Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory. *Theatre Journal*, *40*(4), 519-531.
Clinton, A. (n.d.). [Review of the book *Internet Invention: From Literacy to Electracy*]. *Reconstruction 5*(1). Retrieved from
http://reconstruction.eserver.org/Issues/051/clinton.shtml.
Derrida, J. (2001). *Writing and Difference*. (Alan Bass, Trans.). London, New York: Routledge.
Ensslin, A. (2014). *Literary Gaming*. Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Galloway, A. (2012). *The Interface Effect*. Cambridge: Polity.
Gilster, P. (1997). *Digital Literacy*. New York: John Wiley & Sons.
Greene, J., & Jones, M. (2017). Augmented Vélorutionaries: Digital Rhetoric, Memorials, and Public Discourse. *Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy*, *22*(1). Retrieved from http://kairos.technorhetoric.net/22.1/topoi/jones-greene/index.html.
Halberstam, J. (2011). *The Queer Art of Failure*. Durham: Duke University Press.
Joyce, M. (1996). *Of Two Minds: Hypertext Pedagogy and Poetics*. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan.
Klimas, C. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://twinery.org/.
Lanham, R. (1995). Digital Literacy. Retrieved from http://www2.idehist.uu.se/distans/ilmh/Ren/lanham-digital-lit.htm.
Manovich, L. (2002). *The Language of New Media*. Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Nelson, T. H. (n.d.). THE XANADU PARALLEL UNIVERSE: Visibly Connected Pages and Documents for a New Kind of Writing. Retrieved from http://xanadu.com/xUniverse-D6.
Ong, W. (2002). *Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word*. London, New York: Routledge.
Porpentine (2012a). *howling dogs*. Retrieved from
http://slimedaughter.com/games/twine/howlingdogs/.
Porpentine (2012b). Creation Under Capitalism and the Twine Revolution. Retrieved from http://nightmaremode.thegamerstrust.com/2012/11/25/creation-under-capitalism/.
Selber, S. (2004). *Multiliteracies for a Digital Age*. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University.
Shultz Colby, R. & Colby, R. (2008). A Pedagogy of Play: Integrating Computer Games into the Writing Classroom, *Computers and Composition* (25), 300-312.
Sundvall, S. (2017). The First 100 Days of an Electrate President: Post-Truth, Alternative Facts, and Fake News in the Third Sophistic. *Textshop Experiments* (3). Retrieved from http://textshopexperiments.org/textshop03/first-100-days-of-an-electrate-president.
Ulmer, G. (n.d.). Electracy and Pedagogy. Retrieved from
http://users.clas.ufl.edu/glue/longman/pedagogy/electracy.html.
Ulmer, G. (2004). *Teletheory*. New York: Atropos Press.
Ulmer, G. (2009). The Learning Screen. In *networked: a (networked_book) about (networked_art)*. Retrieved from http://ulmer.networkedbook.org/the-learning-screen-introduction-electracy/.
Ulmer, G. (2011). Avatar Emergency. *Digital Humanities Quarterly 5*(3). Retrieved from http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/5/3/000100/000100.html.
Underwood, R. (2016). Twinescapes, or The Rise of Spatial Hypertext. Retrieved from
https://killscreen.com/articles/twinescapes-or-the-rise-of-spatial-hypertext/.
Weaver, R. (1985). *Language is Sermonic*. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University.
