RAW New Media builds on the first decade of work in new media research within English studies, following (and also breaking from) the longer history of hypertext theory. The book defines new media only in as much as the individual chapters do so, setting the field as materially rich, ever-changing and remediating itself, and kairotic. What is “new” has no fixed boundaries. Because new media is constantly changing, it must be constantly historicized, theorized, and situated within cultural and social (as well as time-based and spatial) contexts.
RAW, as its name stands for, focuses on reading and writing practices in new media. In the Reading section, those practices range from close, rhetorical, critical, cultural, and post human readings of databases, Flash text, proto-hypertexts, university Web sites, and the lives of new media themselves. In the Writing section, authors address pedagogical issues including the changes in teaching new media from 10 years ago, students’ identities in online spaces, teachers as first-time composers, and issues of curriculum, access, and space design. Overlap between the two sections is obvious and purposeful. This website hopes to further articulate this overlap and enhance the text and overall study of new media.
(Source: RAW website)