Jill Walker's Upcoming Visit — December 3rd

Congratulations to Dr. Jill Walker, who defended her dissertation this week in Bergen, Norway. Dr. Walker is celebrating the successful defense of her dissertation with a visit to Stockton. She'll be giving a presentation on blogs as a literary genre next Wednesday, December 3rd, at Noon in the Townsend Resedential Life Center Multipurpose Room. Anyone interested is welcome to attend. Although I can't guarantee she'll look as stunningly beautiful as she did last evening at the party after her defense,

having read her superb dissertation and several of her articles, and having followed her weblog for the past couple of years, I can assure all attendees that it's sure to be a fascinating talk, delivered in a wonderful Australian accent.

Jill is an avid weblogger, and weblogs are currently both the topic of and a
primary method in her teaching and research. She is recognised as a leading
authority on weblogs, and has lectured extensively on weblogging and
networked communications internationally. Her paper “Blogging Thoughts“,
co-authored with Torill Mortensen, was one of the first academic papers on
weblogs, and she has written the definition of “Weblog” for the forthcoming Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory.

In addition to weblogs, Jill's main research interest is electronic
literature. Her first conference paper on the topic won the Ted Nelson
Newcomer Award at ACM's Hypertext '99, and since then she has presented at
numerous conferences and published in journals both in Norway and
internationally. Her book chapter “How I was Played by Online Caroline” is
forthcoming in First Person: New Media as Story, Performance and Game from
MIT Press later this year. She co-edits the Hypertext Criticism theme of the
Journal of Digital Information with Susana Tosca, and is a frequent
contributor to Norwegian public debate on electronic art and literature. Her main claim to fame may be that her weblog is the top hit for “Jill” on
Google.