***
Credit for background image goes to: Kara Stone, Pixelles
[[En(Twine)d with Ergodic Rhetoric->abstract]]
by
[[Chloe Anna Milligan->Bio]]Aarseth, E. (1997), *Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature*, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University, 1[[.->beginning]]Aarseth, E. (1997), *Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature*, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University, 2[[.->ergodic rhetoric]]Aarseth, E. (1997), *Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature*, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University, 1[[.->ergodic text]]Ong, W. (2002), *Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word*, London, New York: Routledge, 1[[.->literacy]] Gilster, P. (1997), *Digital Literacy*, New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1[[.->digital literacy]]Ulmer, G. (2009), The Learning Screen, In *networked: a (networked_book) about (networked_art)*, Retrieved from
http://ulmer.networkedbook.org/the-learning-screen-introduction-electracy/ [[.->electracy]]Ulmer, G. (n.d.), Electracy and Pedagogy, Retrieved from http://users.clas.ufl.edu/glue/longman/pedagogy/electracy.html [[.->electracy]]Ong, W. (2002), *Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word*, London, New York: Routledge, 11[[.->is not]]Ong, W. (2002), *Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word*, London, New York: Routledge, 83, 79[[.->The Technologizing of the Word]]Ong, W. (2002), *Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word*, London, New York: Routledge, 83[[.->(Though a portmanteau may work better...)]]Klimas, C. (n.d.), Retrieved from http://twinery.org/ [[.->Twine]]Joyce, M. (1996), *Of Two Minds: Hypertext Pedagogy and Poetics*, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 47, 111[[.->literate modes]]Nelson, T.H. (n.d.), THE XANADU PARALLEL UNIVERSE: Visibly Connected Pages and Documents for a New Kind of Writing, Retrieved from http://xanadu.com/xUniverse-D6 [[.->"story"]]Porpentine (2012b), Creation Under Capitalism and the Twine Revolution, Retrieved from http://nightmaremode.thegamerstrust.com/2012/11/25/creation-under-capitalism/ [[.->Storyspace and published by Eastgate Systems]]Porpentine (2012b), Creation Under Capitalism and the Twine Revolution, Retrieved from http://nightmaremode.thegamerstrust.com/2012/11/25/creation-under-capitalism/ [[.->"game"]]Greene, J., & Jones, M. (2017), Augmented Vélorutionaries: Digital Rhetoric, Memorials, and Public Discourse, *Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy*, *22*(1), Retrieved from http://kairos.technorhetoric.net/22.1/topoi/jones-greene/index.html. [[.->you must click to proceed]]Porpentine (2012a), *howling dogs*, Retrieved from
http://slimedaughter.com/games/twine/howlingdogs/ [[.->its tension between modes]]Ulmer, G. (2011), Avatar Emergency, *Digital Humanities Quarterly 5*(3), Retrieved from
http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/5/3/000100/000100.html [[.->its tension between modes]]Underwood, R. (2016), Twinescapes, or The Rise of Spatial Hypertext, Retrieved from
https://killscreen.com/articles/twinescapes-or-the-rise-of-spatial-hypertext/ [[.->"playing one's avatar"]]Galloway, A. (2012), *The Interface Effect*, Cambridge: Polity, viii[[.->interface]]Underwood, R. (2016), Twinescapes, or The Rise of Spatial Hypertext, Retrieved from
https://killscreen.com/articles/twinescapes-or-the-rise-of-spatial-hypertext/ [[.->interface]]Manovich, L. (2002), *The Language of New Media*, Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 323[[.->I]]Aarseth, E. (1997), *Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature*, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University, 3[[.->creating space by traversing images]]Clinton, A. (n.d.), [Review of the book *Internet Invention: From Literacy to Electracy*], *Reconstruction 5*(1), Retrieved from
http://reconstruction.eserver.org/Issues/051/clinton.shtml [[.->break free]]Derrida, J. (2001), *Writing and Difference*, (Alan Bass, Trans.), London, New York: Routledge, 279[[.->decenters]]Weaver, R. (1985), *Language is Sermonic*, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University, 194[[.->on-high to down low.]]Aarseth, E. (1997), *Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature*, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University, 4[[.->consequences]]Porpentine (2012b), Creation Under Capitalism and the Twine Revolution, Retrieved from http://nightmaremode.thegamerstrust.com/2012/11/25/creation-under-capitalism/ [[.->competitive grade culture]]Porpentine (2012b), Creation Under Capitalism and the Twine Revolution, Retrieved from http://nightmaremode.thegamerstrust.com/2012/11/25/creation-under-capitalism/ [[.->Porpentine]]The spatiality of interactive composition is more in line with what Aarseth [[(1997)->twenty-third citation]] calls "spatiodynamic." The evocation of movement through a textual space is what creates this virtual space.
