I'm not sure what the question -- "why aren't people in the field of rhetoric and composition doing it?" -- means. Did Karl not go to CCCC? Is he not familiar with Kairos? 'Cause, uh, we are doing it.

Mike,

You, Clancy, and the rest of the folks over on Kairos are indeed writing in traditional (i.e., linear) formats about some of these same topics, and doing it well. I'd like to think that I'm reasonably familiar with the work you guys are doing, although I've only read what you've chosen to post on Kairos and your own blogs.

What I find particularly interesting about Karl's work is the way he deals with visual representation of these ideas. I'm not aware of any other project that approaches these issues in quite this way. His notions about embodiment also intrigue me, although now that I think about it, Weinberger pointed to some of these same ideas in Small Pieces Loosely Joined. If you're aware of other similar work (particularly work that deals with this stuff in a visually interesting manner) then please point me to it and I'll post an update here.

Well, concerning visual/other media representation of ideas: there were lots of sessions on it at CCCC in New York, to the point where some people complained, "Aren't we forgetting about writing?" And there's the work of Victor Vitanza, Greg Ulmer, and Geoff Sirc at Pre-Text and elsewhere. The online journal Kairos has some interesting multi-modal stuff, including a whole issue devoted to new media concerns. As far as the issue of linear versus nonlinear formats goes, computers and writing as a discipline has a robust history of writing in and about nonlinear, hypertextual modes of expression. And, since Stolley was more than likely at CW2003, his question seems even stranger to me: composing in multiple media and nonlinear ways is actually a pretty common practice, with a lot of people doing it in our little subfield of computers and writing.

Yeah, it's an unfair statement I made, Mike. Or at least a hideously undeveloped one. (Still, many of the submissions to Kairos and other online journals tend to be Word documents that must be reformatted into Web-friendly text.) I think what I was trying to get at there--and at least what I'm going to try and get at before presenting a new 'n improved version of this project at 4Cs next month--is whether and how we consciously treat visuals and visual writing as rhetorical choices, or as mere distractions, decoration, etc.: the kinds of negative ideas that cause members of the field to question whether we've "forgotten" about writing.

Ah: OK, Karl, that makes it a little more clear. In which case, I'd suggest that some closer attention to how Ramus revised Cicero -- of which you're clearly already aware -- might be a wonderful way to reinterpret the way current-day compositionists look at invention versus style. When are you presenting, and with whom?

The "Ramist split" of rhetoric (style) & philosophy (logic) is one of my favorite ruptures to dwell in. Ernesto Grassi's Rhetoric as Philosophy does a great job of covering many aspects of it, through the eyes of Italian Renaissance Humanism. Invention is one of my primary dissertation research concerns: how do we invent (with) images? But...I should refrain from making Krista's Blog a forum for all of this :-) But to answer your CCCC question, I'm presenting an O session, which is the last series of panel sessions on Saturday. I'm presenting with Beth Jorgensen and Charles Sheaffer, but that's purely by chance as I submitted the actio project on its own. Anyway...if you'd like to continue this conversation on email, hit me up at stolley at purdue dot ee-dee-you. I'm very interested to know what you're working on.