Announcement <3
Greetings! This is PD, reporting in. This is a good time to announce (RE: The Header) that I’m about to start on a new chapter: my PhD in Text & Technology at the University of Central Florida.
There are plenty of logistics to work through before I move back from Tuscaloosa to Orlando, but here’s what you’ve missed in the meantime.
I finished my Master’s degree in Journalism and Media Studies!
I’m about to finish my Creative Writing MFA — my defense date is April 9!
What’s next?
Well, that graph I made in my very first introduction post (below) still holds.
I’ve spent the past two years parsing out the bottom right corner: “InstaPoetry,” and some “Critical Scholarship”/”Discourse Analysis” around the “Trends in Publishing” associated with that. I’ll disclose an abbreviated edition of that 130-pg. monster here in the coming weeks!
On the creative end, I’ve been working on a manuscript that orbits my childhood as a Missionary Kid. It’s 6 chapters deep, and I’m excited to work on it more this summer, revising some of the essays so that they can be submitted for publication!
Next steps.
For now, I want to talk about one big addition to that “Research Interests” graph that came around since 2021: Computer-Assisted Writing. It’s been on the whole world’s radar for the past year or so, and I think people are right to be cautious about its use. But I believe in cautious engagement, not disengagement. I’ve got two projects in mind:
1. Short Term
Since it’s National Poetry Month, I’m going to be exploring how one chatbot responds to writing prompts and the sorts of conversations one might have around poetry more broadly, and share my findings and thoughts here.
Last year, Dr. Byas put together this forms calendar, and I’m going to free write some forms and put those bits in conversation with ChatGPT, testing its limits and abilities. I’ll be working with 3.5, unless I make the decision to shell out $20 this month for version 4.0.
So far, I wrote a sonnet, asked the program to write one separately, and then showed it mine. More thoughts on that soon— and on ChatBots and the “reflective voice.”
2. Long Term
The literary world needs a critical space to develop best practices and methods for engaging with computer models and tools that write and create that is mindful and conscious of the environmental, social, and aesthetic intersections with what we’ve nicknamed “AI”.
I’d like to begin curating computer-assisted literary arts; I’ve begun hinting about this (re: tweeting threads about it); I’ll lay out a manifesto soon. Until then, peace and blessings!