MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

The proliferation of the internet as a participatory instrument has produced writing that illustrates the narrow scope of the genre academics privilege. The conventional academic research essay is limited in audience, purpose, and context. At a time when our universities proclaim education toward citizenship, and rhetorics of responsivity challenge us to reconsider what is important in the teaching of writing, we want to offer some thoughts on how internet culture can deepen our understanding of composing processes, expand our perspectives on unconventional genres, and bring about a revival of the social turn. The members of this roundtable—three faculty members and three of their students—will explore how developments in communication technologies such as social media platforms, content management systems, website builders, news aggregation and curation platforms, and productivity apps offer rich possibilities to involve undergraduate writers in research and publication beyond the academic community.