Logging On - Spring 2025
doi:10.7940/M329.2.LOGGINGON
Michael J. Faris, Editor, & Cheryl E. Ball, Senior Editor
In This Issue
We're very excited about this issue. We have six webtexts in this issue, each of which pushes the field to think differently about current practices.
This issue has three Disputatio webtexts. The first, "Giving Voice to Generative AI Refusal in Rhetoric and Writing” by Maggie Fernandes and Megan McIntyre, shares the first episode of their podcast, Everyone's Writing with AI (Except Me!), as well as a Kairos-exclusive episode interviewing Michael Black, author of Transparent Designs: Personal Computing and the Politics of User-Friendliness. As Fernandes and McIntyre observe, writing studies has generally accepted the use of artificial intelligence, particularly large language models, without much critical refusal of this technology, which is environmentally disastrous, reinforces language normativity, and threatens to dispose human creativity.
Fernandes and McIntyre don't use the word dispose—I draw that terminology from Ira Allen (2024), who, in Panic Now? Tools for Humanizing, wrote, "Disposition is where automated intellection, both generative and otherwise, comes home to rest in and as individual human cognition" (p. 43). Allen encouraged readers to panic (indeed, panic is the best response, he argued) in response to the "polycrisis" of global climate change, mass extinction, environmental disaster, and the revolution of automated intellection. I won't dwell in Allen's argument (read his book!), but, building on Davide Panagia, he made the point that "we are disposed to be what we are by the kinds of media we live and make meaning through" (p. 44). Understanding AI as "a new medium," Allen wrote, "the medium of AI disposes us toward not merely wanting or thinking, but actively becoming this, that, or the other" (p. 45). The question—a question generally avoided by questions of how to incorporate AI into writing pedagogy or how to prevent student cheating—is who do we want to become? One of Allen's concerns—one I share—is how AI is deployed in the interests of large technological corporations, leading him to ask, "there is good reason to wonder what most of us are even for in an era of supercharged AI" (p. 46).
I have departed from Fernandes and McIntyre's webtext here because I think their inquiry into refusing AI is an important one—and one the field should heed. I'm looking forward to listening to more episodes of their podcast.
Vee Kennedy provides our second Disputatio webtext, "One Disabled Student's Dream Syllabus Statement," a Twine-based exploration of their dream syllabus accessibility statement, with recursive links that unpack, expand on, or complicate some of the phrases and notions in their dream statement. Kennedy provides an engaging exploration of the politics around disability, accessibility, and inclusion in syllabi statements and in writing pedagogy.
Our third Disputatio webtext is by Senior Editors Cheryl Ball and Douglas Eyman. In "Getting Your Work Read: Ethically Circumventing Paywalled Publishing Practices," they advocate for sharing publications legally and ethically in open access venues. They provide some useful advice for understanding author agreements, for posting pre-prints on institutional repositories or personal websites, and more.
In the Inventio section, I am very excited that Kairos is publishing Vyshali Manivannan's "perimortem [in (theoretical) rigor]," an experimental text-based interactive fiction game based on the same ideas she presented during her Keynote talk at the 2024 Computers & Writing conference. Manivannan's keynote was one of the most innovative and interesting Keynote addresses I've witnessed, and Kairos is honored to publish the first "release" of "perimortem," a parser game that explores colonialism, academic writing, and racial and ethnic violence in ways "designed to simulate the pleasurable and painful affects of composition." Manivannan’s game is challenging and frustrating (intentionally so), but worth spending time with and exploring.
Holland Prior and Allie Johnston provide an Interviews webtext, "Negotiating Barriers to Multimodality in Writing Program Administration: A Case Study at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville," which offers an interview-based exploration of how writing program admininistrators at UTK created a multimodal project that could be used and adapted by teachers in the writing program during the COVID-19 pandemic.
We also have one Reviews webtext in this issue: Sarah Ottinger's Review of Extremely Online: The Untold Story of Fame, Influence, and Power on the Internet, by Taylor Lorenz.
