American Studies at the Digital Crossroads

 Digital Scholarship and Publication  Professionalization and Formal Training  Scholarship in the Cultural Disciplines and the Digital Conversation-to-Date: Three Threads American Studies at the Digital Crossroads

KEYWORDS Online Collaborative in design and execution –Network of 64 scholars –Dialogue across analytical frameworks Keywords in American Studies and cultural studies: as the vocabulary changes, so should the means through which we track their usage and the knowledge projects they enable. “Keywords” themselves are reflective of new media and digital environments: metadata, search terms, and tags. Translation into a new medium of the blank pages at the back of Raymond Williams’s Keywords

KEYWORDS Online  The main website: keywords.nyupress.org  Our blog: depts.washington.edu/forums  Our wiki: depts.washington.edu/keywords/wiki Our Three Locations

keywords_blog hosts discussion around keyword-related events

keywords_wiki targets classes and working groups

keywords_website … keywords from the book updates to all three sites—and new features … … student-produced keywords from the wiki … and resources for instructors: syllabi assignments instructor chat

touring the collaboratory

Synthetic essays that track and cohesively narrate keyword usage across course texts. + Final Products (1)

touring the collaboratory Multi-layered essays that parse keyword-usage by course texts and offer deep content by linking across the wiki and other online resources + Final Products (2)

touring the collaboratory Archive of course texts paired with student analysis tuned to multiple meanings of course keyword(s) + Final Products (3)

wikis in the classroom 360° Visibility Different Modalities of Course Dialogue Pushing the Classroom beyond Class Walls Direct Engagement with Keyword-Formation Critical Awareness of Public Knowledge New Kinds of Collaboration and Knowledge Production

ad-hoc grad student survey 50 respondents: Institutions: UW, Fordham, Brown, UT Austin, Michigan, Florida State, Duke, George Mason, MIT, Case Western, SMU (Inter)disciplines: English, Rhet/Comp, American Studies, History, Anthropology, Special Education, Communications and Media Studies, Philosophy

What digital technologies have you been trained in?

Where did you learn your digital technology skills? Additional Question: If you use digital technologies in the classroom, do you feel that your department recognizes and rewards your efforts to teach students these new literacies? No: 67 % Yes: 33%