[Bilimsel Haber] CFP: Wikis, Authority and the Public Sphere (3/15/06; MLA '06)

[Sule Tarakcioglu]

From: Amit Ray <axrgsl@rit.edu>


CFP: Wikis, Authority and the Public Sphere (3/15/06; MLA '06)

Proposed MLA Special Session organized by Dr. Amit Ray (Department of 
Language
and Literature) and Erhardt Graeff (Department of Information Technology),
Rochester Institute of Technology.

Please send 250-word abstract and CV by March 15th to: axrgsl@rit.edu


   "Wikis, Authority and the Public Sphere"

As social computing practices continue to modify and transform how cultural
texts can be generated and circulated, written communities fostered and
sustained by wikis offer some insight into the possibilities and pitfalls of
dynamic, group "authored" content production. The fame (and infamy) of 
Wikipedia
as an example of on-line wiki-activity begins to address some of the 
theoretical
issues about authorship raised in late structuralist and poststructuralist
thought. For many in the humanities and social sciences, the de-centering of
authorship in favor of discursive and systemic modes more attuned to 
power and
historicity across the field of representation has led to novel methods for
critical interpretation and evaluation. As such, this panel will 
consider the
avenues by which wiki activity and related social computing phenomena 
further
complicate traditional notions of authorship and, thus, associated issues of
authority, originality and value.

Wikis are software programs that allow users to create and edit web 
pages with a
web browser. The implications of open access on the creation and editing of
content is profound. In an unprecedented way, wikis allow for discourse to
emerge that is continually negotiated and articulated through a community of
users; sometimes, literally, thousands of interlocutors. The properties 
of texts
that have emerged from active collaboration test the boundaries of 
established
avenues of knowledge production and modern institutions of knowledge and
authority. The recent controversies surrounding Wikipedia speak to the 
sense of
encroachment felt by many established media and information outlets.

This panel seeks papers that analyze and assess prominent examples of wiki
collaboration from various theoretical perspectives. We seek papers that 
address
how wikis function in the context of established media and the public 
sphere. As
wikis present the attendant risks associated with any social forum
(misrepresentation, hate-speech, hoaxes, vandalism, and the like), how 
do wiki
communities debate, shape and regulate the mores, practices, even the
terminology, of public discourse?


Amit Ray, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Literary and Cultural Studies

Rochester Institute of Technology
College of Liberal Arts, 06-2309
90 Lomb Memorial Drive
Rochester, NY 14623
USA

Phone: 585 475-2437
Fax: 585 475-7120

http://honors.rit.edu/~wiki/index.php/User:ProfRay
http://del.icio.us/AmitoRIT



          ==========================================================
               From the Literary Calls for Papers Mailing List