Comings and Goings
Kairos is excited to announce that Anastasia Salter has joined the editorial staff as Inventio Editor. Welcome aboard, Anastasia!
Kairos Awards
A reminder that nominations for Kairos awards—Best Webtext, the own Lovas Award, and the Awards for Graduate Student and Contingent Faculty—are due by March 15, 2025.
Kairos is also honored to announce a new award: The Bill Hart-Davidson Mentoring Award.
Bill Hart-Davidson was one of the earliest supporters of Kairos, joining the inaugural editorial board and serving until his passing in 2024. In the field of writing studies, Bill was known for his kindness, his prescient consideration of future technological challenges such as AI and computer-based agents, and his ability to carefully consider an issue from all sides and rhetorically problem-solve and bridge gaps between people and ideas. Bill was a force for good in the world, and his philosophy of giving—"when in doubt, give more"—has become an aspirational model for us all. Bill was particularly known for his mentorship, which was indeed a kind of giving, and one that we all need at some points in our lives. He provided support, caring, politically savvy advice, and solid approaches for research and scholarship.
The Bill Hart-Davidson Mentoring Award honors Bill's legacy by recognizing stellar individuals who (often quietly, and with little fanfare) provide the key supports that sustain us as teachers, as scholars, as designers and artists who work rhetorically to further our understanding of rhetoric, technology, and pedagogy. Any member of our community can be nominated for this award; nominees need not be at any particular stage of their career to be considered. The key criterion is whether the nominee exhibits Bill's philosophy of giving.
More information on the new Bill Hart-Davidson Mentoring Award and other awards can be found on our Awards page.
Additionally, the Gail E. Hawisher & Cynthia L. Selfe Caring for the Future Scholarship provides financial support to an underrepresented first-time Computers and Writing attendee, often a graduate student, to facilitate building interest in the computers and writing discipline. This scholarship is funded by donations from C&W-related scholar and practitioner donations, along with sponsorship by annual C&W hosts! Please consider donating to help sustain the viability of this scholarship. Send funds via Venmo to Kairos Senior Editor @Cheryl-Ball-1 (mark as HSCF) or contact kairosrtp@gmail.com for more donation options. You can use the QR code in the image below to easily Venmo your donation.
Peer Review Project
In a Kairos-adjacent project, we are excited to report that the Council of Editors of Learned Journals (of which Cheryl is Executive Director) has been awarded a grant of $555,000 from the Mellon Foundation to advance equitable and inclusive practices in peer review and scholarly journal publishing within the humanities. The project team includes members of the CELJ Board and is also guided by a diverse advisory board. By aligning peer-review processes with principles of diversity, equity, inclusion (DEI), and knowledge justice, CELJ seeks to reshape scholarly publishing for the humanities.
This project, which began December 2024 and will last for 3 years, will survey key stakeholders—editors, authors, peer reviewers, and publishers—to examine peer review models, methods, and experiences, while identifying ways to improve them. In addition to the wide-scale survey—to which you can contribute questions/topics CELJ might include—the team will also develop free workshops and toolkits that explore collaborative, inclusive, and open peer-review practices, providing actionable alternatives to traditional double-anonymous models. You can read more about the project, including the press release, and contribute questions for the survey at https://www.celj.org/mellon-project.
(Hot take: This project happened because someone at Mellon heard Cheryl and some other editors talking at MLA 2024 about developmental peer review, like the kind we have done at Kairos since its founding in 1996, and reached out to CELJ to ask us some questions! Thanks, Kairos!)
