Category Archives: Harlot

Harlot Symposium: Presidential Rhetoric

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Check out Harlot’s latest call for contributions for a symposium on presidential rhetoric:

Presidents and Presidential Hopefuls of 2008/2009
Presidents and Presidential Hopefuls of 2008/2009

Throughout a heady election season, the conclusion of a divisive administration, and an inauguration that attracted a record 1.8 million people to Washington D.C., American presidents and presidential hopefuls have performed a flurry of persuasive acts, some stilted, some eloquent, some mangled, some unintentional, some iconic. What have been the most pivotal moments in American politics in the last year? What stood out, made you laugh, made you yell, made you think? What conversations should the nation — and the world — have as we move forward?

We welcome short contributions of 500-750 words or video/audio productions of 1-2 minutes (or any combination thereof) that explore an issue or phenomenon you think is stimulating, amusing, or uncomfortable — as long as it is insightful. Submissions are due by Monday, March 2, 2009.

Submission Information

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We’ve been getting some questions here at Harlot about our submissions. Not to worry, we have and will answer to those askers directly, but for as many people out there who actually ask, there are more who simply wonder. So, if you’ve been wondering the same thing, hopefully I can answer some for you right now.

I’ve heard that you’ve been calling for submissions, but can’t find anything on your site.

Hmm, indeed. Our initial inclination to simply announce this through our blog seems to have been a bit misguided. Well intended, perhaps, but there are obvious flaws with this logic. So, we have updated the homepage to show our call for the second issue. It includes the graphic version and the text version as well as instructions on how to submit.

I can’t figure out the submission process.

We do recommend that you check out the For Creators page as well as the information about Online Submissions. We’ve recently added step by step instructions on how to submit.

I can’t find any information about actually submitting through the system.

This information is now located on the For Creators page, the call for submissions on the main page, and here. More in depth instructions of the system which include going through the Five steps of the Submission process are available here:

http://pkp.sfu.ca/files/OJSinanHour.pdf (opens in pdf)

There’s also a video from Open Journal Systems about the process at this address:

http://pkp.sfu.ca/files/video/ojs_author_submission/ojs_author_submission.htm

What are the Submission Instructions?

How to Submit
1. Register as a creator.
2. When logged in, there will be a link in the right column called “user home,” which will show the roles for which you’ve registered. Click on your role as “creator.”
3. This will take you to a page titled “Active Submissions.” Underneath, there is a smaller heading that says “Start a New Submission.” Click on the link that says “click here to go to step one of the five step process” link.
4. From there you can work your way through the steps by entering information into the fields and clicking “Save and Continue.” You may submit the work in step five.

What do I do if I’m still confused?

If you still have questions, then you can email the editors at harlot.osu@gmail.com or the tech team at harlot.tech@gmail.com.

Call for Submissions: Issue 2

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Harlot is getting around. Our October launch issue prompted visitors from around the globe, with over 13,000 hits on our first day — from the UK to Hong Kong, Italy to Oman, Argentina to Tanzania. The first issue contained a rich and varied set of creative and critical reflections, including interactive digital collages, queer theory provocations, ekphrastic poetry, and rhetorical analyses ranging from Disney to Christmas carols. We’ve received fascinating feedback–glowing, glowering, helpful, and hilarious — that will continue to shape Harlot‘s future, with your help.

Here’s our challenge to you for the next issue: take it to the streets. Harlot is looking for submissions that take a smart and savvy look at everyday persuasions. Mess with the mundane. Question the quotidian. What messages do your shoes send? How does that graffiti mess with your mind? Do you find guilt trips compelling? What makes you stop and stare (or fight or flee) on your way to work? Do you like rhetorical questions?

We welcome contributions of all sorts — no observation too pointed, no style too random. Submissions for the spring issue are due February 2. So, get out there and analyze the everyday, critique the common, and bring the banal to Harlot.

The Essential Part of Running a Website

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Let’s say you’re playing around on the Harlot site. You’re enjoying yourself–reading some mad good works of writing, writing comments, adding content to the wiki, having discussions–and, oh no, there’s something you don’t like. The comments are not intuitive to what the reader needs. The design is hard on your eyes. The logo’s too big. Or a number of other issues.

Well, well. Do I have a post for you. Because this site is meant to be a space for you and your needs, we want to make the best space that we can for you. It’s kinda like your favorite coffee shop, but cooler. This is your opportunity to help tailor Harlot to you. So, hit me with the feedback. Good, bad, totally apathetic. You can email us at harlot.osu@gmail.com or leave a comment. Here if you like or under the Editors’ Letter.

Tell me what you think, what you want, what you like, what you think doesn’t work.

Now, realize that I may only be able to do so much for ya, and if you ask for a Thoroughbred, you might end up with a Tennessee Walker. Jus’ Sayin’. There is a limited amount of time and support.

To preempt some of the things that do come up, know that our first priority is to create a single login session for all of our systems. That means instead of signing in for all the separate entities: Blog, Wiki, and the home page, you will only need to sign in once for all three. Useful, eh? We think so. Of course, we have been working on it (or I should say that our amazing PHP Programmer, Jason, has been working on it), but you may just have to bear with us as we go through the technical woes.

