zwhalen Archives

Whalen Publishes Essay on Computer-Generated Creative Writing

October 2, 2019 by jlaiacon

Associate Professor Zach Whalen

Zach Whalen, Associate Professor of English, has just published an article in a special issue of The Journal of Creative Writing Studies on “Creative Making as Creative Writing.” His article, “The Many Authors of The Several Houses of Brian, Spencer, Liam, Victoria, Brayden, Vincent, and Alex: Authorship, Agency, and Appropriation,” is an artist’s statement reflecting on how creating a computer-generated book like Whalen’s 2017 work The Several Houses of Brian, Spencer, Liam, Victoria, Brayden, Vincent, and Alex invites readers to reconsider the idea of what it means to be an author. Whalen’s book draws on several different databases to create an essentially infinite variation on the nursery rhyme “This is the House that Jack Built”; these databases contain the work of hundreds of contributors, so Whalen argues in this article that the novel is best considered a collaboration among many instead of the work of a single individual or computer. https://scholarworks.rit.edu/jcws/vol4/iss1/

Whalen Presents at Two Conferences

August 28, 2019 by jlaiacon

Associate Professor of English Zach Whalen

Zach Whalen, Associate Professor of English, gave two professional presentations over the summer. In June, he gave a talk titled “Against Blogging” at the Domains 2019 conference. He reflected on the decline of blogging as a digital writing assignment and speculated on possible futures for digital writing in the classroom. In July, he went to Cork, Ireland for the 2019 conference of the Electronic Literature Organization. There, he presented about his ongoing research on computer-generated text, specifically the “National Novel Generation Month” community of practice (NaNoGenMo). He will be continuing that project this fall as a URES 197 project with the help of some research assistants.

Blevins and Whalen Present at Conferences

August 28, 2019 by jlaiacon

Assistant Professor of English Brenta Blevins

Brenta Blevins, Assistant Professor of English, and Zach Whalen, Associate Professor of English, with Lee Skallerup Bessette, Learning Design Specialist of Georgetown University (previously Instructional Technology Specialist at UMW). recently gave presentations that constituted a panel at the 2019 Computers and Writing Conference, held at Eastern Michigan University in East Lansing, MI in June 2019.

The panel, entitled “The Digital Studies 101 Website: Developing and Using an Ethical ‘Un-Textbook,’” described teaching Digital Studies 101 at UMW using the Digital Studies 101 DGST101.net website, which is a common, free, open educational website used in lieu of a physical textbook. In describing the development and uses of the UMW Digital Studies 101 website, the panel addressed the ethical priorities, pedagogical benefits, and curricular opportunities for UMW’s Digital Studies program. The presenters described the programmatic history and impetus for the initial development of the website; presented on continuing development, instructor use, and pedagogical implications of the website; and addressed student use of the website.

Associate Professor of English Zach Whalen

The DGST101.net OER resource has had 30,000 visits since 2016 and supports the #OpenEdVA initiative and the Commonwealth’s goals around open educational resources (OER).

This trio also presented a poster on this same topic at the Association for Computers and the Humanities (ACH) in Pittsburgh, PA, in July 2019. There they had the opportunity to talk one-on-one with Digital Humanities faculty and staff from around the world.

At the same conference, Blevins also presented her project “Developing Avatar Ethos in Mixed Reality Protests” analyzing the rhetorical strategies recent protesters in Spain, France, and South Korea employed using Mixed Reality, a medium that combines virtual elements with material objects. When in-person gatherings have been legally banned or prohibited by such existential threats as terrorism, protesters have used digital technology to create virtual avatars for demonstrating at physical protest sites. While the three analyzed protests all successfully used Mixed Reality to achieve traditional protest aims related to political and environmental activism, these technologies in the future could be disrupted or employed by counter-protesters, to attack or misrepresent protesters, or otherwise subvert demonstrations.

Finally, at the same conference, Whalen also presented a paper as part of a cross-institutional panel on “What Do We Teach When We Teach DH across Disciplines?”

