Greetings and Disclosures

First and foremost, I'd just like to take a second to thank you for checking out my blog. I've been interested in blogging (though not active, but I'll get into that in a moment) for some time, but haven't really gotten much traction in the smattering of abandoned blogs I've started in the past. The circumstances that prompted me to start this blog, however, will certainly give me the space, forum, and structure to be more consistent and (hopefully) engaging with my approach to the genre.

I am a first-year Ph.D student in Rhetoric and Composition at Washington State University in Pullman, Washington. I am currently taking a seminar, ENGL 597 - Studies in Technology and Culture, that asks students to respond to the readings we do in class through an independently-run blog. The instructions are as follows:

"You are responsible for writing a summary for each book we read in class. The summary is due by classtime and must include:

1. the book's main argument summarized in your own words,
2. three direct quotes from the book that you feel are important to the overall argument,
3. a description of two issues the author raises that you find compelling (you may be compelled because you agree or disagree),
4. one image, video, or song/soundclip, that you feel is somehow related to what you took away from reading the book (this is VERY open)."

The book summaries that I will compose for this blog will certainly address and respond to all of these components, though I hope to make them as fluid and readable as possible. Which is to say that I will not be using a number system, but more so trying to compose with a wider audience in mind. Earlier I stated that I had not been able to sustain a blog in the past. I would truly and sincerely would like to continue working on this blog beyond the purview of the course I'm taking, so the aforementioned rhetorical choices are with this goal in mind.

With all of that said, I'm going to work on my first blog post, which covers the first five chapters of T. V. Reed's Digitized Lives: Culture, Power and Social Change in the Internet Era (Routledge, 2014). I will put many of Reed's ideas in conversation with recent events involving leaked nude photographs of celebrities. Please feel free to read, comment, share, etc. Thanks again for giving my blog a gander.