Computers and Composition: An International Journal invites contributions for a special issue.

Multimedia Composition: Pedagogies, Production, Possibilities

Guest-edited by David Blakesley and Karl Stolley

Deadline for submissions is May 1, 2005.

Multimedia composition is the craft of inventing, shaping, producing, and delivering text, audio, video, and images purposefully. As a craft (or art), it is a set of skilled practices for integrating content that may appear in various forms—words, sound, moving and still images, even physical objects—all in the interest of communicating, entertaining, or persuading. Producing multimedia used to be the sole province of high-end specialists with expensive technologies. Now, however, the creators of content—authors, designers, artists, musicians—are closer than ever to the means of delivering rich multimedia content to audiences. New technologies have made it possible for people who aren't technical specialists or professionals to compose multimedia. Yet the technical challenges remain significant. The tangible incentives seem disproportionate to our desire for composing and disseminating multimedia. We have yet to articulate a rich theoretical basis that would rationalize teaching multimedia as a new, if not primary, form of composition.

The guest editors invite articles that address the nature and circumstances of multimedia composition. Cross-publication of articles with digital components in Computers and Composition Online is also a feature of this issue. Suggested topics include, but are not limited to:

• How can we bring the creators of multimedia content closer to the means of producing and publishing it?
• What are the technical challenges of composing multimedia?
• What is the role/expectation of instructors' technical proficiency, and how does that affect the kind of pedagogy and theory our (sub)field is capable of producing?
• What ideological forces militate against our efforts and those of our students to write and receive recognition for composing multimedia?
• Have traditional pedagogical models of computer-assisted instruction failed us?
• What pedagogies have we used to support multimedia composition? How might pedagogies based on design or studio models affect teaching? Is a production model at odds with process pedagogy?
• What would a rhetoric of multimedia include?
• Why have we been rather slow to catch the wave when it comes to producing multimedia content even while we've been fairly good at critiquing and analyzing our use of new media technologies?
• How does the multimedia work of computers and composition relate to/complement similar work in the fields of graphic design/visual communications, computer
  graphics technology, and/or sciences that rely on multimedia prototypes and models (engineering, crystallography)?
• How might terminologies of new media and visual rhetoric shape critical and pedagogical practice?
• What is the nature of the work of composition in the age of multimedia reproduction?
• What historical precedents might we use to shape our understanding of multimedia composition?
• What does the future hold for multimedia composition?
• How has or will new media change the nature of the book or article?

Manuscripts should be 15–30 pages in length, double-spaced, and follow the revised APA guidelines (5th edition). Deadline for submissions is May 1, 2005. Queries and abstracts are welcome before the deadline.

For inquiries, please correspond with David Blakesley (blakesle@purdue.edu) or Karl Stolley (stolley@purdue.edu). Please send manuscripts (by mail or email) to:

David Blakesley
C&C
Department of English
Purdue University
500 Oval Dr.
West Lafayette, IN 47907
blakesle@purdue.edu