Announcing the UM Press/Sweetland Publication Prize in Digital Rhetoric

In conjunction with the launch of the Digital Rhetoric Collaborative (DRC) Book Series from the University of Michigan Press and the Gayle Morris Sweetland Center for Writing, we are pleased to announce the UM Press/Sweetland Publication Prize in Digital Rhetoric.  The prize, which is funded by the Sweetland Center for Writing, will be awarded annually to an innovative and important book-length project that displays critical and rigorous engagement in the field of digital rhetoric.  These projects should be born-digital or digitally enhanced.

Eligible projects will be peer reviewed with the recipient determined by the DRC advisory board and directors.  The advisory board members are Jonathan Alexander (University of California, Irvine), Cheryl Ball (Illinois State University), Kristine Blair (Bowling Green State University), Douglas Eyman (George Mason University), Troy Hicks (Central Michigan University), Derek Mueller (Eastern Michigan University), Jentery Sayers (University of British Columbia), and Melanie Yergeau (University of Michigan).

The directors are Naomi Silver and Anne Ruggles Gere  (University of Michigan).  Tom Dwyer and Shana Kimball of MPublishing will also take part in the review of proposals.

For consideration, authors should provide by email a prospectus for a completed project.  The prospectus should include the following: a description of the goals, intended audience, and significance; a CV; a complete introduction, sample chapter, or substantial digital material; and an explanation of technical requirements, feasibility and long-term sustainability.  The deadline for submissions is Monday, October 1, 2012.  Please send submissions to Tom Dwyer, editor-in-chief of UM Press, and DRC co-directors Anne Gere and Naomi Silver at SweetlandDRCBooks@umich.edu.

The prize is open to scholars of all ranks, though preference is for first and single-author projects of younger scholars.  A prize of $5000 will be awarded, along with an advance contract for publication in the series.  The recipient will be announced on the DRC, UM Press, and Sweetland websites, and at Computers and Writing 2013.

General Guidelines for Prospectus Submission to the Digital Rhetoric Collaborative
The Sweetland Digital Rhetoric Collaborative publishes texts that investigate the multiliteracies of digitally mediated spaces both within academia as well as other contexts.  We encourage discussions that include but are not limited to topics such as:

• new convergences and economies;
• shifting ideologies and politics;
• global contexts and multilingual discourses;
• reconstructions of race, class, gender, sexuality, and (dis)ability;
• emerging theories and technologies; and
• reconfigured divisions and connections within these spaces.

We encourage born-digital as well as digitally enhanced submissions of book-length scope — in the form of collections, monographs, or teaching materials of varying genres — that engage with digital rhetoric’s histories and futures; its border-fields and transdisciplines; its ethics and aesthetics; its materialities, networks, praxes and pedagogies.

Reviewers and series editors will consider the following criteria when evaluating submissions.  Strong submissions will:

• demonstrate informed awareness of relevant literature, models and/or practices;
• define and develop emerging issues and perspectives;
• provide a significant contribution to the field;
• offer an analytic, creative, or critical contribution to the field;
• be original, provocative, or groundbreaking;
• employ innovative formats and technology appropriate to the subject;
• enhance understanding of the relationship of form to content and of design to meaning;
• be feasible and sustainable.

Final publication will be contingent on positive external reviews and approval by the Executive Board of the University of Michigan Press.  The Press and MPublishing, the University’s center for scholarly publishing, are dedicated to publishing innovative work in digital rhetoric.

For additional points to consider in preparing submissions, see: http://www.DigitalRhetoricCollaborative.org/books/.