"You" are here, as I create the passages through which to [[navigate]].You encounter Alexander Galloway's [[(2012)->twentieth citation]] *The Interface Effect* and are told, "The interface effect is perched…on the mediating thresholds of self and world."^
<img src="http://media.wiley.com/product_data/coverImage300/28/07456625/0745662528.jpg">
^^(book cover of Alexander Galloway's *The Interface Effect*)^^
If Twine is the medium then, the interface effect is your interaction with this very passage, your implication as "you" within this (either: "story you are reading","game you are playing"). Self meet world.
In front of you is another quote from Reed Underwood's [[(2016)->twenty-first citation]] essay. Each word is its own building block, and you reform them to contexualize a new point:
Regarding [[spatial hypertext]], it is the no-man's land of the interface within Twine and your occupancy of it as the avatar "you," that creates the relationship between an "already spatial story... reaching out to haunt the physical world."Ensslin, A. (2014), *Literary Gaming*, Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 92, 89, 105-106[[.->You]]"One of my problems is 'digital literacy'—that term. So I've been saying lately that if you describe science as 'nature magic,' then go ahead and say 'digital literacy,' but otherwise don't[[.->you must click to proceed]]"Abstract
In this [[webtext->Preface]], I adapt Espen J. Aarseth's concept of ergodic literature to propose an ergodic rhetoric for composition. Aarseth says an ergodic text demands responsibilities beyond just “eye movement and the periodic or arbitrary turning of pages,” so I similarly consider that ergodic rhetoric demands a cognitively haptic engagement with writing that extends composition not just beyond literacy, but “digital literacy” as well, into what Gregory Ulmer famously dubs electracy. Using Porpentine’s *howling dogs* and the “interactive, nonlinear” storytelling device Twine it was created through, I explore how ergodic rhetoric is an electrate step forward that does not disavow literacy, but does build outside of its constructs. Twine is an open-source tool that allows users to create interactive stories that unfold through the clicking of hypertext links, and *howling dogs* is perhaps one of its most famous example texts demonstrating how Twine compositions can be described as games. Therefore, I furthermore explore how ergodic rhetoric can create a nonlinear pedagogy that, according to Rebekah Shultz Colby and Richard Colby, transforms "the writing classroom from workspace to gamespace," and best thrives within our electrate moment in ways that former literate modes only explored. Nonlinear pedagogy "games" the classroom by requiring instructor and student alike to interact alongside one another with the composition process in ways that require more embodied participation, more active engagement, and more ergodic play.
Ong, W. (2002), *Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word*, London, New York: Routledge, 1[[.->is]]Ong, W. (2002), *Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word*, London, New York: Routledge, 83, 79[[.->"writing"]]Preface
Since ergodic texts require more than just “eye movement and the periodic or arbitrary turning of pages,” they instead call for a heightened level of interaction with the text and sustained effort on the part of the interactor. Ergodic literature can include cognitively demanding print texts such as Vladimir Nabokov's *Pale Fire* all the way to constant haptically involving digital texts such as Robyn and Rand Miller's now-classic computer game *Myst* and even beyond. For the purposes of this webtext, it is worth mentioning that Aarseth's original taxonomy of examples included exclusively textual works, from the *I Ching* to MUDs (Multi-User Dungeon) and MOOs (MUD, object-oriented).
