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Computer Science Department Colloquium To Clearly Show Where No One Has Gone Before: Craft & Story & Science in Writing Speaker: Kristina Quynn, Director, CSU Writes, Faculty in English & Graduate School When: 11:00AM ~ 11:50AM, October 29, 2018 Where: CSB130 Abstract: High-quality and influential scientific articles (i.e., cited) and proposals (i.e., funded) contain many of the same features as high-quality and influential science fiction: specific and engaging characters, unexpected happenings, new understandings, and novel beginnings. To clearly show where no one has gone before is a story of scientific adventure. The imperative for STEM researchers to “tell the story” of their work has been repeated so often, however, that it has become somewhat of a cliché, and yet, telling the story of science in writing remains an inescapable imperative for those researchers who wish to contribute both meaningfully to their field and meaningfully to the world beyond their field of study. Depending on how you craft it, your “story” can communicate your research meaningfully to other experts in the field, to educated and interested readers not in your field, to the nebulously-imagined “general public” (which is never so general), or even to your doting grandmother. This talk addresses current models and approaches to using story craft in science writing, drawing on work by Joshua Schimel, Stephen Heard, Steven Pinker, Alan Alda, Helen Sword, and Cal Newport. It also includes specific writing strategies and literary techniques that attendees can use to show (and tell) the story of their own research. Bio: Dr. Kristina Quynn is the founding Director of CSU Writes and a faculty member of the English Department and Graduate School at Colorado State University. Through CSU Writes, she works with faculty, postdoc, and graduate student writers from across all colleges and departments at CSU. Trained as a literary scholar, her research interests include transnational (post)modernisms, self-reflexivity in women’s writing, and emerging areas of performative literary criticism. She is co-editor of Reading and Writing Experimental Texts—an essay collection of innovative critical practices (Palgrave 2017). Her articles on experimental women’s writing can be found in The Journal of Midwest Modern Language Association, Women in Modern Irish Culture and Society, and MLA Teaching Approaches. |