Whalen Publishes Essay of Media Archaeology in Digital Studies

May 22, 2019 by jlaiacon

Associate Professor of English, Linguistics, and Communications Zach Whalen

Zach Whalen, Associate Professor in the Department of English, Linguistics, and Communications, recently had his article “Teaching with Objects: Individuating Media Archaeology in Digital Studies” published in The Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy: https://jitp.commons.gc.cuny.edu/teaching-with-objects-individuating-media-archaeology-in-digital-studies/.

Abstract: “Media archaeology presents a framework for understanding the foundations of digital culture in the social histories of technological media. This essay argues that a pedagogy focused on individual, physical artifacts of technological media involves students in constructing a constellation of insights around technology’s mineral, global, and human history as well as its ecological future. By describing and reflecting on a series of assignments and exercises developed for my “Introduction to Digital Studies” class, I show how the intimacy of specific devices can connect to the exigencies of technological media through the lens of media archaeology. The core of this experience is a group project where students take apart an artifact like an old smartphone or game console, attempt to locate the origins of each component in that artifact, and present those origins in a map and timeline. The risks and rewards of this assignment sequence actively engage students in designing their own learning and encourage them to think critically and ethically about the media they consume, the devices that provide the foundation for that consumption, and the global economy of human labor that makes it all possible. In a step-by-step consideration, I consider how the practical and logistical challenges of this assignment sequence support the learning goals I identify as crucial to Digital Studies.”

Whalen Presents Research on Computer-Generated Narrative

August 21, 2018 by Kristin Davis

In August 2018, Zach Whalen, associate professor of English and director of the minor in digital studies, traveled to Montreal to participate in the annual conference of the Electronic Literature Organization. At the conference, Whalen presented research on using computational text-analysis to study and interpret the work of a community of practitioners who use code to generate novels every November in an event called National Novel Generation Month (NaNoGenMo).

Whalen also performed a reading of his own NaNoGenMo 2017 book titled The Several Houses of Brian, Spencer, Liam, Victoria, Brayden, Vincent, and Alex, an 800-page long “children’s book”

Whalen, Blevins, and Skallerup Bessette Present at Computers and Writing Conference

May 29, 2018 by Kristin Davis

Whalen

Blevins

Skallerup Bessette

Zach Whalen, Associate Professor of English; Brenta Blevins, Assistant Professor of English; and Lee Skallerup Bessette, Instructional Technology Specialist, recently gave presentations that constituted a panel at the 2018 Computers and Writing Conference, held at George Mason University.

The session was titled “Locating Digital Writing Space,” and the presenters talked about the origins of the Console Living Room project, using Augmented Reality with students to expand and complicate their sense of that space, and the ethos of Domain of One’s Own as digital writing space.

Foss and Whalen Co-edit Essay Collection

February 4, 2016 by Erika Spivey

Professor of English Chris Foss and Associate Professor of English Zach Whalen (together with Jonathan W. Gray, Associate Professor of English at John Jay College/City University of New York) have published a book of essays titled Disability in Comic Books and Graphic Narratives. The book appears as part of Palgrave Macmillan’s Literary Disability Series (series editors David Bolt, Elizabeth J. Donaldson, and Julia Miele Rodas).

This book invites readers to consider both canonical and alternative graphic representations of disability. Some chapters focus on comic superheroes, from lesser-known protagonists like Cyborg and Helen Killer to classics such as Batgirl and Batman; many more explore the amazing range of graphic narratives revolving around disability, covering famous names such as Alison Bechdel and Chris Ware, as well as less familiar artists such as Keiko Tobe and Georgia Webber. The volume also offers a broad spectrum of represented disabilities: amputation, autism, blindness, deafness, depression, Huntington’s, multiple sclerosis, obsessive-compulsive disorder, speech impairment, and spinal injury. A number of the essays collected here show how comics continue to implicate themselves in the objectification and marginalization of persons with disabilities, perpetuating stale stereotypes and stigmas. At the same time, others stress how this medium simultaneously offers unique potential for transforming our understanding of disability in truly profound ways.

