2021-2022 was an exciting year for the Sweetland DRC Fellows. As their fellowship draws to a close, our six fellows offer reflections on their experiences and projects. This year’s cohort continued to focus on themes of accessibility, ethics, and activism, along with several other topics within the field of digital rhetoric. Our blog carnival explored emerging perspectives on new media technologies, and a new teaching materials page was created to showcase crowd-sourced classroom activities, texts, and prompts. In addition, our fellows created a new podcast, the DRC Talk Series, which features prominent scholars currently working in the field of digital…
Author: Kelly Hartwell
Alyse Campbell, Laura McCann, Laura Leigh Menard, Courtney A. Mauck, Laken Brooks, Jennifer Burke Reifman, Sarah Hughes
Kelly Hartwell is a doctoral student in the Joint Program of English and Education at the University of Michigan, where she studies writing assessment, literacy, and language ideologies.
Earlier this year, President Joe Biden announced his plan to expand WIFI and broadband internet access to rural areas in the United States. However, some political and pop culture conversations about rural America and Appalachia, my own home region, can reinforce certain stereotypes. Some people believe that Appalachia is devoid of technology, but I learned digital literacy as I snapped green beans on the front porch with my grandmother.As a DRC fellow, I’m excited to raise awareness about digital literacy and folklore. Angela Haas and other cultural rhetoricians point out that “digits” meant “fingers and toes” long before computer scientists…