Daniel Richards

Research and Teaching Talk Old Dominion University 17 January 2013

The (Re)Naturalization of Margaret Cavendish, Spectacle, Sex, and Property in Eighteenth-Century Literature and Culture, AMS Press, 2013. Question: In what ways did Cavendish challenge the traditional scientic methods employed by the Royal Society in her philosophical and creative work?

Published Research

Argument: While Cavendish does promote a Baconian superiority of humans (particularly herself) over nature, she changes the means by which humans relate to nature: not by the use of mastering scientic instruments but through a democratized experience with its complexity.

Digitizing Dewey: Blogging an Ethic of Community, Computers and Composition Online, Fall 2011. Question: How can we expand the current usage of blogs in the writing classroom, particularly as it relates to the notion of social action?

Argument: If we are to ever harness the full potential of blogs there needs to be a shift away from self-centered models of rhetorical exigence and a move towards the expandingand ultimately re-purposingof blogs in a pedagogical context as more socially-responsible spaces.

Current Project

Dead Mans Switch: Nonhuman Stakeholders and the Vibrant Rhetorics of Ecological Disasters, Dissertation, June 21 Defense. Context: Connecting work in the eld (e.g., disaster reports) to the philosophical and scientic discourses of posthumanism to explore the ways these perspectives can inform the practices of technical communication. Question: How does an application of posthumanist theory to disaster/risk communication challenge what constitutes as a cause?

Preliminary Findings: Deepwater Horizon oil spill provides a unique case study to show us how technical communicators can help us move beyond the epideictic rhetorics of blame and discourses of environmentalism. Blow-out preventer (BOP) functions as a boundary object that has a tremendous amount of agency as part of the larger distributed and becomes an exigence around which knowledge and action is possible.

Department of English University of South Florida drichar3@mail.usf.edu danielrichards.net 863-738-0667

Research Agenda

Risk Communication in a Posthuman Age, Baywood Press. I will be revising my dissertation into monograph form to be published through Baywood Press, which recently launched a book (Stalinist Genetics) theorizing the intersection of the rhetoric of science and technical communication. This project will highlight the changing role of a technical communicator in writing about risk and disaster while acknowledging the rhetorical agency and suasive force of the nonhuman.

Teaching the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill: Disastrous Objects in Technical Rhetoric, IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication. Using stakeholder theory and approaches in the rhetoric of science, students use real documents ranging from news accounts to national commission reports to corporate reports to identify systematic problems that contributed to the disaster. Working from particular stakeholder perspectives, students work collaboratively to produce materials that promote a deeper, materialist approach to environmental literacy.

A Blazing Critique: An Object-Oriented Approach to 17th-Century Scientic Equipment, Technical Communication Quarterly. Building on my previous work, which outlined the ways Cavendish reshaped her relationship to nature, this project recovers the 17thcentury writer/experimental philosopher (cf. Nickels Shirk, Brasseur) as a contributor to the eld of scientic communication, specically as one who offers an object-oriented critique of the Royal Societys methods and instruments.

Teaching

Community Connections At the core of my teaching is a drive to have students develop the skillsets necessary to thrive as productive citizen-workers. Individual and group projects are structured to build productive bridges between classroom and community, content and clients.

Online Curriculum Service as a pedagogical approach can take many forms and should not be relegated to physical presence. Online projects often ask students to contribute meaningfully to online communities (e-tutorials, industry-specic blogs) by positioning themselves as a technical authority on a subject, skill, or procedure.

New Technologies, New Genres Effective technical communication is not limited to textual modes of composing. Students are often asked to engage with and identify the limitations and affordances of various communication technologies.

Learning Objectives Students identify objects as materialnot representationalforces.

Department of English University of South Florida drichar3@mail.usf.edu danielrichards.net 863-738-0667

ENGL 334

COMMUNICATING DISASTER:
ENVIRONMENTAL LITERACY AND TECHNICAL COMMUNICATION
Course Description

Instructor Email Ofce Hours Skype Site

Daniel Richards drichar3@mail.usf.edu Building 123 Thursday 11a-2p ProfDanRichards 334F13.wordpress.com

This course introduces you to the rhetorical principles and writing practices necessary for producing effective, professional documents in a technical setting. This semester you will have the opportunity to apply these principles to a specic exigence (ecological disaster) and a specic community site (NOAA@Nauticus). The content you will write, design, and produce this semester resides at the intersection of effective technical communication principles and practices and theories of critical risk communication. Your work will be aligned with the mission of NOAA@Nauticus, which is devoted to the enhancement of environmental and scientic literacy. Throughout the course, students will: Apply key principles to local contexts. Engage in both textual and visual techniques for communicating technical information. Become familiar with critical risk theories. Write to multiple audiences for various purposes. Identify and explore problems in public and organizational contexts.

