I want to restate in comprehensible terms my question, which came out dumb due to the current state of my brain and associated systems (am some value of sick, ergo stupid). I found the panel profoundly frustrating -- productive-frustrating, not stagnant-frustrating -- because I can't conceive of where we start establishing a realistic medial point between the extremes of Luddism and chaos. To clarify: I am of course wholly on the side of the academic anarchists and their exploded canon, but I can also recognize the value of having a rubric for "good" literature. Clearly it can't be the old universalist standard, but I'm not sure I'm ready to accept the idea that there *is* no standard, nor am I sure that's the thing to work towards. However, obviously the same rubric can't be applied to all media; the question becomes, then, how do we account for medium when trying to establish it? I'm certainly not willing to say "here's what kind of reading is worthwhile [for lack of a less loaded term], but it only applies to books, please ignore for everything else, they can't be evaluated on this scale," since that's tantamount to saying "they can't be evaluated as worthwhile" (and I think the NEA report is guilty of some of this kind of artificial omission). On the other hand, I don't think it's productive to say "oh, books and games and text messages and AIM and television and film and magazines eat oats and little lambs eat ivy." So........ what? What do you do with medium prior to establishing some kind of literary evaluation, so that things can be analyzed on the same scale? Or do we really do away with the idea of evaluation entirely? I must admit that the report and the panel both made me face up to a lot of ingrown parochial ideas; perhaps this is one of them.

Anyway, Matt, thanks so much for putting this together. I thought it was fascinating. I felt bad for my students, who were clearly passing notes and whatnot, but I think even just going and absorbing some of it will make them think down paths they wouldn't have thought down otherwise, and give them some inkling of what it means to be involved in academic discourse.

All very well put, Jess.

"Most of all I’d appreciate ideas about how to continue the conversation."

A blog? Perhaps something more open than a blog, like Drupal? http://www.drupal.org/

I just posted on the panel at my blog (jeb.wordherders.net). I also was very impressed, and encouraged, by the turn-out. In my usual empathic way, I sided with those who felt digital arts were slighted by the NEA, but also with those who thought the panelists were a little too sanguine in the face of the incontrovertible findings in the report about the drop-off of reading in general in the U.S.

Can't we have digital arts AND books? I hope so. In fact, that's pretty much what I've been trying to do with my blog in the early going: to champion both kinds of writing, and both kinds of reading.

Anyway, thanks Matt for your efforts in bringing it all together and at the very least I think we can keep the conversation going at wordherders.

G'day Matthew,

You may wish to upgrade to the latest version of Movable Type to combat the Spam problem. I was having the same issues.

best,

Craig Bellamy
www.history.net.au

Hi Craig,

It's on the to-do list.