Welcome to Issue 13.2 of Xchanges!
Before I introduce the impressive undergraduate scholarship collected in the first issue I’ve had the pleasure of working on as Managing Editor, I wanted to say a few words about our newly expanded editorial team and what they’ve been contributing to the journal. A year ago, Editor-in-Chief Julianne Newmark began mentoring us into our new roles and encouraging us to bring our own insights and expertise to determining the future direction of the journal. I appreciated the patience and dedication of Julie, the Xchanges review board, and all our contributors as I learned the ropes of my new position and worked to reorganize the reviewing and editing process.
Technical Editors Eric Mason and Chanakya Das meanwhile worked tirelessly to format this issue, de-bug our archives, and update our site and logo. It’s possible that if you are admiring our new design right now, it’s because you’ve come across a link to us in one of the posts by Social Media Editors Christopher Stuart and Kathie Gossett. We’re lucky to have these two digitally savvy editorial teams to help keep Xchanges updated and in circulation.
If you’re new to Xchanges, you couldn’t have picked a better time to find us, as our current issue features the debut of our "Profiles in Digital Scholarship and Publishing" series. In it, Associate Managing Editor Elizabeth Barnett interviews Justin Hodgson, Assistant Professor of Rhetoric, Writing, and Digital Media Studies at Indiana University and founder and general editor of TheJUMP+, The Journal of Undergraduate Multimedia Projects. Stay tuned for future issues of Xchanges for forthcoming interviews with Doug Eyman and Cheryl Ball, as this series stands to make an important scholarly contribution to conversations in writing studies around open-access publication and digital scholarship—due as much to the caliber of the scholars profiled as to Elizabeth’s deeply researched and deftly conducted interviewing.
The scholarship collected in this issue too stands to make an important contribution not only to what we know as a field but to how we conceptualize and utilize undergraduate scholarship within the field. In “The Gaming Trifecta,” Kathryn Asay of Weber State University develops a schema for conceptualizing and further researching the lack of playable female protagonists in video games. In “Fusa Tsumagari,” York College of Pennsylvania’s Skyler Drew explores the intersectionality in one Japanese American woman’s conversational rhetorical style, as evidenced in letters she sent during her time in two internment camps. And in “Students’ Perceptions of Written Instructor Feedback,” Eric Wisz of University of Central Florida demonstrates that instructor feedback needs to be as thoughtful and nuanced as the students’ perceptions captured in this project.
From game studies to cultural and feminist rhetorics to composition pedagogy, this issue’s articles evidence that our field’s intellectual richness and breadth is manifesting in our undergraduate programs. We therefore present to our readers the impressive undergraduate scholarship collected in this issue of Xchanges as a valuable intellectual contribution in its own right and as a powerful teaching and learning resource in undergraduate programs in writing studies and related disciplines.
~ Brian Hendrickson, Managing Editor
Xchanges Issue 13.2Articles
Interview
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