Logging On - Spring 2024
doi:10.7940/M328.2.LOGGINGON.FARIS

Michael J. Faris, Editor

We're only a few days past having 2023 in the rear-view mirror. It was a busy, sometimes overwhelming, year—enlivening and energizing at times, but also scary at times... at many times (climate change, politics, wars. . . I could go on). 2023 was also heartbreaking. We're bringing you a full and rich issue this spring to lauch 2024—an issue full of exciting research and theory in computers and writing sholarship but also marked by the passing of two of the field's most influential scholars: Gail E. Hawisher and Johndan Johnson-Eilola.

I won't deny my tears as I write this Logging On column. Indeed, I think more Kairos editorial meetings the last few months have been filled with tears than my previous years of Kairos editorial meetings combined. Johndan and Gail were giants in the field, to rely on a cliché. Let's start with Gail and Johndan, and then turn to the current issue, and then a few other important updates.

In Memoriam (by Cheryl E. Ball)

As editors, it has been difficult to prepare multiple memorials for colleagues so instrumental to Kairos's being. Johndan Johnson-Eilola's passing followed so closely by Gail E. Hawisher's has shaken us, and we would be remiss in not honoring and memorializing their importance to this journal and the field in which this journal thrives. It feels odd and pertinent that we honor both of these individuals in a single issue. As Doug Eyman and I wrote in a recent Kairos Book post on the origin of the journal, Johndan has been with the journal since its founding, serving as an editorial board member from the first issue until his death in November 2023. Part of what Doug and I discussed in writing that origin story, and what I mentioned in my online remembrance of Johndan was his instrumentality in serving as the first name we wanted to capture in Kairos's database of name pronunciations, Scholarnames. However, that's not a totally accurate story. Johndan was the first name we recorded, but it was a query from an early career scholar in the field who wanted to know how to pronounce Gail E. Hawisher's name so they could introduce her correctly at an on-campus talk that formed the origin of the Scholarnames project.

It pains us to have lost both of these wonderful scholars and Kairos board members and colleagues in the same span of time. We have prepared a selection of memorials from online tributes for both Gail and Johndan, and we invite you to get your tea or whiskey, light a candle, and settle in with these remembrances. Take some time to fully embrace the entire discipline of digital writing studies that Gail helped shepherd into being by reading select memorials for Gail and rereading the collaborative piece she published and the many reviews about her own publications within Kairos. Then, as Gail would do, get up and do some yoga, stretch, walk tall across the room and back. Then settle back in to visit with Johndan's memorial—a recreation of his 1996 webtext from the journal's first issue, a recreation of his 2012 webtext as well, and additional tribute prepared by Kairos editor Michael J. Faris.

In This Issue

Perhaps, before introducing the contents of this issue, it's important to mention and acknowledge the context of this issue: In the vein of the collaborative nature of both Gail's and Johndan's work, Kairos is produced collaboratively—and volunteer-based. I want to acknowledge the work of our Managing Editors, who coordinate our collaborative peer-review process; our Section Editors, who invite scholars to submit, provide mentoring to novice authors, and provide developmental feedback to many; and our Assistant and Associate Editors, who edit webtexts for design and style before we publish them. I won't list all these great folks invidivually, but Kairos wouldn't be the high-quality journal it is without these folks' hard work and care. Cheryl, Doug, and I probably put in 100 hours of work combined (probably more!) in the weeks before an issue goes live. But these folks probably put in a thousand hours combined as they work with authors, provide feedback, and edit the issue. Our huge shout-out to our editorial staff!

I'm very excited about this issue. We open with a Topoi webtext, "port-man-toes: the aroace - queercrip - transmad - neuroqueer erotics of digital collaboration," by S. Cavar and ulysses/constance bougie. It feels appropriate to publish this experimental webtext—which traces a collaborative, queer, crip, aromatic conversation between two junior scholars in the field—alongside a tribute to Johndan Johnson-Eilola. I imagine that some scholars in the field don't see the connection between hypertext and textual play on the one hand and radical queer innovation on the other—but I invite you to read this piece and think about how queerness, cripness, hypertextuality, and collaboration are in conversation with each other.

