Writing about cool: Teaching hypertext as juxtaposition

This article takes as its departure point the near simultaneous work on notions of cool , technology, and composition in 1963, to begin discussion on how the juxtaposition of these moments can lead to an electronic rhetoric. Based on classroom work done at the University of Florida in two courses entitled "Writing About Cool," the article presents juxtaposition as a method for writing electronically. Because this particular juxtaposition revolves around the word cool, the rhetoric proposed here is called a rhetoric of cool . The article frames a rhetoric of cool by describing how temporal events in the respective fields of writing, technology, and cultural studies seen in juxtaposition provide a model for electronic research. The article considers the influential 1963 Conference on College Composition and Communication (4Cs), writings by Albert Kitzhaber, Marshall McLuhan, Douglas Engelbart, and Amiri Baraka, and demonstrates how these works inform writing instruction in a contemporary networked writing classroom. Finally, the article examines how students working with hypertext, drawing from these works and juxtapositions, are able to not only write about cool, but are able to write cool as well.