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Alan Rauch, Ph.D. is Associate Professor of Literature, Communication, and Culture at Georgia Institute of Technology. In addition to his work in the cultural studies of science in the nineteenth century, he writes on the role of irony... in song lyrics among other things... and on the role of the reader in children’s literature.

The question posed by the title of his talk seems an easy one to answer but the fact is that writers respond to “ambient” knowledge both wittingly and unwittingly. What’s even more important is that most of us can’t actually identify the sources for what we know. Knowledge permeates culture in myriad

ways and is shaped by social, scientific, and cultural forces that aren’t always apparent. The result is that cultural ideology is rehearsed and repeated in ways that we ourselves are not fully aware of. Among the “vectors” for transmission of cultural ideology are the oft-neglected “knowledge texts” that surround us. Our lives are cluttered by encyclopedias, dictionaries, children’s books, reference guides, and instructional literature that we tend to read uncritically, notwithstanding their lasting influence. By looking at writers including Charlotte Brontë, Jane Austen, Rudyard Kipling, and J. K. Rowling, Dr. Rauch will explore how the work of knowledge and the work of writing intersect.

Rauch’s book Useful Knowledge: The Victorians, Morality, and the March of Intellect (2001), published by Duke University Press (and a 2001 GAYA nominee), looks at the impact of science on culture prior to Darwin. Rauch also edited Jane Loudon’s 1827 novel The Mummy! A Tale of the Twenty-Second Century (Michigan, 1994) and, with George Levine, One Culture: Essays in Science and Literature (Wisconsin, 1987).

Atlanta native Teri Holbrook is a former award-winning newspaper reporter, short story writer, and the author of the Gale Grayson and Katie Pru mystery series.

In recent years, her professional interests have included e-literature, a computer-based form of writing that incorporates print, images and sound. Neither traditional literature nor traditional film, e-literature uses hypermedia to generate a new form of writing that gives the reader a more active role in the narrative process.

At our February meeting, Holbrook will discuss her impressions of how technology is changing the writing experience, including her own experiments in hypertext

and her development from a print-only (and not particularly computer-savvy) writer to one eager to embrace new writing technologies. She will also give a preview of topics to be discussed at Kennesaw State University’s upcoming e-publishing conference, March 14-15, 2002. (Details on our Opportunities page.)

Holbrook’s print novels have been published in six languages. Together, her first two books, A Far and Deadly Cry and The Grass Widow (Bantam Books), were shortlisted for the Edgar, Agatha, Anthony, Macavity, and the Georgia Author of the Year Awards. Sad Water was released in 1999, and The Mother Tongue came out in 2001, both by Bantam. A graduate of the College of William and Mary with a degree in anthropology and a minor in linguistics, Holbrook is pursuing an MA in Professional Writing at Kennesaw State University and currently teaches workshops and classes in creative writing.