Twine is a largely (hyper)textual medium, though images, videos, and external links may be included, and are in my particular piece. Twine compositions are often ergodic in nature through their non-linearity and interactivity. And many of them, such as Porpentine's *howling dogs* and this one, are also, as Aarseth requires, "nontrivial" in the ways they facilitate not just engaged reading but exhaustive rereading. Interactors with this webtext will not read everything in one traversal, as they must take certain paths and commit to particular choices each time. That is where my proposal for ergodic rhetoric comes into play, as the reader crafts different arguments each time they engage with the text, perhaps gets vastly different impressions of the argument as a whole based on the ideas they access and witness, until they finally exhuast all combinations.
This frustration of traditional reading is intentional; it is meant to be generative of news ways to experience arguments. And new access to new arguments make for new pedagoical strategies. Beyond this page, the familiar gesture of passive scrolling down long pages full of text gives way to an increased economy of clicking through shorter chunks of text, thus increasing the haptic interaction. Ergodic rhetoric exponentializes the potential of argument as it challenges what an argument even is. That challenge is not just materially textual, but opens up the classroom structure in ways innovatively pedagogical.
So whether this is an initial attempt or the umpteenth, interactors can [[begin->beginning]] again, experience again. Richard Lanham [[(1995)->first post review citation]] calls multimedia literacy the practice that will help us "recapture the expressivity of [[oral cultures->(Though a portmanteau may work better...)]], which printed books, and handwritten manuscripts before them, excluded."
His conception of literacy for a multimodal framework is a step beyond the somewhat abruptly neat combination of "digital" and "literacy," as it [[widens the writing ecology->multiliteracies]] at stake. What Lanham does well to highlight is the ways in which new media asserts temporality, mutability, and interactivity. For example, he addresses all three here:
"Print fixes utterance and this fixity confers authority and sometimes even timeless immortality...The multimedia signal puts utterance back into time. The reader can change it, reformat and rescale it, practice transforms on image, sound, and word... Print literacy aimed to fix information. Multimedia literacy allows us to unfix it, to revise and vary in the foreground, always with the timeless original on background call. It couples fixity and novelty, original and variation, in a fertile oscillation."
Lanham's "fertile oscillation" has borne much, [[but->new literacy]] there could be more generative ways to conceive how we compose now.
<img src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/31ku8r2g8dL._SX322_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg">
^^(book cover of Stuart A. Selber's *Multiliteracies for a Digital Age*)^^
Stuart A. Selber's [[(2004)->second post review citation]] contribution to the digital literacy debate is plural, as he proposes not a singular, but *Multiliteracies for a Digital Age*. Importantly, his expansion is more conceptual than medial in nature, as he claims, “Students need both functional and critical literacies"--again, "multiliteracies.” His call for the functional and the critical informs his dedication to adapt digital technology for the composition classroom, instead of the more technologically deterministic vice versa.
In fact, Selber breaks down his multiliteracies into three quite useful categories: "functional," which "stresses effective computer use," "critical," which "stresses informed critique," and finally "rhetorical," which "stresses reflective praxis."
Best of all for my proposal of ergodic rhetoric, Selber's rhetorical literacy "is organized by a [[hypertextual->human potential]] metaphor." But, no matter the metaphor, his multiliteracies seem too practical to take on the critical act of proposing new terminology. Therefore we are left wondering what is [[new after literacy->new literacy]].<img src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/41bRZIq%2BshL._SX308_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg">
^^(book cover of Jack Halberstam's *The Queer Art of Failure*)^^
In Jack Halberstam's [[(2011)->third post review citation]] *The Queer Art of Failure*, he explores ways that, "under certain circumstances failing, losing, forgetting, unmaking, undoing, unbecoming, not knowing may in fact offer more creative, more cooperative, more surprising ways of being in the world." He claims that queer failure can critique how "success in a [[heteronormative, capitalist society->Porpentine]] equates too easily to specific forms of reproductive maturity combined with wealth accumulation."
Building off his encouragement to fail greatly then, I consider how every theorization of new literacy, even Ulmer's neologism "electracy"—combining electronic and literacy—are failures. More compellingly, they are [[generative failures]] for both the critical gaps they fill and those they highlight even as they miss them.
