According to the KAIROS website, the criteria for the “Best Webtext” award is as follows: “Webtexts are texts authored specifically for publication on the World Wide Web. They could be scholarly examinations, individual and collaborative reviews, interactive exchanges between scholars, teachers, and practitioners, or extended interviews with leading scholars. All webtexts take advantage of the Web as a medium to present information in ways that traditional scholarly texts cannot.” Additionally, a successful submission will “reflect the field of computers and writing and may include scholarly examinations of key issues, as published in electronic journals; syllabi and course materials; conference websites and reviews; electronic forums for interaction; resource guides; and more,” reflecting “outstanding” work in both design and content.

Looking over past examples of award winners in this category, it seems that a very common way of structuring the sites is to have an “introductory” page which states the project’s theme, purpose, argument, and major components/structure (not very much unlike an actual paper’s introduction). Another benefit of the webtext interface is the ability to include citations all the way at the bottom of the page. I think that this is especially useful as it eliminates either: 1) clumsy in-text citations, 2) interjectory footnotes at the bottom of each page, or 3) hard to find endnotes and the difficulty of relating each endnote to the main text.

I actually really like the idea of converting one of my own works/projects/seminar papers into a webtext format (it’s inspiring me for the final project proposal!). A few weeks ago, I posted about the benefits of infographics and allowing students to create such digital infographics from their course syllabi as a way to help them retain some of the important course concepts, major assignments, and due dates. I think that converting a seminar paper to webtext might have some of these same benefits of helping to retain important information, while displaying this information in a more accessible format. For example, one of my more recent papers interrogates the impact of physical spaces as it relates to trauma theory in Kamila Shamsie’s 2009 novel, Burnt Shadows. The novel is divided into three separate sections and moves through three separate traumas (the nuclear bombing of Nagasaki, Indian Partition, and 9/11) within the spaces of Nagasaki, Karachi. and New York City. I think that a really interesting benefit of webtext would be the ability to use maps to showcase what the physical spaces of these different areas look like, as well as some of the traditional artifacts discussed in the text (historical/iconic photographs of the before/after of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, the Indian diaspora as a result of Partition, as well as videos of the events of 9/11).

Additionally, we have spent much of the semester focused on the importance of hypertext (through readings by Nakamura, Eyman, etc.). The webtext format would allow the inclusion of hyperlinks that would enable the site’s visitor to access other pieces of information on the web: links to the author’s own web page, or to blogs (two examples here and here) which discuss Burnt Shadows, for example, might be interesting to readers. In lieu of our discussion of copyright/Creative Commons, I unfortunately would not be able to post links to any of the scholarly articles that I used to research the paper; however, materials like publicly available interviews with Shamsie about the novel  and book reviews would all be pertinent to those interested in the text.

I’ve always been the most interested in conference presentations that make use of audio/visual materials (but always reply “no thank you” when I get the email from my panel chair if I’ll require the use of such equipment!). I think webtext might be a more comfortable way for me to integrate some of this multimodality.