Kristine Blair

Mentors versus masters: Women’s and girls’ narratives of (re)negotiation in web-based writing spaces

Abstract Although technology can be a source of anxiety for both students and teachers new to electronic writing environments, much research shows that for women and girls, this anxiety is compounded by traditional gender–power dynamics that often position technology as male, and by the development of technological literacy as a product to be mastered rather than a process to be nurtured. Drawing on research in feminist critical pedagogies, the politics of online communication, and recent calls for gender-fair curricula and the recruitment and retention of women and girls in technology-related fields, this article questions the extent to which we can teach web-based literacy technologies and also foster technological mentoring. Part of our proposed mentoring process involves the role of narrative as both a methodology and a pedagogy that allows women and girls to voice their technological literacy histories and literacy acquisition. We include our own literacy, technology, and teaching narratives, profiling both a graduate seminar in computer-mediated writing pedagogies and a Cybergrrl pilot study in which eight junior high girls learned to create web sites for family and friends. Ultimately, we suggest curricular guidelines for moving from mastering to mentoring.

Literacy, dialogue, and difference in the ‘electronic contact zone’

Abstract Not unlike pedagogies that have as their goal the need to redefine literacy as a type of critical citizenship necessary for social change, much work in computers and composition pedagogy argues for this democratizing potential. As writing teachers become more familiar with electronic networks, however, in place of our initial utopian labels, we are increasingly turning to labels of heterotopic conflict, particularly terms such as electronic contact zones . Through the discussion of a first-year writing class composed of both Hispanic American and Anglo students, this article argues that rather than regard online conflicts between students as mere flaming, such conflicts can be seen as a way of helping students develop as literate citizens more aware of difference.

Remediating the Book Review: Toward Collaboration and Multimodality across the English Curriculum

In this essay, Tulley and Blair combine instructional and editorial perspectives to analyze how the process of digital composing reshapes often entrenched notions of authorship and composing practice within the English major by having students reenvision a traditional print genre, the book review, in digital space.

The Electronic Landscape of Journal Editing: Computers and Composition as a Scholarly Collective

In their introduction to the collection Multimodal Composition, Pamela Takayoshi and Cynthia Selfe assert that “[i]f composition instruction is to remain relevant, the definition of ‘composition’ and ‘texts’ needs to grow and change to reflect people’s literacy practices in new digital communication environments” (3). Although Takayoshi and Selfe are emphasizing undergraduate instruction, a parallel argument applies to journal editors in English studies and beyond: as scholars heed the call, they require contexts that enable rather than constrain scholarship about teaching and researching in digital environments. Certainly, the desire to create such an intellectual community was behind the development of Computers and Composition in 1983, originally edited by Cynthia Selfe and Kate Kiefer and since 1988 by Gail Hawisher and Selfe. Twenty-some years later, Computers and Composition is an international journal with both print and online components, supported by a strong cohort of digital literacy and composition scholars