"Reprogrammable Rhetoric offers theoretical perspectives on material and cultural rhetorics alongside tutorials for critical making across wearable sensors, Arduinos, Twitter bots, multimodal pedagogy, Raspberry Pis, and paper circuitry. It explores dialogues with critical making in play, gaming, text mining, poetic bots, critical text mining, bots, and electronic monuments."--
Critical making theory and methods are related to remaking, reprogramming, and hacking in order to advance political or social change. In this text for advanced undergraduates and graduate students, contributors in rhetoric, communication, and technical communication cover theory and practice of material and cultural rhetorics. In addition, they provide practical exercises (with codes and scripts available online) for analyzing critical making in technology, from wearable sensors to gaming and Twitter bots. They analyze rhetoric and composition scholars’ past and present engagements with critical making and maker cultures, and demonstrate how to employ critical making to negotiate the divide between theory and practice in rhetoric and composition studies. The book begins by framing critical making as part of rhetoric and composition, and specifically as a political practice. Later sections are devoted to text mining, eversion, critical play, and pedagogical implications of critical making. Some specific subjects are critical making and game design, critical making for queer worldmaking, and ethical paradigms for determining emoji frequency in #blacklivesmatter. Annotation ©2022 Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR (protoview.com)
Reprogrammable Rhetoric offers new inroads for rhetoric and composition scholars’ past and present engagements with critical making. Moving beyond arguments of inclusion and justifications for scholarly legitimacy and past historicizations of the “material turn” in the field, this volume explores what these practices look like with both a theoretical and hands-on “how-to” approach. Chapters function not only as critical illustrations or arguments for the use of reprogrammable circuits but also as pedagogical instructions that enable readers to easily use or modify these compositions for their own ends.
This collection offers nuanced theoretical perspectives on material and cultural rhetorics alongside practical tutorials for students, researchers, and teachers to explore critical making across traditional areas such as wearable sensors, Arduinos, Twitter bots, multimodal pedagogy, Raspberry Pis, and paper circuitry, as well as underexplored areas like play, gaming, text mining, bots, and electronic monuments.
Designed to be taught in upper division undergraduate and graduate classrooms, these tutorials will benefit non-expert and expert critical makers alike. All contributed codes and scripts are also available on Utah State University Press’s companion website to encourage downloading, cloning, and repurposing.
Contributors: Aaron Beveridge, Kendall Gerdes, Kellie Gray, Matthew Halm, Steven Hammer, Cana Uluak Itchuaqiyaq, John Jones, M.Bawar Khan, Bree McGregor, Sean Morey, Ryan Omizo, Andrew Pilsch, David Rieder, David Sheridan, Wendi Sierra, Nicholas Van Horn