VAGABONDS AND THE VIRTUAL: IDENTITY, ECONOMICS AND ETHICS IN THE GENRE OF DIGITAL TRAVEL WRITING

While the genre of travel writing has been popular with authors and audiences over centuries, developments in new media, social media and public use genres have caused an adaptation of the genre in the digital space. This genre, as it exists, claims two antecedents: first, the traditional and literary version of the genre and second, the blogs that emerged and were popularized in the late twentieth century. In exploring the genre of digital travel writing, hundreds of internet publications were read, reviewed and cataloged. Of these, many began to demonstrate the criteria which would be considered prototypical for the genre. Any publication in the genre demonstrates, in various ways and to varying degrees, the following characteristics: frequent updates, multiple platform-use and multimedia inclusions, discursive constructions of identity, engagement with economies, and entanglements with the ethical concerns proper to both the genre and its situated ideology. In addition to stabilizing this vast archive of open source media as a perceptible genre, this dissertation hints at ways that the literate practices of these authors speaks to a nuanced appreciation of literacy and one that reverses the classical binary privileging reading over writing. Further, some suggestions are made for using open source and new media genres productively in writing classrooms.

Grantor dc:publisher

Temple University. Libraries

Year dc:date.issued

2020

Author dc:creator

• Asimos, George

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Goldblatt, Eli

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Newman, Steve, 1970-
• Omizo, Ryan
• Durst, Russel K., 1954-

• Rhetoric
• Composition
• Expressivism
• Genre
• Rhetorical
• Travel
• Travel writing

Statement dc:rights

• IN COPYRIGHT- This Rights Statement can be used for an Item that is in copyright. Using this statement implies that the organization making this Item available has determined that the Item is in copyright and either is the rights-holder, has obtained permission from the rights-holder(s) to make their Work(s) available, or makes the Item available under an exception or limitation to copyright (including Fair Use) that entitles it to make the Item available.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12613/318

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:scholarshare.temple.edu:20.500.12613/318