Perhaps a way to try on electrate fashions in the composition classroom is by turning to Judith Butler's [[(1988)->eighth post review citation]] theory of performativity.
What Butler intends with performativity for gender identity, she admits can be expanded writ large to the way humans compose themselves. Therefore I attune its use to the composition classroom, and to the breaking down of hierarchical teacher-student power structures.
If identity itself is made up of performances, of what Butler calls, "a *stylized repetition of acts*", then what are the [[performances]] constructing our classes, the writing done within them, and the arguments they form? And what are the acts comprising them: do the clicks enacted, pathways taken, and readthroughs performed in Twine compositions work as [[classroom models->alongside one another]] too, in which teacher and student perform together?In lieu of a makerspace or a performatice space, Rebekah Shultz Colby & Richard Colby [[(2008)->tenth post review citation]] propose a model for the classroom as "gamespace." They suggest that the classroom-as-gamespace "intertwine[s]" or perhaps, en(Twine)s the "work and play" of the writing process. In more of their own words:
"A transformation of the writing classroom from workspace to gamespace allows writing pedagogy to be informed by computer game theory. Two such theories are emergent and progression gaming. In a game of progression, the player follows a series of challenges that appear in a fixed, linear fashion. For instance, many textual adventures are games of progression. In a game of emergence, however, the player explores the gamespace, creating challenges which constantly change within the context of play...In a classroom based on a pedagogy of progression, one assignment or reading leads to the next with little variety or exploration. Students have little ownership of the assignments they do, so there is little to keep them immersed. With an emergent pedagogy, teachers introduce writing principles and strategies in order to open up a studio-like space for students to work through those strategies on their own."
Twine games complicate Shultz Colby and Colby's claim about textual adventures being "games of progression" by showing how electrate text can be emergent and how gamespaces engender non-linear pedagogy that invite teacher and student into the process. For example, my own [[Writing through Media]] courses I have taught at the University of Florida function best as gamespaces of emergent, or non-linear, pedagogy.For while what they get right may succeed to a degree, what they get wrong gives us ideas for better ways to fail. Halberstam argues for us not to be afraid to fail, like thinkers such as Lanham, Selber, even Ulmer were not.
Selber [[(2004)->fourth post review citation]] says it himself: "There will never be a final word on computer literacy: Technology and its constitutive contexts are dynamic, contingent, and negotiable by nature."
So we can only suggest the next word and never the final. And we can feel free to make mistakes in the attempt. I propose we see then, as enacted through the hypertextual navigation of this text, that, like Halberstam [[(2011)->fifth post review citation]] says, "the goal is to lose one’s way, and indeed to be prepared to lose more than one’s way", rather than insist there is only one path. What do have to lose then by seeing where [[electracy]] can take us?In fact, Twine, like other hypertext technologies before it, is arguably based on print innovations before it. A print precursor, that Aarseth cites in his taxonomy of "cybertexts," or works of ergodic literature, would be the genre of Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books. CYOA books feature multiple choices and resulting pathways just like digital hypertext compositions, yet run on the involvement of turning pages rather than clicking, of course.
Mentioning these codex counterparts is important in order to curtail misconceptions that digital technology performs ideas that print never thought of. Selber [[(2004)->seventh post review citation]] offers in a similar vein:
"all too often computer technologies are touted as the solution to all of our problems…From a humanistic perspective, however, conversations about computers are often misguided by the cause-effect relationships they tend to assume, which typically attribute to computers alone the power to make deep-seated, positive transformations."
Hopefully correcting this conversation by discussing what Twine owes CYOA books, or what hypertext owes print in general, will help us see what it nevertheless innovates, does differently, and [[plays->"game"]] out in a digital medium.What electracy does well that other theorizations of writing for digital media have not acknowledged is the bodily involvement of the writer, reader, interactor, etc. Ulmer cites what electracy offers the "affective body," and I argue that Twine highlights this haptic dimension through its clicking-as-traversing mechanism which questions assumptions of book-bound and print-imitative composition.
