Spencer Abstract

Here is the abstract I sent as part of my Spencer foundation fellowship application.

In this study, I examine the literacy and writing practices of college students and young professionals who author instructional materials for online poker. Working from the perspective of writing studies, I investigate the ways in which their work acquires cultural and economic value, concentrating specifically on how internet technologies reconfigure relationships among authors, publishers, and readers. I use connective ethnography and grounded theory analysis to theorize how this reconfiguration, and the accompanying shift in authorship and labor distribution embedded in it, advances our knowledge of the writing and learning college students and young professionals do in the networked, information society. This study contributes to education by documenting and theorizing a non-institutionalized site of online teaching and learning, but one in which participants have an opportunity to deploy complex literacies and numeracies.