Research
Through my scholarship, I investigate the possibilities new media and digital technologies offer for creating knowledge and telling stories. In my dissertation, I examine invention practices in designing “webtext” (multimedia) scholarship to understand how design takes shape through the twists and turns of the drafting process. I believe webtext scholarship offers a way to incorporate more available means of persuasion into contemporary academic information design.
Furthermore, I practice digital making and mentorship through collaborative research with other scholars, faculty and graduate students alike. As web developer and co-author, I guide collaborators through the process of developing interdisciplinary webtext scholarship. I have developed or published peer-reviewed webtexts with colleagues from fields such as dance, disability, fairy tale, and feminist rhetorical studies.
Selected Publications
Bahl, Erin Kathleen. “The Magpie’s Nest: A Webtext Review of Webtext Scholarship (Review Essay).” Computers and Composition Online, Spring 2017.
The goal of this digital version is to explore the possibilities a webtext review offers for reviewing webtext scholarship in its own born-digital environment.
Bahl, Erin Kathleen. “Composer Stories as Research and Design Materials in Webtext Scholarship (Review Essay).” Computers and Composition, vol. 43, pp. 147-152, March 2017.
This review essay explore the narrative knowledge-making possibilities that webtext scholarship offers for computers and writing studies.
Bahl, Erin Kathleen. “Sung Reading: An Operatic Approach to P. Craig Russell’s Graphic Novel The Ring of the Nibelung.” Semiotics of Art. Signs and Media, vol. 13, Fall 2016, pp. 131-158.
I offer a semiotic foundation towards a performative reading of the graphic novel by drawing analogies to opera as a narrative medium.
Bahl, Erin Kathleen and Sara Cleto. “Becoming the Labyrinth: Negotiating Magical Space and Identity in Puella Magi Madoka Magica.” Special Issue on Fairy Tale and New Media. Humanities Journal, vol. 5, no. 2, 20, April 2016.
We frame labyrinths as creative material memory work negotiating grief and despair.
Bahl, Erin Kathleen. “Comics and Scholarship: Sketching the Possibilities.” Special Issue on Comics, Multimodality, and Composition, ed. Dale Jacobs. Composition Studies, vol. 43, no. 1, Spring 2015, pp. 178-182.
I suggest comics give voice to an alternative mode of meaning-making that embraces a sense of wonder, discovery, and delight in the messy process of knowledge creation.
Bahl, Erin Kathleen and Kaitlin Clinnin. “Networked Composing: DMAC as Community of Practice.” Showcasing the Best of CIWIC/DMAC, vol. 1, 2015.
We use the concept of "communities of practice" to analyze how a group of individuals develop texts, practices, relationships, and literacies to engage in group learning.
Site design and illustration by Erin Kathleen Bahl | erinkathleenbahl@gmail.com