Blog One -- Stroupe and Kress

We live in a society in which technology, globalization, and viral communication are necessities. Text and media work hand-in-hand with one another. Digital authoring is an everyday phenomenon, in both leisure and professional settings. Thus, universities are forced to make a choice. Traditionally slow to change, universities initially strayed from the cultural progress of mixing digital images and formats with standard texts. However, many argue that multimedia education is crucial for modern students' professional success. Therein lies the problem.

In our reading, Stroupe poignantly states: "The discipline [English studies] needs to decide not only whether to embrace the teaching of visual and information design in addition to verbal product, which some of the more marginalized elements of English Studies have already done, but, more fundamentally, whether to confront its customary cultural attitudes toward visual discourses and their insinuation into verbal texts..." (14).

It seems as if part of universities' problem in accepting multimedia authoring is its accessibility. I know how oxymoronic that might sound: writers not wanting their work to be read. But, there is something prestigious about academic texts that are published solely for fellow professors and students. There is luxury in limitedness. Additionally, the degrees of professionalism in digital texts can vary extraordinarily. This is far less true in paper formats. Anyone can post on the internet, while not everyone is qualified to publish a book. It is this level of unknown accessbility that, I feel, holds universities back from accepting multimedia authoring as a professional study.

I believe that Washington State University is progressive in its efforts to meld digital technology with English studies. They have created programs that encourage cooperation between traditional elements of English academia and contemporary authoring. Stroupe discusses the importance of "layering" studies in this way. Other universities, it appears, are following suit.