Kairos DEI Committee Update
Ironically, and unfortunately, the Kairos DEI Committee was not able to meet in 2024, so we have no official report to provide, which typically includes updates to our Inclusivity Action Plan. In 2023, the committee agreed to have rotating chairs that would call the committee together—as this was a model that Cheryl had successfully been a part of when she served on the Library Publishing Coalition's DEI Committee. The call to schedule a meeting occurred a few times in 2024, but we had no success in making it happen, which leads us to the possible conclusion that a rotating chair model simply won't work for the already overburdened faculty members and independent scholars who serve on that committee. 2024 was a more challenging year than expected for nearly all of the committee members (family deaths, moves, resignations, babies, new jobs), and we collectively had to step back to catch our breaths. As Cheryl heads into her final year as a Kairos editor, she vows to work on creating a more sustainable version of this committee whose charge keeps Kairos learning and doing and practicing anti-racist work in scholarly publishing. Help keep us accountable by asking questions!
News in the Larger Publishing Communities
Late last year, a new coalition was formed called the University-Based Publishing Futures (UPBF), made up of university press staff, library publishers, and other academy-affiliated scholarly publishing supporters. The purpose of this "community of communities" is to share knowledge among university-based publishers and align our outreach and advocacy efforts for maximum impact. You might ask: Isn't this what Association of University Presses is supposed to do?! YES, but also, this coalition is bigger than that. Conversations have been ongoing for a few years between the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), the Association of University Presses (AUPresses), and the Library Publishing Coalition (LPC), and these groups decided to band together into this community of communities. After all, university publishing isn't just about university presses but about library publishing and other academic publishing units that aren't affiliated with presses or libraries. Here's what this UBPF group outlines as their shared values:
- Advancing scholarship. Working with authors to develop and advance new scholarly conversations, emerging pedagogical approaches, and innovative publishing practices.
- Equity and inclusion. Centering, amplifying, and circulating the work of members of marginalized groups in order to advance equity in publishing, broaden the scholarly record, and support efforts to promote social justice.
- Broad and equitable access to knowledge. Enabling the widespread circulation of ideas, and expanding the reach and impact of the results of research and experimentation. Open access is one important tool in achieving this goal.
- Accessibility. Overcoming barriers to access for people with disabilities and improving the experience for all readers through the use of established and emerging accessibility standards.
- Intellectual freedom. Upholding free and open inquiry, free expression, and the rights of authors and readers.
- Publishing ethics and integrity. Adhering to high standards in publishing, using a set of principles and approaches that may include rigorous editorial and peer review processes, among other strategies.
These are all admirable ideals, and individuals can get involved by joining one of their working groups (right now, those include Knowledge-Sharing and Advocacy). Kairos hasn't signed on yet, but we plan to, and WAC Clearinghouse and CELJ (of which Kairos is a member) have already signed on! If you edit a journal, consider reviewing their statement and becoming a signatory—especially if you are an independent or small, scholarly society-run journal that doesn't publish with one of the big data conglomerates!
And because good stuff comes in threes, Mike Palmquist over at the WAC Clearinghouse [I mean, let's just stop for a second and give a hearty shoutout to the busiest guy in digital publishing!!] has created, with the help of over a dozen WAC Clearinghouse staff and board members, a document called "Principles for Open-Access Scholarly Publishing." The document states: "The principles articulated in this document are based on the assumption that sharing scholarly work with the widest possible audience is a central goal of scholarly communities." This manifesto on open-access contains—I kid you not—45 principles on open-access publishing, with specifics for a host of stakeholders including publishers, editors and reviewers, authors and other contributors, readers, members of faculty performance review committees, institutions, and professional organizations. Holy wah, y'all: Leave it to a (retired) rhetorician of the provost variety to imagine documentation so thoroughly helpful to any group who needs to know why open-access publishing should be pursued! This document goes along nicely with Cheryl's rant and Doug's—er—Disputatio in this issue called "Getting Your Work Read: Ethically Circumventing Paywalled Publishing Practices," which tackles practical recommendations and a little more background on just a small sample of what WAC Clearinghouse has included in their principles list!
Reference
Allen, Ira J. (2024). Panic now? Tools for humanizing. University of Tennessee Press.