Foss Speaks to Columbia University Seminars

November 5, 2015 by Erika Spivey

On October 16, Professor of English Chris Foss was a featured speaker at the joint meeting of the Columbia University Seminar on Disability, Culture, and Society and the Columbia University Seminar on Narrative, Health, and Social Justice in New York. Along with fellow co-editor Jonathan W. Gray, he talked about their essay collection Disability in Comic Books and Graphic Narratives, forthcoming in February as one of the first volumes of Palgrave’s new Literary Disability series.

They also each offered detailed presentations on their individual chapter contributions to the book. As Foss explained, his chapter, “Reading in Pictures: Re-visioning Autism and Literature through the Medium of Manga,” considers the prospect that manga texts provide a more material means through which to communicate the lived experience of autism, perhaps even encourage a more properly “autistic” reading experience. Exploring how the more conceptual and less linear qualities of Keiko Tobe’s multi-volume series With the Light: Raising an Autistic Child (together with the multimodal reading experience they foster) speak to numerous aspects of autistic embodiment, the chapter effects an open-ended critical articulation of autism and manga (in dialogue with both autistic writers and sequential art scholars) characterized by a mapping around of space from which to consider multiple possibilities.

Sorely missed was third co-editor and lead author of the book’s Introduction, Associate Professor of English Zach Whalen, who was unable to attend because he coincidentally had to be in New York that same day for the meeting of the Modern Language Association’s Committee for Information Technology.

UMW Converges Time and Technology in 80’s Exhibit

April 14, 2015 by Erika Spivey

The University of Mary Washington is converging time and technology with its interactive “Console Living Room” exhibit, a collection of 1980’s technology on display through May 2015. Featuring more than 100 video games, movies and technologies, the exhibit is arranged within a 1980’s living room set-up. Located on the fourth floor of the Information and Technology Convergence Center (ITCC), the interactive exhibit is a space for all visitors to play with the games. Click to view slideshow. The exhibit illustrates the evolution of technology. Today most people play games on mobile phones or high end, specialized devices, but it wasn’t always that way. In the 1970’s and early 1980’s, video games were flourishing in the public spaces of video arcades, but the mass production of home media consoles led to gaming as a home family activity. “The consoles in this exhibit are a piece of our shared digital history,” said Jim Groom, executive director of teaching and learning technologies. “They’re a pre-cursor to the technology we take for granted now.” Situated in the ITCC, the site highlights the history and evolution of technology by contrasting original video games and movies on vinyl with the building’s state-of-the-art structure. “This building, the Convergence Center, is about converging information technology for the future,” said Zach Whalen, associate professor of English. “But historically, new media converged within the technological ecosystems of living rooms everywhere.” According to Groom, there is a story in the technology that is no longer around today. “A lot of this is forgotten technology,” said Groom. “Take, for example, RCA’s Selecta-A-Vision videodiscs.” He points to a bunch of over-sized vinyl video platters against the paneled walls that resemble floppy discs. “That failed format captures a bizarre hybrid of analog and digital that represents a transitional moment in consumer technology in the 80s.” The exhibit’s collection includes well-known video games like Space Invaders, Pitfall and the original Super Mario Brothers. Among the video collection are movies both on VHS and videodisc, such as the copy of Footloose vinyl videodiscs from 1984. Other institutions also have created exhibits featuring older technologies including the University of Colorado Boulder, which has a media archeology lab. For Whalen, the ability to interact with the exhibit was key to the design. “Accessibility was a key factor in designing the exhibit,” said Whalen. “We want students to be able to play the games and appreciate how far technology has come.” For more information about the exhibit or donations to the collection, visit http://www.consolelivingroom.net/. Join the conversation on Twitter with #UMWConsole.

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