[Air-L] CFP: Special issue of Computational Culture on Rhetoric and Computation

[Annette Vee]

CFP: Special Issue of Computational Culture on Rhetoric and Computation

Rhetoric has historically been a discipline concerned with the ways that
spoken and written language shape human activity. Similarly, emerging work
in digital media studies (in areas such as software studies, critical code
studies, and platform studies) seeks to describe the ways that computation
shapes contemporary life. This special issue of Computational Culture on
"Rhetoric and Computation" merges these two modes of inquiry to explore how
together they can help us to understand ways that our communication and
computational activities are now constituted by both human and computer
languages.

Coupling the analysis of rhetoric with computation provokes a number of
questions: How is the rhetorical force of computational objects different
from or similar to that of language, sound, or image? What new modes of
communication open up when we view computation as an expressive medium? How
does computation shape or constrain rhetorical action? What new tropes,
figures, and strategies emerge in computational environments? How do
programmers deploy rhetoric at the level of code and interface? These
questions are not exhaustive, and we welcome papers or computational
projects that pursue these questions and others like them.

Topics or projects might include:


   -

   Computational artifacts (such as videogames or art installations)
   designed to make procedural arguments and model systems or phenomena
   -

   Analysis of multiple choice tests processed by computers as rhetorical
   artifacts, aimed at both human (citizens, students) and nonhuman (machine)
   audiences.
   -

   How computational strategies such as surveillance supercede more
   traditional spheres of rhetorical deliberation such as written law
   -

   The ways in which computational data interpellate individuals and define
   citizenship
   -

   Strategies of the "quantified self" as a way of shaping human behavior
   -

   Rhetorical analysis of computational systems used by governmental,
   educational, and political entities
   -

   How computational systems are described for different audiences from
   groups of expert programmers to the general public
   -

   The use of software algorithms to simulate and evaluate various
   activities, such as writing and conversation
   -

   Rhetorical strategies deployed by communities of programmers and
   designers in marginal comments, online forums or physical workplaces
   -

   Analysis of computational machines as rhetors (i.e., understanding the
   actions of such machines in terms of the tropes, figures, and strategies
   they deploy)


300 word abstracts are due November 25, 2013. Abstracts will be reviewed by
the Computational Culture Editorial Board and the special issue editors.
Authors of selected abstracts will be notified by January 31, 2014 and
invited to submit full manuscripts by April 1, 2014. These manuscripts are
subject to outside peer review according to Computational Culture's
policies. The issue will be published Fall 2014.

Please send abstracts and inquiries to Jim Brown and Annette Vee:
brownjr at wisc.edu and annettevee at gmail.com.

James J. Brown, Jr.

Assistant Professor

Department of English and Program in Digital Studies

University of Wisconsin-Madison

brownjr at wisc.edu

Annette Vee

Assistant Professor

Department of English

University of Pittsburgh

annettevee at gmail.com

Computational Culture is an online open-access peer-reviewed journal of
inter-disciplinary enquiry into the nature of cultural computational
objects, practices, processes and structures.
http://www.computationalculture.net/