The Electronic Landscape of Journal Editing: Computers and Composition as a Scholarly Collective

Abstract

In their introduction to the collection Multimodal Composition, Pamela Takayoshi and Cynthia Selfe assert that “[i]f composition instruction is to remain relevant, the definition of ‘composition’ and ‘texts’ needs to grow and change to reflect people’s literacy practices in new digital communication environments” (3). Although Takayoshi and Selfe are emphasizing undergraduate instruction, a parallel argument applies to journal editors in English studies and beyond: as scholars heed the call, they require contexts that enable rather than constrain scholarship about teaching and researching in digital environments. Certainly, the desire to create such an intellectual community was behind the development of Computers and Composition in 1983, originally edited by Cynthia Selfe and Kate Kiefer and since 1988 by Gail Hawisher and Selfe. Twenty-some years later, Computers and Composition is an international journal with both print and online components, supported by a strong cohort of digital literacy and composition scholars