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Reader Synopsis:

Derek Mueller advocates for a methodology to visualize and understand disciplinarity through what he calls network sense. Mueller’s methodology combines distant reading with thin description in a way that allows academics to avoid the obsessive depth of thick description. Distant reading and thin description complement networks of association in a way that affords inquiry and discovery for newcomers and seasoned scholars alike. Using word clouds, citation frequency graphs, and maps of scholarly activity as visual models, he presents ways we can visualize the field of rhetoric and composition/writing studies and its so-called turns, or widespread attention events, such as the global turn, visual turn, multimodal turn, and so on. This book is published by the WAC Clearinghouse/Colorado State University Open Press #writing book series and co-presented by the Digital Publishing Institute at WVU Libraries.

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Table of Contents

Introduction: The Distant and Thin of Disciplinarity
Chapter 1: Methods for Visualizing Disciplinary Patterns
Disciplinary Catalysts: Restructuring and Accumulation
Data-mining and Visualization Methods for Rhetoric and Composition/Writing Studies
Distant Reading and Thin Description: Orienting Methods
Network Sense: Continuations Toward Self-Understanding of a Discipline
Chapter 2: Patterned Images of a Discipline: Database, Scale Pattern
Chapter 3: Turn Spotting: The Discipline as a Confluence of Words
Word Watchers
Non-turns: Students and Writing
Gradual Turns: Assessment
Micro-turns: Multimodal
Turns Away: Style, Language, Rhetoric
Turn-Making in Rhetoric and Composition/Writing Studies
Glossaries
Deep Definition Inquiries
Semantic Worknets    
Chapter 4: Graphs: The Thin, Long Tail of CCC Citation Frequency
Precedents for Graphing and Quantification: Accounting for Scholarly Activity
Bibliometric Methods and Techniques
Too Dappled a Discipline? Graphing the Long Tail of Author Citation
Following the Long Tail’s Thinness: The Names Invoked Just Once
The Heads and Tails of Disciplinary Density
Chapter 5: Emplaced Disciplinary Networks: Toward an Atlas of Rhetoric and Composition/Writing Studies
Where is the Making of Geographic Knowledge in Composition?
Compiling an Atlas of Rhetoric and Composition
The Making of Maps in Rhetoric and Composition/Writing Studies
Consortia: A Locative-aggregative Projection
Career Activity: A Traversive Projection
The Contingency of Map Data
Chapter 6: Network Sense: Patterned Connections Across a Maturing Discipline
Thickening Agents for a More Durable Dappled Discipline