Replying to @Patrick Murray-John's post:
Hi Patrick. I've been mulling over your post for a coupla days. I'd like to respond to a few errors, if I may. Terminology seems to be a problem here -- as we may be in agreement, but I'm not recognizing the way you're talking about the issue. So apologies in advance if I've misread. My aim is to clarify.
First, this point: "a crucial pivot point in DH relationship to Computers & Composition is Web 2.0". When I first read this last week, I went all "gaaaah!!!" because it seemed to prove my point that most folks don't seem to know that computers and composition, as a scholarly subdiscipline of rhetoric and composition predates "Web 2.0" by, oh, a good 20 years. It predates networked computing in university settings. It predates the Web. So, I guess I'm a little confused what Web 2.0 has to do with this discussion at all. (DHers would, I think, have a similar story -- predating Web 2.0 via HCI work in the 50s and 60s just as c&c work goes back to non-digital rhetorical work of the mid-20th century and earlier.) Then I realized I got hung up on "pivot": you mean "diverge"? Maybe, but really c&c and DH were never together as a field or an interdisciplinary grouping to begin with for many people.
Second, here's some in-field jargon that might help clarify things. (And, fwiw, people in our own field get this stuff wrong all the time...):
- Computers & Composition is the name of the (premier?) print-based journal that folks in digital writing studies (nee computers-and-composition studies) read. This journal began publishing in 1983. The history of the journal can be read here: http://computersandcomposition.candcblog.org/html/history.htm.
- Computers & Writing is the name of the annual conference that digital writing studies scholars attend. The next one is at NCSU: http://chasslamp.chass.ncsu.edu/~cw2012/cfp. Come join us!!
- computers-and-composition is the name of the sub/in-discipline of rhetoric and composition scholars whose research and teaching focus on the impact and use of (digital) technologies in writing. Lately, people have started referring to this discipline by other names, including digital rhetoric(s), digital writing studies, whatever.
Well, that's just a start. The other thing is, I guess, that digital writing scholars (c&cers) rarely use TEI because we don't have much of a need for it. (People WILL disagree with me... and Louie Ulman is a great example of someone in literacy studies who uses a lot of TEI in his research and teaching. But, **generally speaking**, C&Wers [people who attend C&W and read C&C, etc.] don't do a lot of mark-up with TEI, so the split as you've described it doesn't make a whole lotta sense to someone in that field. (Why do we not do a lot of mark-up with TEI? Because we're mostly studying writing-in-process or contemporary writing, not "cultural artifacts" of famous writing that someone has digitized. Again, MAJOR generalization.)
lol, Primer 101 on C&W Jargon now over :)
