Clay Spinuzzi
Syracuse Symposium continues its yearlong theme of “Networks” with a visit by an expert on rhetoric, technology and research.
Clay Spinuzzi, an associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin, will deliver a lecture titled “Three Networks Walk into a Bar … ” on Wednesday, Feb. 10, at 2:15 p.m. in The Kilian Room (500) of the Hall of Languages. The following day from 9 a.m. to noon, he will lead a mini-seminar on “Modeling Qualitative Data” in room 304 of the Tolley Humanities Building.
Both events are free and open to the public; however, registration is required for the mini-seminar. Please R.S.V.P. to jpwill03@syr.edu by Thursday, Feb. 4.
For more information, contact the Syracuse University Humanities Center, based in the College of Arts and Sciences (A&S), at 315-443-7192 or visit syarcusehumanities.org.
Spinuzzi’s residency is co-sponsored by the Writing Program, the Writing Program’s Student Organization and Composition & Cultural Rhetoric Graduate Circle, and the Department of English, all in A&S; Syracuse University Libraries; and the Digital Humanities Work Group of the Central New York Humanities Corridor.
“Professor Spinuzzi draws on the humanities to reframe how we think about labor relations, workplace technology, and widespread economic changes,” says Vivian May, director of the Humanities Center and associate professor of women’s and gender studies. “Moving between theory and practice, he examines how people collaborate with one another and share information within a contemporary workplace environment.”
Affiliated with both the College of Liberal Arts (where he teaches English) and the School of Information, Spinuzzi is interested in writing and rhetoric, workplace studies, research methods and methodologies, and activity theory.
He is the author of four critically acclaimed books: “All Edge: Inside the New Workplace Networks” (The University of Chicago Press, 2015); “Topsight: A Guide to Studying, Diagnosing, and Fixing Information Flow in Organizations” (CreateSpace, 2013); “Network: Theorizing Knowledge Work in Telecommunications” (Cambridge University Press, 2008); and “Tracing Genres Through Organizations: A Sociocultural Approach to Information Design” (The MIT Press, 2003).
His books and articles have received awards from the Conference on College Composition and Communication, the National Council of Teachers of English, and the Association of Teachers of Technical Writing.
“Work is changing. Speed and flexibility are more in demand than ever before, thanks to an accelerating knowledge economy and sophisticated communication networks,” Spinuzzi writes. “These changes have forced a mass rethinking of the way we coordinate, collaborate, and communicate. Instead of projects coming to established teams, teams are increasingly converging around projects. … When the work is done, they disband their members, and take their skills to the next project.”
