It’s Mardi Gras — time to get a little creative — so English graduate student Jessica Ketcham wanted to shake up today’s English Graduate Student Association annual conference.
English studies professors and students — coming from as far away as Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom — will meet in Baton Rouge today and Friday to explore new ideas about integrating words and images.
The English studies conference, dubbed “Reimagining Text,” is about finding new ways for professionals and students to express ideas by combining various forms of media, including Web sites, photos and novels.
“It’s important to be able to write, but there are so many other aspects, too,” Ketcham said. “How can you ever really capture what you want to say, if all you ever use is words?”
Ketcham also said she wanted this year’s conference to cross disciplinary lines, so presenters will lecture and introduce written work on everything from graphic images in comic books to using obituaries to increase discussion on death.
The event will also include two keynote speakers and a luncheon on Friday.
Gregory Ulmer, one of the keynote speakers, is a professor of English and media at the University of Florida and will introduce his personally coined term, “electracy” — a concept he says is the future of institutional education.
Ulmer said “electracy” — electronic literacy — combines technological elements such as computers, the Internet and photography with thinking and writing.
A technologically growing society, Ulmer said, must redefine literacy by teaching students not only to read and write, but also to communicate in a computer-dependent culture.
Teaching students to simply write an argumentative research paper is not enough anymore, Ulmer said.
“We must give students the skills to draw upon how images and sounds work together to produce knowledge,” he said.
The conference is free and open to the public. Seminars will be today and Friday in the Union Vieux Carre, International and Castilian rooms.