Writing in the 21st Century

Writing in the 21st Century focuses on the individual composer, specifically in the context of a network. It reintroduces and reinvigorates the concept of civic engagement and collective social action. In this new mediated landscape, we find that it appears that “writers are*everywhere*.” Through opportunities of so-called “extracurricular social apprenticeship,” any individual may come to participate in composing, learning how to write through the examples and precedents created by peers on the web. Therefore, the impact on writing is that “in much of this composing, we are writing to share . . . to encourage dialogue . . . but mostly . . . to participate.” Digital natives of this era have a tremendous capacity for networking and collectivizing through writing that is largely unmatched by previous generations. As Kathleen Yancey states: “through writing, we participate—as students, employees, citizens, human beings. Through writing, we are.”

Our poster, “Writing in the 21st Century” reflects these main ideas of Yancey’s Presidential address. In the center of our poster, we have chosen an image representing the Enlightenment Era and the notion of discourse at that time. A single individual is depicted, representing the largely individualized transition writing took. Reading was experienced in a shared setting but writing was left to be an isolated practice. Yancey explains in her address that people began “to remember reading for the sensual and emotional pleasure that it gave,” and “writing for the pain or isolation it was meant to assuage.” Now, in the 21st Century, we are seeing a return to the communal participation of writing. It is “newly technologized, socialized, and networked,” as represented by our second main picture of networked learning. The presence of computers in the image indicates the digitized turn this field has taken. “Chatting software,” which is now widely available for users, “enables us to collaborate in dynamic ways.” In our timeline across the top of the poster, we have represented these major shifts from reading text to the physical production of writing to the mediated circulation of both forms brought to us by the computer.