Zeugma

This is the second half of a 2014 interview with Dr. Jody Shipka. If you missed the first half, it’s available via both Zeugma's website and LibSyn. Dr. Shipka was the featured presenter at the Digital Writing and Research Lab’s 2014 Speaker Series. Before her presentation, she sat down with DWRL assistant director Steven LeMieux for this interview. The first half of their conversation focused on Shipka’s 2011 book Toward a Composition Made Whole. In what follows, they turn their attention toward the possibilities and challenges of multimodal scholarship. Many of Shipka’s recent projects have themselves unfolded across a range of modes and media. Notable among these is “Inhabiting Dorothy,” a project that began when Shipka purchased six boxes at a yard sale—boxes containing scrapbooks, photo albums, and other life materials belonging to a deceased couple named Dorothy and Fred. The project, Shipka writes, is “inspired, in part, by projects where people revi

This is the first half of a two-part interview with Dr. Jody Shipka, who was the featured presenter at the Digital Writing and Research Lab’s 2014 Speaker Series. Steven LeMieux, an assistant director in the DWRL, conducted this interview during Dr. Shipka's visit. The interview was originally published on the website of the Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Alliance and Collaboratory (HASTAC) as part of the final project of HASTAC’s 2013-14 rhetoric and composition working group: “Evocative Objects: A Workbook on Multimodal Composition including Assignments, Exercises, and Further Reading."     Jody Shipka is an associate professor of English at the University of Maryland Baltimore County and author of the book Toward a Composition Made Whole. In that book, she makes the case for introducing more multimodal work into composition classes, from interpretive dances to cakes to essays written on ballet slippers. She also outlines a detailed framework for assigning and re

A preview of our upcoming episode on the 2013 Conference on College Composition and Communication is now available! In it, the DWRL's Stephanie Odom talks digital rhetoric pedagogy withJim Brown, a DWRL alum and assistant professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Check back next week for the full episode, which will include a longer cut of our chat with Jim Brown, as well as interviews with Kathleen Blake Yancey of Florida State, Ron Brooks of Oklahoma State, and Jenny Rice of the University of Kentucky!

The full 50-minute version of our interview with Trish Roberts-Miller, an edited version of which was featured in our episode on procrastination. Dr. Roberts-Miller is a professor in The University of Texas at Austin's Department of Rhetoric and Writing.

Every year, the DWRL holds a Speaker Series event, inviting scholars from across the country to present research that sits at the intersections of rhetoric, writing, and digital technology. In past years, the lab has hosted Cynthia Selfe, Victor Vitanza, DJ Spooky, Jody Shipka, Cynthia Haynes, and Gregory Ulmer. In 2015, we had the pleasure of hosting Dr. Collin Brooke, associate professor of rhetoric and writing at Syracuse University. Dr. Brooke also serves as the Director of Electronic Resources for the Rhetoric Society of America and is the author of the book Lingua Fracta: Towards a Rhetoric of New Media.His talk at the DWRL was entitled "Entropics of Discourse: Post/human Rhetorics Amidst the Networks." In that talk, part of an in-progress book project, he traced connections between the so-called "master tropes," network studies, and the concept of entropy. I sat down with him before the talk to discuss these concepts and connections, and about the particular challenges of choosing the me

In light of the proposition of the state of Texas's House Bill 3389, which would limit the distribution rights of smaller Texas breweries, the Zeugma podcast team interviews head brewer Bob Galligan of Hops & Grain Brewery in Austin. We discuss the tight-knit community of craft beer brewers and drinkers in the city, and the future of the craft brew movement in Austin and beyond.

Austin, Texas: home to live music, weird vibes, and many, many food trucks. In this episode, we interview food truck experts on both sides of the register in order to discuss the rhetorical appeal of food trucks and why that appeal is so successful here in Austin. From the patron's point-of-view, food trucks are a polarizing part of food culture. For the people who run the food trucks, the truck is a fun and practical way to do what they love. Warm thanks go to our new food truck friends at Melvin's Deli Comfort, Hey!... You Gonna Eat or What?, Mighty Cone, and Skinny Limits.

Canvassing, fundraising and philanthropy are practices that rely heavily on emotional rhetorical appeals that have been around for millenia. Beginning with Aristotle's discussion of emotion in the Rhetoric, we ask several experienced Austin fundraisers what has changed and what stays the same when raising cash for a cause goes online. What do Classical emotional appeals look like with modern media?

In Austin, Texas, the honky tonk offers more than inexpensive beer and a place to two-step to the sound of the pedal steel guitar. For locals, it also provides a kind of retreat from the fast, commercial rhythms of the metropolis growing relentlessly around them. In this episode, which continues Zeugma's investigation of Austin's "weirdness," we visit a couple of honky tonks and reflect on their history and their contributions to the city's cultural life. We also speak with Christine J. Warren, whose book Honky Tonk Debutante: The History of Honky-Tonk Music as I Care to Tell It (2014) chronicles the heyday of the jukebox and the Texas honky-tonk community.

