The cost of college textbooks has risen 1,041% since 1977, according to a recent NBC study of federal data. That substantial figure confirms what most college students already know—course supply costs are a burden. The Open Education Resource movement offers one solution to the growing costs of educational resources by making it possible to license materials for free use. Open access textbooks play an important role in the movement toward sharing knowledge because they can replace expensive textbooks published for profit. Open access textbooks also have the benefit of promoting emergent subjects of study without worrying about course adoption rates.

These presentations will participate in the Open Education movement by featuring prototype textbooks on social media. Because no standard textbooks exist on the subject of social media, this project by Digital Technology & Culture (DTC) students lays the groundwork for further development in education focused on digital literacy, Internet privacy, e-security, creativity, and effective communication.

Students will model an online textbook using the free, open-source publishing platform Scalar and present their work on October 24th in two rounds, at 9am and 10am. Join us for one or both presentations to celebrate the start of Open Access Week.

Join us for a film screening of The Internet’s Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz.

When: 7-9 pm, October 25, 2016

Where: CUB 210

What: This film recounts the story of Aaron Swartz, a programming prodigy and information activist who helped develop Reddit, RSS, and Creative Commons. Swartz believed in a free and open Internet, which led to his advocacy against SOPA/PIPA and for open access. His life—which was tragically cut short—raises important questions about the relationship between technology, information access, and our civil liberties.

This event is sponsored by GPSA and the WSU Libraries. Please join us for other events in celebration of Open Access Week, 2016. Find out more at http://libguides.libraries.wsu.edu/openaccessweek

Symposium Schedule

Morning Session

9:30am: Coffee

9:45am: Opening remarks & welcome

10:00am: Teresa Zackodnik, “Intense Continuities”: Media Technologies of Black Protest

11:15am: Bergis Jules, The Ethics of Documenting Social Movements

Lunch Break 12:30pm to 1:30pm

Afternoon Session

1:45pm: TreaAndrea Russworm, Race, Technology, and the Problem of Recognition

3:00pm: Roundtable featuring speakers with Thabiti Lewis

4:15pm: Closing remarks & acknowledgements

Since the summer of 2013, #BlackLivesMatter has linked myriad, loosely affiliated protests against pervasive anti-Black violence in the United States. Shortly after George Zimmerman’s acquittal, Alicia Garza originated the phrase on Facebook with her affirmation, “Our Lives Matter, Black Lives Matter.” The hashtag has since served as a banner uniting condemnations of violence against Black people. According to the movement’s website, #BlackLivesMatter makes a unique contribution to the history of Black activism because it affirms “the lives of Black queer folks, disabled folks, Black-undocumented folks, folks with records, women and all Black lives along the gender spectrum.” This symposium brings together media scholars from various disciplines to discuss what that unprecedented affirmation means for digital publics. Talks will address the history and future of technologically mediated public protest against injustice.

Featured Speakers: Bergis Jules (UC Riverside), TreaAndrea Russworm (UMass Amherst), and Teresa Zackodnik (U Alberta)

Join us at the Center for Digital Scholarship and Curation, 4th floor Holland Library

Friday, October 7th, 10:00am-4:30-pm

The presentations will also be livestreamed on the CDSC Youtube account (links below)

Teresa Zackodnik: https://youtu.be/VP64zMNrQWM

Bergis Jules: https://youtu.be/MlZ0pGrpb_M

TreaAndrea Russworm: https://youtu.be/81ykUjuO_uQ

Roundtable: https://youtu.be/TT6PNqV54WU

Nicole Tonkovich is professor of literature at University of California, San Diego. She studies the cultural work of women in the nineteenth century, with an emphasis on nonfiction and photography. She has recently published The Allotment Plot: Alice C. Fletcher, E. Jane Gay, and Nez Perce Survivance.

Washington State University Press has just released Dividing the Reservation, a companion volume that focuses on Alice C. Fletcher’s correspondence during the allotment years on the Nez Perce Reservation.

Join us for a talk and book signing at the Center for Digital Scholarship and Curation, 4th floor Holland Library

Thursday, September 22nd, 4:00-5:00pm

Literary studies of letter writing tend to focus on the personal letter. If their focus is fictional, they consider how the letter allows correspondents to build and maintain interpersonal relations; if nonfictional they use letters as means of biographical interpretation, usually of a figure of public renown.

However, when one studies the whole of the correspondence of a single person for a circumscribed period of time, the boundaries between personal and public, as well as fiction and nonfiction diminish. Reading the personal and public (that is, official epistolary reports) Alice C. Fletcher wrote while allotting land on the Nez Perce Reservation in the 1890s bears out this claim.

The myriad letters Fletcher wrote during this period became the means by which the US consolidated an empire of agriculture and trade in the Northwest. Not only her official reports, but also her unofficial letters were crucial components of the “bloodless tasks of empire.” In Fletcher’s case, as in much of the federal negotiations about Indian policy in her time, personal connections of friendship, school and professional ties, religious affiliation, professional/scientific investigations, and what passed for the straightforward application of policy intermingled. To reading her letters in this way challenges assumptions still distressingly prevalent in contemporary scholarship, that “the sentimental” and “the merely personal” were inefficacious means of driving USAmerican expansion at the end of the nineteenth century.

The CDSC thanks The WSU Department of English, the Sherman and Mabel Smith Pettyjohn Memorial Fund from the WSU Department of History, The WSU Libraries, The Center for Digital Scholarship and Curation, and the WSU Plateau Center for sponsoring this event.