Required Resources Markel, M. (2012). Technical communication (10th ed). Boston: Bedford/St.Martins. Sadar, A.J., & Shull, M. D. (2000). Environmental risk communication: Practices and principles for industry. New York: Lewis Publishers. Deliverables 20% Usability Testing: Smart Buoy Gateway Kiosk Students will conduct their HCI on location at NOAA@Nauticus with the newly-developed Smart Buoy Gateway Kioskan interactive station that educates and reports on oceanic activity. Students will develop and implement test materials and write a formal recommendation report (one page). Project will be completed in groups. The new Tsunami Ready exhibit at NOAA@Nauticus includes multimedia and other information to inform the public of what to do in case of disaster. Your task is to take this information, in addition to your own primary and secondary research, and create an instruction document appropriately communicating the level of risk to a different audience/public. Ofcial reports mandated by corporations, the government, or NPOs after a disaster are highly rhetorical documents that communicate important ideas about causality, fault, and stakeholder impact. Your task in this project is to identify and analyze three visual representations by different stakeholders of some component of an ecological disaster of your choice. Students will be responsible for podcasting (7 podcasts total) on any given topic of their choice, with the only conditions being that the subject matter must pertain to risk, be current, and connect to the theories and ideas covered this semester. Students will use Audacity audio editing software and upload their work to a class-wide SoundCloud account.

30% Instructional Document Design: Tsunami Ready

30% Report Analysis: Visualizing Disaster Reports

20% Bi-Weekly Podcast Responses

Department of English University of South Florida drichar3@mail.usf.edu danielrichards.net 863-738-0667

ENGL 695 ONLINE

PODCASTING:

Project Length Due Date Weight

5 weeks 27 April 30% 100 Optional Audacity

TSUNAMI READY EXHIBIT AT NOAA@NAUTICUS

Overview

Points Group Members Tool

Podcasts are an increasingly popular mode of shaping public understanding on a variety of topics. For example, This American Life, Freakonomics, and RadioLab are award-winning productions that aim at enhancing the public understanding of science, technology, economics, and the arts. This project asks you to think of podcasts as a genre of technical communication aimed at enhancing public understanding on a given subject or procedure. Technical communicators need to always be thinking about the means through which their information is being disseminated. Communicating risk to the public via podcasts allows another avenue for communication and also affords us the opportunity to learn a new, increasingly popular genre in the realm of enhancing public understanding of science. Exigence and Task The NOAA@Nauticus recently opened the Tsunami Ready exhibit, which, according to their website, explores the nature of these destructive waves through engaging video and signage and educates visitors about steps they can take to protect their lives and property from tsunamis. The NOAA, Nauticus, and the NOAA@Nauticus all provide useful online educational and informational materials to support their respective missions and causes. However, for this exhibit, a fully-downloadable resource is lacking, meaning that citizens wanting to know more about tsunami risks must physically visit the exhibit. Your task is to ll this need for an online information stream communicating disaster preparedness and reaction so as to minimize poor decision making and ensure public safety. Deliverables 15pts Leading and Recording an Interview/Media Clip To get your feet wet with the audio recording software, Audacity, this preliminary deliverable requires you to conduct an audio-recorded interview with someone who can serve as a primary source for your project. If an interview is not possible, then an audio news media clip can act as a replacement. Not only will I be assessing your interview skills outlined in the Markel text, but I will also be assessing and providing you feedback on your ability to splice the audio clips in an appropriately-timed manner. Midway through the project, you will be asked to submit a 2-3 page, professionally formatted progress report to your secondary audience (instructor). This report will clearly articulate a reassessment of your goals, namely what you have accomplished so far and what you have yet to complete. The nal podcast must be in between 10 and 15 minutes in length and will be assessed by the following criteria: quality of content and research; understanding of critical risk communication; audio overlay; clip splicing; style and tone; and principles of technical communication.
Department of English University of South Florida drichar3@mail.usf.edu danielrichards.net 863-738-0667

25pts Progress Report

60pts Final Podcast