Elsevier

Summer 2011 - Editor's Welcome

As I noted in the welcome to our Fall 2010-Spring 2011 double issue, one of the advantages of online publication is the immediacy of delivery and access when compared to print journals, which all too often have protracted review and production schedules. Thus, it’s a pleasure to be able to publish several pieces that have been reviewed and accepted after the publication of the our double issue and before the next round of Computers and Composition Online Special Issues: Rhetorical Media in the Two-Year College (Fall 2011, guest edited by Matthew Kim and Shelley Rodrigo) and Ethics in a Digital Age: Ethics and Digital Media in the Writing Classroom (Spring 2012, guest edited by Toby Coley).

Our Theory into Practice section features Paul Muhlhauser’s “Teaching Moms and Dads to Perform the Family: Rhetoric and Assisted Reproductive Technology Websites.” Muhlhauser contends that the visual rhetoric of parenthood and family on a range of medical websites reinscribe traditional gendered assumptions about the parental roles of women vs. those of men. Using a systematic data collection and content analysis, Muhlhauser concludes that such visual imagery plays a powerful, “extracurricular” role in normalizing what it means to be a family.

The Virtual Classroom highlights a second contribution by Dirk Remley to C&C Online, “The Practice of Assessing Multimodal PowerPoint Slide Shows,” which describes how to assess PowerPoint slide shows and adopts criteria similar to those to assess traditional print-linguistic texts to articulate a new set of guidelines for presentation and slideware genres. Focusing on nursing students who designed presentation about the types of writing and communication common to their profession, Remley calls for further publication of multimodal assessment practices to provide those writing teachers new to teaching new media writing viable pedagogical models.

I am especially grateful to all of our book reviewers who provide a critical eye in assessing relevant resources inside and outside the field of computers and writing: Amanda Athon’s review of Regards Croisés: Perspectives on Digital Literature, edited by Philippe Bootz and Sandy Baldwin; Matthew Bridgewater’s review of Facebook and Philosophy, edited by D.E. Wittkower; Maggie Pascoe’s review of Multimodal Composition: Resources for Teachers, edited by Cynthia Selfe; Meagan Rodgers’ review of Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing (volume 1), edited by Charles Lowe and Pavel Zemliansky; and Mike Salitrynski’s review of Teaching Literature and Language Online, Edited by Ian Lancashire.

Even as I write this editor’s introduction, there are a series of scholarly webtexts and reviews in the works which will lead us to a similar Winter 2012 issue to ensure that emerging models of digital scholarship are circulating as quickly as possible. We hope you’ll check back in to access our upcoming issues and join the extended national and international audience of C&C Online readers we’re reaching, as our recent Google Analytic stats document. Finally, with this writing I have assumed the editorship of Computers and Composition print and am thrilled that both journals will be in the good hands of the fabulous editorial team of Rhetoric and Writing doctoral students at Bowling Green State University, along with our dynamic duo of senior editors Dr. Lanette Cadle (Missouri State University) and Dr. Joe Erickson (Angelo State University).

Kris Blair
Editor