A MITH Digital Dialogue
Tuesday, March 27, 12:30-1:45
MITH Conference Room, McKeldin Library B0135
“Identifying Web 2.0: Remixing Institutional Identities”
by BYRON HAWK
Established e-portfolio and CMS systems such as Blackboard and WebCT are based on storing, commenting on, and chatting about documents. They are closed to integration with other administrative, scholarly, and social networking systems on the web. These systems lack the ability to develop identities in relation to various systems, texts, and institutions. As new systems such as Zotero (GMU) and Digital Notebook (Georgetown) are being developed to take advantage of Web 2.0 capabilities such as citing, tagging, and cross referencing content across systems, the issue of identity is still in flux. On the one hand, Gregory Ulmer’s work provides the theoretical grounds and pedagogical model for seeing identity formation as the basis of research. On the other hand, Hardt and Negri recognize that the modernist institutions that produce identities are breaking down. The newer CMS systems are centered on the production of a university or scholarly identity. This paper will examine the possibility of accepting the personal and subcultural identities that will inevitably emerge with the development of Web 2.0 research tools.
BYRON HAWK is an Assistant Professor of English at George Mason University and editor of the electronic journal *Enculturation*. His primary research interests are histories and theories of composition and rhetoric and technology, specifically the intersection of invention, pedagogy, complexity theory, and new media. He has published articles in the edited volume *The Terministic Screen* and the journals *Pedagogy*, *Technical Communications Quarterly*, and *JAC*. He is currently working on a book series for Parlor Press titled New Media Theory, and on a single-authored book for the University of Pittsburgh Press titled *A Counter-History of Composition: Toward Methodologies of Complexity*. His edited collection *Small Tech: The Culture of Digital Tools* will be coming out in Fall 2007 with the University of Minnesota Press.
Coming up @MITH, ***this week***: BRAD PALEY, Wednesday, March 28, “Interaction Design as a Branch of the Humanities: A Healthier Fit than Technology or Computer Science?” 4:00, 3258 A.V. Williams Bldg. and Thursday, March 29, (Workshop) “Domain- and Task-Specific Tools for the Humanities: We’ll explore what’s needed now, what’s attainable.” 10:00-12:30, MITH (B0131 McKeldin).
View MITH’s complete Spring Speakers Schedule here:
http://www.mith2.umd.edu/programs/mith_speakers_spring_2007.pdf
Contact: Neil Fraistat, Director, MITH (www.mith.umd.edu, mith@umd.edu, 5-8927).
