Institute for the Study of Culture and Society

Report and request for continued support for the cluster for the academic year of 2004-2005 submitted by Radhika Gajjala, Cluster Organizer - April 2004

Participating in the cluster gave me opportunities to learn about the research process, the career process of a scholar and an academic. It also gave me the opportunity to meet first hand with scholars who work in fields related to the work I'm interested in doing, and to get their input about my research. In helping to plan and build the virtual conference, I got experience with how to conceive and realize conference plans. Because my work is squarely interdisciplinary, the cluster was very useful to me in identifying scholars both within and outside BGSU who are interested in my topics.

- Melissa Altman (in an email to Radhika Gajjala)

The Cultures of Technology Research Cluster members contributing actively towards the activities for this year included a mix of graduate students, tenure track and tenured faculty. Their names are listed below (in alphabetical order):

Melissa Altman (Masters student in ACS)

Ellen Berry (Professor of English and ACS)

Kris Blair (Associate Professor, English)

Chris Bollinger (Doctoral Candidate in School of Communication Studies and Instructor in Dept of Interpersonal Communication)

Radhika Gajjala (Associate Professor, Dept of Interpersonal Communication/School of Communication Studies)

Davin Heckman (Doctoral Candidate -defended Phd as of Spring 2004 - ACS)

Denise Menchaca (Assistant Professor, Dept of Interpersonal Communication/School of Communication Studies)

Stephanie Tuszynski (Doctoral Student, ACS)

We met several times both virtually and face-to-face to plan and implement our main set of activities for the year.

The main activity of Cluster for the academic year 2003- 2004 was the "Cultures of Technology Virtual Conference" which was announced as follows:

Cultures of Technology Virtual Conference

March-April 2004

Cultures of Technology, an interdisciplinary research cluster at ICS led by Prof. Radhika Gajjala, will hold its first annual Virtual Conference. The conference explores cultural studies, pedagogy, and performance in relation to technology. The conference will kickoff at BGSU on Wednesday, March 24, 2004.

Keynote Addresses I & II

Wednesday, March 24, 2004, 2:00pm-5:00 pm, 315 BTSU

"Screening Bodies: Performance and Technology"

Marcy Rose Chvasta, Ph.D

University of South Florida

"Queering Digital Space"

Jillana Enteen, Ph.D

Northwestern University

Reception to follow

* * *

Keynote Address III

April 13, 2004, 4:00 pm-6:00 pm, 206 East Hall

Open Office Hours, 2:00-4:00 pm

"Epistemologies of Doing: From Media Studies to Media Making"

Craig Saper, Ph.D

University of Central Florida

For information on the live visits as well as the virtual conference, check the websites below for updates or email Prof. Gajjala at: radhik@bgnet.bgsu.edu

Sponsored by the Institute for the Study of Culture and Society and in part by the

Department of Theatre and Film, School of Communication Studies, and the Department of English

Virtual Conference Related websites:

http://www.cyberdiva.org/PTT/index.html

http://www.cyberdiva.org/techcluster/

The speakers arrived and spoke on March 24th and April 13th and their visits were also suported by various other departments such as ACS, English, Communication Studies, Theater and VCT.

Activities for the virtual conference included web-based discussions in various graduate seminars, setting up of "blogs", which are web-based interactive fora for discussion ( see http://cyberdiva.typepad.com/virtual_conference), "MOO" based chats as well as development of an ejournal called performance/text/technology (see http://www.cyberdiva.org/PTT) which is a multimediated ejournal exploring the potential of online spaces for scholarship beyond the mere replication of traditional print text format via the internet. As is stated on the opening screen of the ejournal it is :

an always in-process ejournal, exploring (im)possibilities for publishing texts and mediated embodiment in digital environments

Student response papers (three so far) have also been published in this ejournal. With this ejournal, the cluster members hope to explore innovative forms of digital scholarship and academic publication. Such work is still fairly cutting edge and is also being pioneered in universities such as USC (Annenberg) and Georgia Tech.

Cluster members Gajjala and Berry are also exploring possibilities for connecting another ejournal (a founding member of which is Dr. Berry) called "Rhizomes" (see http://www.rhizomes.net) to some of the virtual conference activities. Collaboration on a joint issue (or section of an issue) of Rhizomes and PTT is being considered.

