Full Panel
Panelists
Stacey Berry is an Assistant Professor of English for New Media. Her research areas include digital humanities, specializing in text editing and analysis, and post-1945 American fiction, especially violence in the novel.
Shreelina Ghosh is an Assistant Professor of Professional and Technical Communications. Her research is at the intersection of cultural and digital rhetoric, cultural identities and resistances, subaltern studies, human computer interaction, information design, accessible website design, and usability techniques.
John Nelson has been teaching and working with computers since 1982, especially with emerging technologies. His other research interests include digital games, especially their depiction of Native Americans. He teaches American literature and courses fusing English and new media.
Panel Description
In a contemporary communications setting, a reader and writer are in constant contact with each other, sending and receiving messages, writing and reading updates, a kind of continual dancing, each communicant on a side of a thin electronic veil. Students seeking to find a role in this communication event must be willing and able to learn and critically explore new dance steps, whether it be blogging, updating websites, chatting, tweeting, posting social media updates or some new process in the wings.
The new English major will not be sitting in the library alone with their well-thumbed copy of The Great Gatsby. They will be immersed in the world of Gatsby, dancing in his lighted fountain to the bounce of his hired band. They will drive under the gaze of Dr. T.J. Eckleberg and run down poor Myrtle Wilson on their portable devices. Professional writing students won’t make design choices based only on personal ethos and aesthetics, but use actual audience feedback and responses to compose texts and images.
“Readers” in that age will not be content with a lavish version of Fitzgerald’s novel on the big screen. This story, still a commanding classic, will transform into a more immersive textual encounter. Who will build this experience? How will they know what their readers want? Our undergraduate students are preparing for these opportunities. They use user-centered design principles to visualize their audience. They use persona and audience profiling techniques of usability studies to translate an “audience” into real potential readers of composed text. They examine the critical features of a text, visualizing it and reimagining it for translation into new packages, new forms. They will build ever more immersive, technologically enhanced experiences.
John Nelson will discuss the work of students in the English for New Media program– visualizing texts and translating conventional poems, stories, and critical work into technologically enhanced performances of the text.
Stacey Berry will discuss using computational analysis tools to encourage students to look at texts in new ways.
Shreelina Ghosh will discuss the method of employing user-centered design technology and persona profiling in her Professional Writing and English for New Media courses.