Category Archives: 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

The Production of Knowledge — And the Harlot of the Arts

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An excerpt from the introduction to “The Birth of Understanding: Chaste Science and the Harlot of the Arts”

– Celeste Michelle Condit

Two metaphors dominate our discussions of knowledge. The “old” metaphor sees knowledge as something discovered. Through this looking glass, great individuals like Newton, Columbus, and Einstein have added to the treasury of knowledge, whether by apples dropped on their heads, misguided efforts to get to the Orient, or true genius. Today another metaphor is widely employed to describe the augmentation of the international human treasure—that of production. In spite of the Nobel prize’s obduracy in spotlighting individuals, most of us know that knowledge is produced by anonymous groups relying less on apples, genius, and missed directions and ever more upon inhumanly clever computers, research teams of aspiring academics, and public funding.

What, however, if we refuse to see knowledge as “discovered” or even as “produced”? What if knowledge is reproduced? “Born” of human interactions, ways of understanding grow or fail to grow to maturity (or paradigmatic status if you will). They either pass on their genetic structure to new generations or pass on. In such a metaphor we might find the capacity for exploring the intercourse between rhetoric and science.

After all, rhetoric (the harlot of the arts) and the social science of communication (the sanctimoniously chaste youth) have been pressed up against each other for something around forty years now. Each has experienced a different torment, locked in a tiny compartment of the university, scrapping for crumbs of academic prestige (fulfilling the destiny Henry Kissinger noted for academics, by fighting so viciously because there is so little at stake). Each denies any hanky-panky, protesting respectively, that “the youth won’t pay” and “she’s no lady.” There are signs, however of offspring; there are increasing numbers of lines of study that borrow from the scholarly traditions of both rhetoric and social scientific communication research. Are these offspring legitimate? Do they give us true “knowledge”? Examining the family traits may lead us toward a genealogical conclusion.

Communication Monographs, Vol 57, Dec. 1990.

Unveiling Harlot

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Whew! It’s been a crazy few weeks (months, actually), and the unveiling of this project (ok, yes, pun intended) has gone about as smoothly as we could hope. In the process, we got a first-hand look at the ancient rhetorical concept of audience when our two presentations — first at our university as part of the LiteracyStudies@OSU initiative and then at the FemRhet conference in Little Rock — sparked substantially different discussions.

At OSU, a rather energetic debate followed over the word, harlot. I’d love to map out the evolution of the conversation (perhaps we should post a synopsis of it at some point), but I’ll just mention some details here. Concern was raised over whether the name is worth the potential amount of people who may be offended and turned away, worth the amount of rethinking we hope to spark with the OED definitions of harlot, the subtitle (a persuasive look at the arts of persuasion), the url (HarlotoftheArts.org), a description of the term’s relationship to rhetorical studies, and so on. How much are we willing to risk turning people away from this space before they even put effort into figuring out the philosophy behind the name?

Several people jumped in with responses in our favor — to the point where we nearly didn’t have to answer. My favorite response came from Jim Fredal (and I hope I paraphrase well enough): If in five years Harlot is still doing the work it seeks, the meanings (denotations and connotations) currently affiliated with the word will shift. The space of Harlot has the ability not only to question but also to write the ways in which symbols (words) are understood. And with this, we were momentarily struck silent with the grandeur of the idea. If only. . . .

An overwhelming topic that arose at the FemRhet conference revolved around issues of academic publishing. It was quite a shame that Tim, our resident student of academic publishing, couldn’t attend since he hadn’t yet been a member of our team when our conference proposal was submitted. His part of the presentation would have been very valuable for this crowd. Many voiced a desire to publish in a space like Harlot for reasons of philosophy and service. The problem, however, is that many scholars cannot put aside time to produce work that doesn’t directly apply toward tenure requirements. Many of the digital productions teachers spend time, energy, and thought producing are not recognized by current standards, and yet these productions are what bring scholarly work into the digital age, allowing networks and information streams to form and flow among professional scholars, students, and areas of study.

This discussion is probably what weighs heaviest on me right now. What standards must we put into effect to give academic authors a tangible reason for submitting to Harlot? In other words, if Harlot is supposed to be a space in which academic and public audiences come together on equal footing to discuss matters of persuasion in today’s culture, to what extent do we have an obligation toward scholars to produce submission criteria that would enable them to face their tenure and promotion committees and proudly present their accepted Harlot publications? Will we lose this part of our community if we don’t somehow oblige? When will the practicing of one’s scholarly philosophy in an online space finally become an aspect of academic work that is accepted, respected, and appreciated?

As always, for those of you who attended either presentation or who are reading our thoughts-in-progress in this blog, we welcome and urge your input. Establishing criteria for submitting to Harlot should be communally agreed upon . . . as in line with the philosophy of Harlot.

Fun at Feminism(s) and Rhetoric(s)

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It’s been almost a week now since we presented our pilot at Fem/Rhet in Little Rock, and I’m still riding pretty high. The conference, first of all, is consistently delightful, fascinating, warm, and inspiring. We were confident and excited, and the presentation just felt like fun — thanks especially to a responsive and challenging crowd full of advice and enthusiasm. Thanks are also due to Kay Halasek, who chaired and collaborated on the presentation. Good times!

The best part, I think, is that right from Krista Ratcliffe’s energizing keynote, every panel we attended seemed directly related to the Harlot project — every text and conversation seemed like one that we could have, with spirit and fun, on the site. So I hope that we reached a few of our fellow presenters, because I can’t wait to see what the conversations they engage on Harlot in the future.

Going Public

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A few days have passed since Friday’s presentation.  And, as Katie expressed in her post, the experience has left me reflecting not only on the organization and design of our presentations but also on the design, theory, and practice of Harlot.  Personally, Friday’s discussion with the audience was exactly what I needed.  In many respects, since I first jumped on board, with a genuine personal and intellectual interest and devotion to the project, I have not really stepped outside of it or forced myself to see the project from multiple views.  Some of the issues raised during the question/answer session on Friday forced me to begin that process–an important one, and a timely (kairotic, perhaps) one.

It’s a good time to reflect on what we’ve done so far–what we’ve put into action–and how well it fits with our goals and philosophy.  One of the greatest challenges we face (and we were reminded of this on Friday) is gaining interest from and facilitating engagement with the public…and this is central to Harlot.  How will we capture the attention of the public?  How will we gain their interest and respect?  What will make them want to participate and to continue to participate in Harlot?

Though this week we need to focus our attention on revising our presentations for the Fem(s) Rhet(s) conference on Friday, I think when we return, we need to spend more time working with the public on Harlot.  We need to talk to more non-academics as we move forward with this project.  We need to “go public.”