Introduction Computers & Writing 2012, ArchiTEXTure Meagan Kittle Autry , North Carolina State University Ashley R. Kelly , North Carolina State University Articles To Preserve, Digitize, and Project: On the Process of Composing Other People’s Lives Jody Shipka , University of Maryland, Baltimore County Attaining the Ninth Square: Cybertextuality, Gamification, and Institutional Memory on 4chan Vyshali Manivannan , Rutgers University Expanding the Available Means of Composing: Three Sites of Inquiry Matthew Davis , University of Massachussetts Boston Kevin Brock , North Carolina State University Stephen McElroy , Florida State University The Role of Computational Literacy in Computers and Writing Alexandria Lockett , Pennsylvania State University Elizabeth Losh , University of California, San Diego David M Rieder , North Carolina State University Mark Sample , George Mason University Karl Stolley , Illinois Institute of Technology Annette Vee , University of Pittsburgh Composing in the Dark: The Texture of Light Painting Jennifer Ware , University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Designing Digital Texts in/for the Classroom Sarah C. Spring , Winthrop University Keynotes Composing Objects: Prospects for a Digital Rhetoric Alex Reid , SUNY Buffalo Knowledge Cartels versus Knowledge Rights David Parry , University of Texas at Dallas Performance Silent Beacon Thomas Stanley, George Mason University and Erica Benay Fallin, George Mason University Reviews The Insect Technics of Rhetoric: Review of Jussi Parikka’s Insect Media Jeremy Cushman , Purdue University Remaking the Future of Multimodal Composing by Examining its Past Jenna Pack , University of Arizona Losing the Heart: Sherry Turkle’s Alone Together Bradford Hincher , Georgia State University (A Much Needed) Spotlight on Delivery: A Review of Ben McCorkle's Rhetorical Delivery as Technological Discourse Mariana Grohowski , Bowling Green State University

Tamika L. Carey , University at Albany – SUNY Enculturation : http://www.enculturation.net/rhetorical-healing-as-reeducation ( Published: January 16, 2013 ) In The Value in the Valley: A Black Woman’s Guide Through Life’s Dilemmas , motivational speaker, spiritual teacher, and self-help author Iyanla Vanzant describes one of her purposes for writing her best-selling 1996 book. She says: Black women do not understand there is no wrong in being human. There are only lessons. No matter how outlandish, ridiculous, or irresponsible our behavior may be at any given time, know, accept, love. There is nothing wrong with you. There is, however, always room for improvement and change… Self-knowledge is not about picking your scabs, beating up yourself, feeling bad about your wounds or weak spots. It means that you recognize you have them, make a commitment to nurture and strengthen them, and leave them alone to heal. (75) Such affirmations and calls for self-reflection are common features within the numerous African American self-help books and inspirational guides published for women since the nineties. The majority of these books “promise” to teach readers insights and strategies for overcoming the dis ease of past trauma or alleviating the dis content with challenges in their present lives. Readers and writers alike have found these self-help texts beneficial. For women like Brenda Sheffield, who claims that self-help books are “springboard[s] to discussing and healing [her] life and those of people [she] knows,” the benefit in reading them is learning, or re-learning, ways of being, knowing, or acting necessary for resuming one’s intended life path (Houser). For Vanzant, and other popular and profitable writers in this genre, activism is an incentive. Through writing books containing their testimonies, observations, and teachings, they pass on the ways of knowing they consider essential for the survival of their communities. Scholarship on self-help literature critiques…

Michael MacDonald , University of Waterloo Enculturation : http://enculturation.net/martial-mcluhan-2 ( Published: June 26, 2012 ) Editor’s Note: This is part two of an essay published in Enculturation’s special issue on Marshall McLuhan, “McLuhan @ 100.” In “Martial McLuhan I: Framing Information Warfare,” Michael MacDonald argues that McLuhan’s basic theoretical frame for understanding media was rhetoric. This rhetorical focus allowed McLuhan to see that war is about both the destruction of physical infrastructure and the shaping and reconfiguring of bodies and brains, affects and attitudes. In “Martial McLuhan II,” MacDonald uses McLuhan’s understanding of media ecology, embodiment, and information environments to examine military theory. That analysis presents a detailed account of how Info War strategies take aim at the body and brain by using information as a “soft kill” weapon. In On War , Carl von Clausewitz argues that every battle revolves around a “central hub” of activity—a center of gravity or “heavy point” ( Schwerpunkt )—that forms the nodal point of the enemy’s material military power. Info War, however, makes civil society itself the center of gravity. Info War targets not only the physical infrastructure of information (nodes, cables, links, servers, towers, routers, electricity grids) but also the decision makers, “human or automated,” plugged into the grid. “The friendly or adversary personnel who make decision and handle information,” notes the Joint Publication on Information Operations , “constitute a critical component of the GII [emphasis added]” (Glossary GL-6). According to McLuhan, the “sheer inclusiveness” of information as a medium and as a concept expands both the field of battle and the semantic field of war. “Real, total war has become information war,” notes McLuhan in The Medium is the Massage , “it is being fought by subtle electric informational media—under cold conditions, and constantly” (138). Building on The Mechanical Bride…

Alexandra Hidalgo , Purdue University Enculturation : http://www.enculturation.net/national-identity ( Published: June 18, 2012 ) THE SHRINKING B Figure 1: Toy store advertisement Growing up in Caracas, Venezuela, in the 1980s, I knew that the greatest accomplishment for any woman would be winning the Miss Venezuela beauty contest. I didn’t dare dream I would ever compete, however. My legs were too thick and my “potato nose,” as my cousin disdainfully called it, was bound to outrage the judges. By the time I became a teenager, the list of anatomical crimes committed by my body could cover a few pages of rampant (and I’d later learn nonsensical) dissatisfaction. However, my breasts never made it on the list. Sure, as a B-cup I didn’t turn heads with my cleavage, but it didn’t matter. So few of my classmates had any cleavage to speak of. B-cups were the norm in my school, and we had other things to obsess over, like split ends and slightly protruding bellies. Things that could actually be altered. In 1993, when I was 16 years old, I moved to Dayton, Ohio, and have since returned home every other year to find that my breasts are shrinking. It started slowly, but about 12 years ago it exploded. Cs and Ds and other letters I’d never heard of in relation to bras were parading up and down the streets, making my Bs look incongruously small. The unalterable was being altered everywhere I looked. One by one my dearest friends chose to have breast implant surgery when none of my American friends would dream of it. Figure 2: Beer advertisement Something happened in my native country, and living abroad I failed to both be part of it and understand it, which is why when I purchased my first video camera, I booked a ticket home and made Perfect: A Conversation with the Venezuelan Middle Class About Female Beauty and Breast Implants , a 25-minute documentary shot in English and Spanish 1 . In this essay, I will use the 13 participants’ responses to analyze the rhetorical…