Sunday, September 3, 2006

Moran, "Computers and Composition 1983-2002"

Moran, Charles. "Computers and Composition 1983-2002: What We Have Hoped For.'" Computers and Composition. 20 (2003): 343-358.

Charlie Moran, writing from the perspective of an insider, synthesizes twenty years of Computers and Composition (1983-2002) scholarship by identifying trends in what was hoped for. Addressing participant's in Barton's discourses of technology and as teachers, Moran contends that the journal reflects a particular series of hopes for the implications of computer technology on the teaching of writing. Early hopes, Moran explains, focused on the elimination of drudgery ("copy-editing, revising, and retyping" (346) to "responding to student writing" (346)) and on technology-prompted improvements in the quality of student writing (for basic writers, as well). As the journal matured, the hoped-for thing shifted to improved professional status in an effort to "become more established, more secure in our research, tenure, and promotion" (351).

More recent hopes, according to Moran, reflect a shift from looking at technologies to looking through them (Lanham's distinction). Along these lines, Moran accounts for the improved material quality of the journal (352) and also increasing consideration of egalitarian and social justice concerns--manifestations of critical pedagogy--reflected in the journal.

"Computers and Composition 1983-2002" proceeds by broad-strokes synthesis and the generalization of thematic patterns in the scholarship appearing in Computers and Composition. To some extent, the essay is bibliographic; in it, Moran reduces numerous article-length works to single sentences while accounting for overarching, persistent themes.

"So what is it that we, in the field of computers and writing, have hoped for?" (344).

"I argue in this article that in the pages of Computers and Composition, we have been critics, but we have been planners and designers too, working for change in the spaces presented to us by technological change" (344).

Terms: "cultural hybridity" (353)

Related Sources

Haas, Christina. Writing Technology. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1996

Lanham, Richard. The Electronic Word. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1993.

Selfe, Cynthia. Technology and Literacy in the Twenty-first Century. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1999.

Posted by Derek Mueller at September 3, 2006 10:33 AM to Writing Technologies