I mean, we have a whole list of things we’d like to see, but I know that y’all will have concerns that we never even thought about. So, please, tell us what you want. Tell us how to make the site better for you.

What would Bakhtin do?

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I’m reading Bakhtin’s Discourse in the Novel on a sunny Labor Day afternoon (ah, the odd joys of studying for comps), and just ran into this:

Opposed to the language of priests and monks, kings and seigneurs, knights and wealthy urban types, scholars and jurists–to the languages of all who hold power and who are well set up in life–there is the language of the merry rogue, wherever necessary parodically re-processing any pathos but always in such a way as to rob it of its power to harm, “distance it from the mouth” as it were, by means of a smile or deception, mock its falsity and thus turn what was a lie into gay deception. Falsehood is illuminated by ironic consciousness and in the mouth of the happy rogue parodies itself. (401-2)

As we’ve been preparing for Harlot‘s October launch (woo hoo), there’s this natural impulse to reflect on the project, its ideals and actuality, its goals and challenges. And so reading Bakhtin’s admiring description of the “merry rogue” immediately challenged me to consider how–and how well– Harlot will live up to the rogue part of its persona.

The rogue speaks ironic, parodic truth to, and more importantly about, power. The rogue is a member of the folk culture, a person of the masses, one who stands on the edge of dominant culture, points its finger, and dares to laugh. And in that laughter there is a shifting of power and authority.

So I wonder: How can Harlot perform the role of the rogue, to not just analyze but critique, to playfully (as Kaitlin says) kick the stuffyness out of intellectualism? To participate in what Bakhtin calls “the common people’s creative culture of laughter”?

Or more to the point, how can Harlot encourage YOU to perform that role?

Cast your vote for Harlot’s “Featured Text”

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In the spirit of collaborative criticism, one of the key elements of Harlot’s pilot (see harlotofthearts.org/pilot/) is the “Featured Text”: a rhetorical artifact that begs to be analyzed, preferably by lots of smart people. For that exercise, Kay Halasek provided prompts and a launching point for discussion of Hillary Clinton’s infamous Sopranos spoof  campaign ad.

Now that we’re approaching our official launch in the fall (woo hoo!), my question is: what do we want to talk about? What would you like to analyze in Harlot? What’s going to get the conversation going? The Olympic opening ceremony?

Mudslinging campaign ads? The New Yorker cover debacle? David Byrne’s “Playing the Building” exhibit (see my post on May 18)? Those “We” global climate change commercials? Your favorite text of the moment?

Just let us know.

And We’re Launched!

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Exciting times.

We’ve now unveiled our (temporary) home for Harlot. It contains our call for submissions, information about the origins of this project, the pilot issue and sample texts we presented at the Feminism(s) and Rhetoric(s) conference, and a link to this blog. If you haven’t already seen it, take a look: www.HarlotoftheArts.org. We always welcome and very much appreciate feedback of any sort.

And now we’re moving toward the next phase: solidifying our editorial process and producing a tech platform (content management system) to streamline that process. It’s interesting how the conceptual and technological are working hand in hand for us. As we make decisions about what the editorial process will entail, we are customizing the back-end system to allow such a process to take place with ease. And, yet, at the same time the existing technology is showing us how a version of how this process can work and is thus affecting the details of the editorial process.

A symbiotic relationship it is.

It’s cool that we’ve come to this juncture with two solid frameworks – one a publication process and the other an existing and powerful software – that must adjust in other to accommodate and complement each other all while preserving the mission of Harlot.

If anyone is curious, we are looking at Open Journal Systems (OJS), an open source software we hope to customize. The system itself is already quite advanced and complex enough to handle general editorial processes for journals, but as it is geared toward print publications, we need to work out what may be the limitations of its setup and how we can make it friendlier toward multimedia and multiple-file submissions. We will also have to adjust the default front-end (interface), which means we will be designing and building our website all over again. Our current site, then, will eventually be an artifact of our journey, but it has been a big stepping stone for all of us: We can all understand tech-speak better than we ever imagined, and we’ve all become a bit more savvy at matters of design and Web publishing. We hope with the publishing of our debut issue will come our best design yet.

We’ll keep you tuned in on how our progress is going. In the meantime, we’d like to give a heartfelt thanks to Kaitlin, who’s worked endlessly and tirelessly with us in producing the current and pilot sites for Harlot. We are grateful for all the time, work, and heart she’s put into this effort with us. And as the pendulum swings from techy to even more techy with the customization of our back-end system, we’re putting our faith in Warren and Shilpa, who are fluent in languages we’ve never heard spoken before. They are certainly the next generation of computer whisperers.

audio articles?

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I was pleasantly surprised to find myself linked to an audio article while breezing The Chronicle of Higher Education this morning.

Audio offers such a different, intriguing interaction than what many of us are used to in web journals.  For instance, right now I’m listening to the article while typing this–learning about sustainability while writing about possibility.  Harlot could capitalize on this medium as a way to keep things fresh.

Of course, my next question is: How can we make it better?  How might we