Hi everyone and welcome to my blog for “EGL 614: Digital Rhetorics”! I’m Meghan and I’m a first year doctoral student in the English department here at Stony Brook. Before coming to Stony Brook, I earned my B.A. in English, with concentrations in Rhetoric and Global Culture, from Binghamton University in 2013, and my M.A. in Literature from Purdue University in 2015. Fun technological fact: I was a graduate tutor for Purdue’s Online Writing Lab (more famously known as “the OWL”), and actually was the OWL (meaning: people emailed with grammar, style, and citation questions and I answered them). My research, however, is primarily focused on twentieth century postmodern American literature, postcolonial narratives (in particular, narratives which focus on the experiences of the second generation immigrant), and trauma studies.

I first experienced both teaching using technology and the concept of digital rhetoric during my time as an instructor of freshman composition at Purdue. The university divided the course, which met 5 days a week, into two discussion days and three lecture days, one of which met in a computer classroom. As an avid avoider of new forms of technology (I haven’t updated the software on my Macbook or iPhone in over two years and they both flash angry reminders at me every day for it), I was extremely nervous to work with my students on designing websites in order to fulfill the multimodal requirement of the course. However, each semester I became slightly more comfortable with navigating the editing tools and was always, always amazed (and jealous!) of the fabulous final projects my students created.

Because of that experience, I’m convinced that composing digitally is essential not only to being a competent instructor and researcher, but to being a responsible instructor and researcher; the way in which we access information is constantly changing (for the better, I think), and understanding how to navigate these new forms is critical to producing relevant work. I’m really looking forward to pushing myself this semester to try to incorporate multimodality into my research and writing!