FLORIDA proposes Florida as a nexus of various contested moments, ideas, concepts, and relations. In the age of networks, it is not enough to only think of computerized, economic, or labor intensive systems as networks. As Bruno Latour writes, networks are represented in ways other than graphic visualizations or visualizations of spokes and connections. Spaces, too, are networks, and specific spaces, such as Florida, are networks in need of exploring and understanding so that we better understand how politics, ideology, economics, race, and other moments come into being and affect each other within the representations we circulate. Editor Jeff Rice and contributors argue that we need to rethink taxonomies of spaces, moving from static entities to shifting networks of meaning. Contributors demonstrate how Florida is a space for composing and inventing fresh responses that traditional images and representations of Florida do not provoke. They explore the intersection of various Florida moments to trace the ways spaces can be written, and the compositional space of Florida, broadened. Contributors include James P. Beasley, Cassandra Branham, Lillie Anne Brown, Bradley Dilger, Sidney I. Dobrin, David M. Grant, Charlie Hailey, Megan McIntyre, Lauren Mitchell, Sean Morey, Steve Newman, Jeff Rice, Craig Saper, Todd Taylor, Adam Trowbridge, Gregory L. Ulmer, and Jessica Westbrook. JEFF RICE is the Martha B. Reynolds Professor of Writing, Rhetoric, and Digital Studies at the University of Kentucky. He is the author of The Rhetoric of Cool: Composition Studies and New Media and Digital Detroit: Rhetoric and Space in the Age of the Network. His work has appeared in numerous journals and edited collections. He specializes in new media, rhetorics of space, pedagogy, rhetoric, and writing studies.
