A book chapter by Brenta Blevins, Assistant Professor of English, was recently published in Modern Language Association’s Writing Changes: Alphabetic Text and Multimodal Composition, a collection edited by Pegeen Reichert Powell.

Blevins’ chapter, “Of Writing and the Future: An Essay on Augmented Reality Composition,” makes the point that Augmented Reality (AR) not only incorporates but depends upon traditional alphabetic literacy. That link between traditional and emerging literacy practices suggests prior knowledge can aid those composing in unfamiliar media, including in media that do not yet exist. This chapter further argues that contemporary AR functions within essayistic traditions begun hundreds of years ago with Michel de Montaigne.

Brenta Blevins, Assistant Professor of English, recently delivered a presentation and workshop to the Virginia Farm Bureau’s Growing Leaders Academy on “Digital Identity and Social Media” in Blacksburg, VA. Blevins spoke about how agricultural businesses can use social media to promote rural and farm-based agricultural endeavors.

At the 2019 Western States Rhetoric and Literacy conference at Montana State University, Assistant Professor of English Brenta Blevins presented a paper as part of the “Contemplating Rhetorical Futures in a Post-Desktop Computing World” roundtable with Jacob Greene, Arizona State University; David Rieder, North Carolina State University; Shannon Butts, University of Florida; and Jason Crider, University of Florida.

Blevins’ presentation, “Approaching the Event Horizon of a Digital Black Hole: Contemplation in Augmented Reality in an Era of Technological Change,” explored the tensions in post-desktop composing between attention and preservation, on the one hand, and, on the other, between distraction and deprecation. Taking augmented reality as one example, she explored how digital information risks falling into an information black hole where technology change renders digital texts inaccessible to future audiences. The digital black hole is a risk not just for augmented reality, but all instances in which human history, inquiry, and expression are recorded solely in digital media.

Brenta Blevins, Assistant Professor of English, has had her article “Teaching Digital Literacy Composing Concepts: Focusing on the Layers of Augmented Reality in an Era of Changing Technology” published in the December 2018 Computers and Composition journal. In an issue focusing on wearable technologies, ubiquitous computing, and immersive experiences, Blevins’s article addresses the challenges that instructors face in teaching composing using current digital tools, while also supporting students’ future digital literacy acquisition in technologies that do not yet exist.

To address these pedagogical concerns, Blevins’s article explores educational composing in Augmented Reality (AR), a medium in which a digital “layer” is combined with the user’s surroundings. She elaborates the benefits and challenges of a scaffolded, analysis-oriented pedagogy focused on the layer for preparing students to compose in AR for classwork and other purposes. Blevins contends that the concept of the layer extends beyond the visual layers of AR to a composing strategy applicable across media. This approach thus supports composers developing critical media awareness and adaptability for multiple media in current and future contexts. Given our rapidly changing software and hardware technologies, teaching theoretical composing concepts, such as the “layer,” prepares students to become communicators capable of composing in multiple media, those present and those yet to emerge.