New Media/New Methods: The Academic Turn from Literacy to Electracy

The essays in NEW MEDIA/NEW METHODS: THE ACADEMIC TURN FROM LITERACY TO ELECTRACY pose an invention-based approach to new media studies. Representing a specific school of theory emergent in graduates of the University of Florida and working from the concept of electracy, as opposed to literacy, contributors present various heuristics for elaborating new media rhetoric and theory. NEW MEDIA/NEW METHODS challenges literacy-based understandings of new media, which typically pose such work as hermeneutics or textual interpretation. Rather than grounding their work in hermeneutics, contributors rely on heuretics, or invention, to outline new modes of scholarly discourse reflective of and adapted to digital culture. Contributors include Ron Broglio, Elizabeth Coffman, Denise K. Cummings, Bradley Dilger, Michelle Glaros, Michael Jarrett, Barry Jason Mauer, Marcel O'Gorman, Robert Ray, Jeff Rice, Craig Saper, and Gregory L. Ulmer. ABOUT THE EDITORS JEFF RICE is Assistant Professor of English and Director of the Campus Writing Program, at the University of Missouri-Columbia. He is the author of THE RHETORIC OF COOL: COMPOSITION STUDIES AND NEW MEDIA (Southern Illinois University Press, 2007) and the textbook Writing ABOUT COOL: HYPERTEXT AND CULTURAL STUDIES IN THE COMPUTER CLASSROOM (Longman) as well as numerous essays on new media and writing. He blogs at Yellow Dog (http://www.ydog.net). MARCEL O'GORMAN is Associate Professor of English at the University of Waterloo and Director of the Critical Media Lab. His published research, including E-CRIT: DIGITAL MEDIA, CRITICAL THEORY AND THE HUMANITIES (University of Toronto Press, 2006), is concerned primarily with the fate of the humanities in a digital culture. O'Gorman is also a practicing artist, working primarily with physical computing inventions and architectural installations.