Our Praxis section in this issue explores a different type of collaboration—one between a writing program and a library. In "Developing Symbiotic Institutional Partnerships: An FYC and Library Collaboration to Increase Multimodal Instruction," Jenn Stewart, Emily Thompson, Anna N. McDonald, and Andrea Schurr discuss a collaboration between the writing program and the library at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.

We have two Inventio webtexts in this issue. The first, "Podcasting Bad Ideas About Writing," shares Kyle D. Stedman's reflection on producing a podcast in which we read chapters from Cheryl E. Ball and Drew M. Loewe's book Bad Ideas About Writing. The second, Teresa Contino, Nathan Barnes, and Amy Lueck's "Composing Collaborative Feminist Recovery Projects with Scalar," describes Lueck and her students' experiences and perspectives on using Scalar to create a collaborative online book in an undergraduate writing class on feminist rhetorical recovery work.

Kairos also has two PraxisWiki webtexts in this issue. In "The Making of a MAB: Composing a Multimodal Annotated Bibliography and Exploring Multimodal Research and Inquiry," Isabelle Lundin, Joey Colby, Courtney Jarema, Lauren Karmo, Antonio Verrelli, Katlynn Wheatley, and Crystal VanKooten share their experiences creating Multimodal Annotated Bibliographies in VanKooten's Digital Publishing course. Students selected a medium and venue—like TikTok, SoundCloud, YouTube, and so forth—to share their research with audiences by introducing sources, summarizing them, and providing takeaways. Ann N. Amicucci, in "Effective Video Instruction in Online Courses: Suggestions Grounded in Universal Design for Learning," provides suggestions, based on research in the field and in online education, on creating effective instructional videos for online writing courses.

We have one Reviews webtext in this issue: Yasmine Romero reviews Nancy Bou Ayash's Toward Translingual Realities in Composition: (Re)Working Local Language Representations and Practices. In the spirit of Bou Ayash's book, Romero reviews the book through a variety of modes and approaches: textual-visual, podcast-style, and narrative.

Last, this issue includes two Interviews webtexts. In "OWI—A Future of Challenge and Possibility," a host of Online Writing Instruction experts—Jason Snart, Jessie Borgman, Heidi Skurat Harris, Joanna Whetstone, Natalie Stillman-Webb, Cat Mahaffey, Jennifer M. Cunningham, Lyra Hilliard, Casey McArdle, Mary Stewart, and Scott Warnock—ask each other questions about the state of OWI. Their responses are thoughtful, far-extending, and useful for online teachers and administrators of online writing programs. Amelia Chesley interviews two of her retired colleagues at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University–Prescott in "Interdisciplinary Legacies: Interviews and Reflections with Dr. Eileen Landis-Groom and Dr. Angela Beck." Through the interviews and an interactive, multimedia timeline, Chesley provides an egaging oral history of an English department at a STEM institution.

We—and our excellent contributors!—have provided you with a lot to read, listen to, and watch in this issue. The work in this issue is, I think, immensely valuable as we consider effective and innovative digital rhetoric, pedagogy, and writing instruction. Sit down with your laptop, mobile phone, or tablet device and your drink of choice and enjoy!

Comings and Goings

The nature of a volunteer-based editorial staff is that folks come and go without much fanfare. Well, let's provide some quick fanfare! We want to thank Associate Editor Thomas Pickering, Associate Editor Bret Zawilski, and Assistant Editor Caitlin Burns for their excellent service and help over the last few years. They're stepping away from the journal for personal and professional reasons, but their work has left a mark on the journal as they've provided some great copyediting and design-editing for webtexts in this journal over the last few years. We're wishing Thomas, Bret, and Caitlin the best in their future endeavors, and we're forever grateful for their contributions to the quality of webtexts published in Kairos

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