Cross-Border Networks in Writing Studies. Derek Mueller
Earlbaum: 2
NCTE Press: 2
Sage: 2
Taylor and Francis: 2
Utah State UP: 2
A distinctive American orientation in both lists further contextualizes the prevalence of North American identification with publishing activity from Question Nine. Each list includes just one Canada-based publishing venue, CJSDW/Technostyle among the journals, and Inkshed among the presses. Online journals (Present Tense and Kairos) reflect a receptiveness to contemporary delivery formats, and the comparably high number of mentions for Parlor Press, WAC Clearinghouse, and Inkshed indicates, as well, that open access publishing is as prevalent as proprietary and paper-based publishing. Present Tense, which was inaugurated in 2009 as an online journal for medium-form scholarship, is the newest of the journals and publishers mentioned.
Questions 1–4, 11: Locations associated with professional activity
The first three geography-oriented questions confirmed that over 70% of the respondents are from Canada, completed a BA or BS in Canada, an MA or MS in Canada, and live and work in Canada now. However, just 23 (41.8%) of the respondents completed a PhD in Canada; whereas 29 (52.7%) undertook doctoral studies in the United States. In an otherwise Canadian-oriented set of geographical identifiers, doctoral studies are the anomalous class, signaling cross-border activity through which a majority of Canadian writing studies scholars surveyed went to the United States for a PhD and returned to work in Canadian universities. Although this does not account for those who did not return in the future, or who might not, within this data-set, responses to this question offer a limited, distant report on patterned interdependency. The survey results provided sufficient warrant for exploring this cross-border pattern more carefully—a pursuit that will be focal in the following section.
Figure 3. An information graphic presenting compiled survey responses for the aggregate locations among respondents.
Table 1. Survey tabulation of the geographic locations among respondents as relate to where they are from, where they took up undergraduate and graduate programs of study, and where they are now.
| Toponym Distribution | |||||||||
| CA | US | RU | AU | NZ | UK | N/A | % Canadian | n | |
| FROM | 44 | 9 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 80.0% | 55 |
| BA | 42 | 10 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 76.4% | 55 |
| MA | 41 | 12 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 74.5% | 55 |
| PHD | 23 | 29 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 41.8% | 55 |
| NOW | 46 | 8 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 83.6% | 55 |
Finally, Question 11 invited respondents to include a curriculum vitae as an attachment. With CVs from 49 of the 55 respondents, more precise details became available, such as other locations where respondents had worked and the years in which they completed their PhDs. In a few cases, when attached CVs did not provide sufficient detail, supplemental queries on Google or in databases, such as ProQuest’s Dissertations & Theses Global, supplied further information to develop Figure 4, a block histogram showing the years in which respondents completed PhDs and whether the PhDs were from Canadian universities. While this figure provides yet another perspective on the data presented in Figure 3, it also acknowledges a reasonably balanced rate of participation from late career, middle career, and early career scholars.
Figure 4. Block histogram presenting compiled survey responses for the year of PhD completion. Doctorates completed at Canadian universities are annotated with a maple leaf in the upper right-hand corner of the rectangular block.
As a preliminary, distant instrument for inquiring into cross-border interdependencies in writing studies, the survey confirmed numerous instances of blending, hybridity, and transnational thinking on the part of participants. Yet the survey also primed new questions—harder questions, I would say—about the methods best suited to tracing transnational disciplinary interdependencies at the broadest, most encompassing scales. In addition to this survey, my initial explorations of how best to trace interdependency were keyed to geographic locations, on the affinities that coalesce and cascade from one location to the next along emplaced, distributed career pathways. In the following section, as a way to further consider patterned interdependency based on geographic locations identified in the survey results, a series of interactive, digital maps reaffirm with slightly more refined granularity the ways interdependency operates both in specific career paths and in the aggregate career paths of the 55 respondents.
From the survey’s specific place names to an encompassing North American viewshed for getting to know data indicative of interdependencies, the exploratory digital maps featured in this section contribute a distant, preliminary intervention in the broader study. Grouped as they are, the maps constitute an inquiry atlas, the points marked in them only after geocoding more than 300 locations referenced in the survey responses and curriculum vitae. Methodologically, we should think of this process as a pursuit of indexical aereality—the plotting of geographic coordinates onto map projections such that we can read the maps for otherwise non-obvious patterns and shapes. Indexical aereality names the process of translating a geolocative data-set and plotting it cartographically, so viewers can explore an emerging definition shape as one report on some disciplinary domain of activity. There have in recent years been similar efforts to map disciplinarily relevant, geographic data-sets, such as Jim Ridolfo’s rhetmap, which documents job ads by geographic location (n.d.); Christopher Thais and Tara Porter’s mapping of WAC/WID programs (2010); Jeremy Tirrell’s (2012) study of the geographical history of online journals, and maps by the Doctoral Consortium in Rhetoric and Composition (Phelps & Ackerman, 2010) and Master’s Consortium of Writing Studies Specialists (n.d.) to show membership locations. Yet, a full realization of disciplinary cartography is early in its development, and many geographies of writing have by-passed cartographic representations altogether, instead focusing on narrative and descriptive accounts.
The mapping process began with a simple line map developed using R, a programming language for visualizing statistical data. The detailed technical steps exceed the scope of this chapter, but the basic process required creating a file with the toponyms already geocoded, or assigned accurate latitude and longitude coordinates (geocoding is the translation of a place name into these numerical coordinates; I used the GPS Visualizer website and an API key from Bing Maps, which, in tandem, yielded a comma separated format that imported easily into other applications for sorting, analyzing, and plotting). The R console could process and overlay these geocoded data on a stock map projection from one of the available R libraries. The result from an early iteration of the project appears here.
Figure 5. A map projection of geolocative survey data rendered in R.
The rudimentary line map positions a marker where a scholar is currently located and adds radiating lines to all of the locations where that scholar has studied or worked. This approach to mapping career activity is synchronic (see Figure 6); the visual representation suggests the cumulative presence of every past position is bundled together, emanating from a locus situated in the here and now. I consider this a career footprint; it resembles a starburst or hub and spoke pattern. As a function of representing networks visually, it is understood to be a reductive, limited scope representation of merely one slice of professional activity, though it is nevertheless an invaluable way of grasping complex cross-border activity at the outset. In terms of interdependencies, this projection reflects numerous cross-border traversals. And yet the visual output from R was not quite satisficient (Simon, 1991). The map data in this early draft was neither satisfyingly navigable nor sufficiently selectable.
Figure