The labor for the activities for the virtual conference were evenly divided among cluster members - Dr. Menchaca and Mr. Bollinger took care of Dr. Chvasta's visit planning, while Dr. Gajjala hosted the speaker in her home; Dr. Berry and Dr. Heckman took care of Dr. Saper's visit planning and hosting; Dr. Gajjala and Ms Altman took care of planning Dr. Enteen's visit and hosting. Dr. Gajjala and Ms. Altman were responsible for most of the ejournal design and blog and MOO building, while Dr. Blair and Ms. Tuszynski were helpful with other technology related details and planning for digital video streaming and MOO-based discussion. Ms Tuszynski and Ms Altman also took on leadership roles in recruiting graduate student participation for all the events. Supplemental funding was received from the School of Communication Studies, Department of Theater, American Culture Studies Program, VCT and English.

Student Benefits, especially Graduate Students

Most significant student benefits were the contributions to Dr. Gajjala's class on Humanistic Research Methods (COMS 640), which was using a tech-mediated space (Lingua MOO) as the site at which to understand research methods.

Drs. Enteen and Chvasta gave guest presentations in this class and watched students present their own group projects based on the MOO as a site for research, on Thursday March 25th.Several of the students produced final projects, class journals and response papers that heavily incorporated information that came from the three talks and the discussions that followed on our blackboard course discussion board. Student in this class came from the School of Communication Studies and from American Cultural Studies graduate programs.

The Building Cyberfeminist Webs group that has been regularly meeting at the women's center every third Wednesday of the month also contributed as well as benefited from the Cluster's virtual conference, members of this group also met with all three speakers. Work resulting from discussion based on the Virtual Conference and the project from COMS 640 is being reworked this summer by a group of graduate students and Dr. Gajjala for publication. At least two publications will result from this - one being a book chapter for the "International Handbook of Virtual Learning Environments" - Editors: Joel Weiss, Jason Nolan, Peter Trifonas.

The texts from this virtual conference will also be used for summer workshops such as WS 694:Technology, Migrancy and Globalization (being offered during summer session one, 2004) and COMS 586/IPC 490: Performing Digitally Mediated Identities (being offered during summer session two, 2004). Stephanie Tuszynski, Beth Waisner, Cary Alderman and Melissa Altman in particular have incorporated a significant amount of discussion arising from these events into their final projects for COMS 640. Stephanie and Melissa are also reworking these papers for their Phd and Master's projects respectively.

All three speakers were clearly impressed with the participation and callibre of the graduate student participants as well as of the very creative activities made possible through the cluster (under the Institute's benevolent sponsorship). During her visit to Gajjala's class, Professor Enteen expressed open admiration of all COMS 640 student presentations and the level of sophistication which they had acquired through the process of engaging the MOO as a site for investigating research methods. Professor Saper in particular expressed repeatedly both during his presentation and during lunch and dinner meetings with cluster members that Bowling Green seems to be one of the few Universities doing the interesting work of combining academic work with creative digital production. He even attempted to recruit a couple of the MA students (Melissa Altman and Melanie Fields) who attended his presentation and asked intelligent questions, for the Phd program at his institution.

Dr. Chvasta met with several Theater , Communication studies and American Culture studies students - both graduate students and undergraduate students and spent many hours in in depth discussion of scholarly issues raised both in their work and hers. In addition to meeting with graduate students, Dr. Chvasta also did a guest lecture in Dr. Menchaca's class THEA 395. Graduate students from Theater, such a Michelle Smith and Mel Erne, who are working on projects related to performance, cyberculture and sexuality met with Dr. Chvasta for lunch as well. There were more than 30 audience members at the Enteen and Chvasta 24th event (the room was about a 30 person capacity and there was standing room only for a bit there) and on 25th evening, there were more than 25. During Craig Saper's presentation there were about 8 to 10 people in 206 East Hall.

Plan for 2004-2005

For the academic year 2004-2005 I as the organizer of the research cluster will query all current members to see who may be interested in continuing on as a cluster member. After that, I will search out new members for the cluster.

Our main targeted activity will be to seek proposals for unique multimediated scholarship (in this we follow a precedent set by members of USC Annenberg for their online journal called "Vectors" - see http://www.iml.annenberg.edu/vectors/) and after a process of reviewing and selecting (a process to be developed in early fall), we will invite the top two or three submitters for on-campus presentations. The products will be published via the developing ejournal performance/text/technology.

Continuing Members for 2004-2005 include:

Melissa Altman (Masters student in ACS)

Ellen Berry (Professor of English and ACS)

Kris Blair (Associate Professor, English)

Radhika Gajjala (Associate Professor, Dept of Interpersonal Communication/School of Communication Studies)

Stephanie Tuszynski (Doctoral Student, ACS)

In Fall 2004, we will be recruiting more members. Faculty from Computer Science and Tech writing departments have expressed an interest in joining.

Previous Content may be found through this link.