The subtle knife: Writing programs and technology

This dissertation addresses the relationship between pedagogical uses of technology and writing program administration; because it is so centrally concerned with technology, it has been completed in a hybrid format, with online chapters that complement the print chapters. In the first chapter, I argue that the writing program Web site can function as a central pedagogical tool and that the process of imagining the site in this way can help writing program administrators achieve critical technological literacy. The online component of Chapter One considers the impact of such a site while arguing for the need for multimodal assessments of program Web sites. In the second chapter, I examine the tensions that can emerge between program administrators and institutional IT specialists, locating strategies that can ease these tensions. The online complement looks at the identity of the technorhetorician within the writing program, suggesting ways to distribute responsibility for technology throughout a program. In Chapter Three I turn to the question of the corporate university. Adopting pedagogical applications of technology, I suggest, can move writing programs and English departments to the center of the new university. To supplement that argument, I offer suggestions on orienting faculty and graduate students to technology in the online version of this chapter. Having established all these programmatic and institutional contexts, I turn in my last chapter back to the classroom, developing several submerged themes of the project to argue for a new kind of queer pedagogy. The online component of Chapter Four provides additional material relevant to my analysis in the print version.