Since its founding in the late 1830s, our home city of Austin, Texas, has been known by various names--Bat City, the City of the Violet Crown, and the Live Music Capital of the World, to name just a few. In this episode, the Zeugma team explores the history of Austin's nicknames and some of the ways that the city has transformed itself into a hub of tourist and musical activity. We also hear from a few Austinites who question whether or not the city is living up to its reputation for "weirdness."

"The Intersection of Rhetoric and Technology." This is a phrase we bandy about in Zeugma, the Digital Writing and Research Lab, and the broader field of rhetorical study. But what, exactly, does it mean? On what map is it located? In this episode, the Zeugma team conducts a series of interviews of people within the vicinity of the University of Texas campus, seeking their sense of what the words "rhetoric" and "technology" mean, and how both manifest in their day-to-day lives. The episode is as much a look backward at the mission that Zeugma has been driving toward during its first two years in operation as it is a look forward to the third season, which is currently underway and increasing the series' interest in exploring matters of interest to the Austin community and the process of community building.

Last year, we debuted a Very Special Episode titled 'Riffing', which we then described as collaboration without communication: an audio relay race in which each member of the team worked from a tiny snippet of sound, branching off into something radically new and different -- and it was so much fun, we decided to try it again. Riffing is an exercise in freedom … within bounds. We were inspired by the children's collaborative writing game in which each kid writes a sentence of a story, then folds the page down so just a few words are visible and passes it on, leaving the next person to build on that fragment. When the story has gone the whole way round, each one is read aloud -- and everyone revels in the (un)expected forks in the road. In the Zeugma version, each team member puts together a 3-minute segment in secret, then hands over the last 15 seconds to their teammate to inspire their own 3-minute segment: lather, rinse, repeat. Last week we gathered to listen to the fruits of the semester's secreti

In this special summer episode--the last in Zeugma's summer interview series from the 2014 Rhetoric Society of America conference--we talk with Victor Vitanza of Clemson University. Dr. Vitanza talks about Kenneth Burke and Geoffrey Sirc, Immanuel Kant and Internet cats, rhetorics and media old and new, Pre/Text: A Journal of Rhetorical Theory, and Clemson's Rhetorics, Communication, and Information Design program.

This episode of Zeugma is dedicated to poetry, exploring how technology has shaped and continues to shape the market for poetry in general as well as its form, content, and methods of composition.

Riffing: What is it? It's a collaborative effort minus communication, an experiment with the unknown; it's developing something creative from a minimal snippet of audio and working extremely freely within very defined parameters. It's Zeugma members developing ideas off of each other--or tripping each other up and deliberately misinterpreting each other. It's a mix of exciting, weird, and hilarious that is hard to explain. Best just give it a listen.

In this episode of Zeugma Beck Wise explores hacking broadly conceived as transformative practice and the way it intersects with rhetorical teaching and research. In an audio essay. she introduces her own "Rhetoric of Hacking" class and its pedagogical approach. She also interviews Steven LeMieux about the machinic invention project group at UT's Digital Writing and Research Lab, which explores the rhetorical constraints and affordances of working with objects like 3D printers and single-board micro-computers.

Have you heard the one about the Lacanian who made a podcast on laughter? They say it's hysterical. Thank you, thank you. We'll be here all week. In this episode of Zeugma, Jake Cowan digs into just what tickles our funny bones. To lend a hand, Jake asked Charles Rogers--the co-writer and director of the award-winning satirical film Fort Tilden--and Austin comedian Justin Davidson to talk about just what cracks them up.

In this episode, Megan Eatman talks with members of the Digital Writing and Research Lab's Digital Archiving Group, as well as a co-chair of the Rappaport Center's Human Rights and Archives Working Group, to learn more about their approaches to and struggles with, archiving. The lab's Cole Wehrle and Sarah Frank discuss the challenges of building an archive from a wide variety of digital and physical materials, and the Rappaport Center's Charlotte Nunes provides suggestions for how scholars can approach archival work in a more radical way.

In this episode of Zeugma, Axel Bohmann explores the world of sports and fan cultures. A number of fantasy sports players talk about their respective leagues, their motivations for joining them, and the way being a league member has influenced their perspective as fans. We also take a look at roller derby, which has come a long way from its humble beginnings on Austin's 6th Street to currently being the fastest growing sport in the world. Derby announcers Koolaid and Chip Queso explain how the culture of the sport has taken some decisive turns over its history and why derby is about so much more than just sports.

Are you being watched right now? And if so, what are you going to do about it? In this episode of Zeugma, Beck Wise explores the world of surveillance, from robot baristas to naked body scanners, and the ways people respond to these increasingly prevalent, and increasingly invasive, technologies. Our first segment introduces you to one of the creepiest technologies on campus, an automated coffee robot that seems like it's making your caffeination process just a little bit easier -- but turns out to be keeping, and sharing, more of your personal information than you might be comfortable with. And we talk with Simone Browne, a professor of African and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas, about the raced and gendered experience of surveillance -- and about the ways that surveilled communities use social media and art to turn the surveillant gaze back on the dominant culture. This episode features music from thefakesaltychips, Peter Chiykowski, and Michael Adams. Image credit: TSA C