Scott D. Sundvall [[(2017)->sixth post review citation]] more forcefully claims that, "we do not need the development of media literacy, information literacy, digital literacy, or any literacy for that matter, so much as we need the development of electracy." While I do not share his singular insistence, I do his sentiment that electracy sees more fully the digital apparatus at work and what it is doing to us.
Maybe we can see then what software like Twine, analyzed as an [[electrate tool->human potential]], can equip us to do ourselves, cognitively and haptically.Consider that, admittedly, arguments made through Twine do not register the same effect as more classical models, but they are not meant to. They are arguments performed by the interactor constructing them, who sometimes gets entirely different impressions of the information presented depending on what they access and witness in particular readthroughs.
As a tool for composing ergodic rhetoric and for organized non-linear pedagogy around, Twine shows how the classroom can be a [[performative space->makerspace]] in which teacher and student take new paths toward writing in communities, not hierarchies. Butler's [[(1988)->ninth post review citation]] words here find new meaning in a pedagogical context:
"the theatrical sense of an 'act' forces a revision of the individualist assumptions underlying the more restricted view of constituting acts within phenomenological discourse. As a given temporal duration within the entire performance, 'acts' are a shared experience."
The acts shared in our classroom should foster non-linear pedagogy.Taking this pathway is akin to speedrunning this piece, finding the cheat to finish it as quickly as possible. Speedrunning is a practice in game culture as old as finding the pipe in *Super Mario Bros.* that allows players to warp to the last world of the game.
Playing this piece like a game can entail glitching it too, so enjoy this premeditated skip to nearly the end of the argument. Readers on this path may not fully grasp the ideas at stake in the reading, but speedrunning is not about aesthetically understanding a game; it's about manipulating its mechanisms to [[finish->competitive grade culture]] it.Lanham, R. (1995), Digital Literacy, Retrieved from http://www2.idehist.uu.se/distans/ilmh/Ren/lanham-digital-lit.htm [[.->multimedia literacy]]Selber, S. (2004), *Multiliteracies for a Digital Age*, Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 24[[.->multiliteracies]]Halberstam, J. (2011), *The Queer Art of Failure*, Durham: Duke University Press, 2-3[[.->new literacy]]Selber, S. (2004), *Multiliteracies for a Digital Age*, Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 29[[.->generative failures]]Halberstam, J. (2011), *The Queer Art of Failure*, Durham: Duke University Press, 6[[.->generative failures]]Sundvall, S. (2017), The First 100 Days of an Electrate President: Post-Truth, Alternative Facts, and Fake News in the Third Sophistic, *Textshop Experiments* (3), Retrieved from http://textshopexperiments.org/textshop03/first-100-days-of-an-electrate-president [[.->affective body]]Selber, S. (2004), *Multiliteracies for a Digital Age*, Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 4[[.->book-bound text]]Butler, J. (1988), Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory, *Theatre Journal*, *40*(4), 519[[.->electrate fashions]]Butler, J. (1988), Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory, *Theatre Journal*, *40*(4), 525[[.->performances]]Shultz Colby, R. & Colby, R. (2008), A Pedagogy of Play: Integrating Computer Games into the Writing Classroom, *Computers and Composition* (25), 310, 305[[.->makerspace]][[Chloe Anna Milligan->title]] is a Graduate Research Fellow in the Department of English at the University of Florida, specializing in the intersections of media archaeology, digital rhetoric, and electronic literature. She received her B.A. in English from Emmanuel College and her M.A. in English from Clemson University. She is a HASTAC Scholar and a founding member of Trace, UF’s digital humanities initiative housed in the English Department, as well as assistant editor of its journal *Trace: A Journal of Writing, Media, and Ecology*.