Call for Texts

Send us your wired words, yearning to breathe free . . . *

Anyone who's been hanging out for any length of time in the writing environment known as the Internet has likely stumbled into places where the conversations hummed with energy, where subjects of interest to writers and to rhetoric and writing teachers/st udents/scholars are dealt with in a variety of forms and styles not found in traditional print publications. The immediacy and interactivity on the net conspire to create conditions in which topics of intellectual and social interest (sometimes, but not a lways, "academic" in nature) emerge in new, evolving shapes.

RhetNet is an electronic journal intended to serve as a place to explore the possibilities for publishing these new rhetorical and aesthetic forms with full respect for their native characterictics. In other wor ds, this is an academic venue, but we don't encourage contributors to twist their texts into familiar print-based forms. This is a journal of the net and for the community of writers and rhetors on the net.

Dialogic Text Magnet

If this invitation is a magnet, here's the kind of stuff we hope will stick to it, becoming part of the RhetNet collection of texts:

Excerpts of discussions that occur spontaneously on electronic mailing lists, Usenet newsgroups, local bulletin boards, IRC channels, or text-based virtual environments (commonly MUDs, MOOs, and other MU*s). These might come in the form of highlights from a single thread, but perhaps tangential elements and intersections from other relevant sources could be intertwined.
Orchestrated online discussions or symposia, which might combine a number of network venues, might include featured "speakers" or panels, might occur over an extended time so that the published "work" would accrue rather than freeze solid the moment i t sees the light of day (as most printed texts do).
Snapshots, by which we mean short, pithy, provocative essays on any topic relevant to writing and rhetoric. Snapshots might also come in the form of periodically accruing layers of text, with new installments from the same or different writers or grou ps of writers being linked to existing texts in numerous combinations.
Traditional articles and essays that deal in some way with the effect of technology, particularly (but not exclusively) networked computer technology, on writing, on rhetoric, and on culture.

RhetNet Venues

One of the primary assumptions informing RhetNet is that the technological environment matters when it coms to the form, style, and content of any text. Therefore, potential contributors should keep in mind that RhetNet has access to several online enviro nments: World Wide Web, gopherspace, MOOspace, and mailing list distribution and archives. We hope to place some version of every text in each spot in order to maintain a high level of accessibility, but some methods of presenting texts will fit better wi th one venue or another, and we are open to negotiating where and how each text can and should best be presented.

How to submit texts or ideas for specific projects

Tradition and innovation will co-exist. We believe it makes sense to treat articles and essays in ways approximately similar to the way they currently are treated in the print and electronic worlds, selecting appropriate work by a more-or-less conventiona l peer review process. For this purpose, RhetNet has an editorial board which will review and critique submissions.

Traditionally shaped essays and articles should be submitted via email to rhetedit-l@showme.missouri.edu. All submissions will be acknowledged within 24 hours, and replies concerning acceptance/rejection will follow within two weeks.

Net/texts (slices of conversations from network venues) or summaries of them should be submitted via email to rhetnt-l@mizzou1.missouri.edu with a subject line that begins with COWRITE: (please use all caps and the colon) followed by the submitter's last name, e.g.: subject: COWRITE: Doe

RHETNT-L/COWRITE is a subset of the public mailing list that serves RhetNet. Posting texts here is an invitation to collaborate with members of the RhetNet community. It is also an opportunity to blur the lines between reader/writer/editor in what we thin k will be interesting ways. Subscribers to RHETNT-L who choose to read the subtopic COWRITE will respond to texts submitted, copying in the submitter. The process should be considered an immediate extension to the text being submitted, a continuation of t he compositing process simultaneous with the editing process.

NOTE: All submissions, whether traditional essays/articles or unconventional net/texts, should be accompanied by a 200-300 word abstract.

NOTE2: Anyone who wishes to perform the HTML markup on a text to be submitted as a net/text or an article may send just the URL where the text begins so editorial board members or COWRITE colleagues may find it. Texts destined to be published on th e web may be marked up by authors or by members of RhetNet, or both, as suits the situation.

How to become part of the project

We're interested in exploring the reconfiguration of editorial/authorial/audience roles as they apply on the net. In a sense, anyone who contributes text is part of the editorial process, part of the project. Anyone who joins the list is also part of t he process. To subscribe:

Send mail to

   listserv@mizzou1.missouri.edu

Leave the subject line blank, and in the first line put

   sub rhetnt-l Yourfirstname Yourlastname

* Apologies to Emma Lazarus for "liberties" taken with a line from her poem, "The New Colossus," as inscribed on a tablet at the base of the Statue of Liberty.

Top

Last update: 30 March 1995
Suggestions, questions, comments to:
Eric Crump
wleric@showme.missouri.edu