J.Rice

Current Project

This book addresses the complex relationships between rhetorical production, urban space, technology, and network theory. Detroit is the site of past technological innovations such as the birth of the automotive industry and the creation of techno music. Detroit also hosts emerging technology-oriented movements like Wayne State University's TechTown or the annual Digital Detroit meeting (and association by the same name). While an Assistant Professor in Wayne State University's English Department, I headed a digital literacy initiative whose focus was the integration of technology into the teaching of writing. These moments circulate specific understandings regarding the importance of technology to education and urban space. The most dominant meanings we encounter are in terms of economic investment and development or in a perceived educational benefit earned from familiarity with new technologies. Digital Detroit begins with these moments, noting their importance to the city and its image, but asks how digitality also works in conceptual ways. That is, Digital Detroit is an investigation into how space functions in non-physical ways, how it works as a site of rhetorical production and rhetorical invention.