By Grace Tesoro, Staff Writer
Lecturer Cheryl Ball visited campus on Nov. 2 to discuss how digital media has helped the evolution of publishing and to share her experience in both fields.
In the lecture, titled “Publishing in the Liberal Arts,” Ball discussed the connection between a liberal arts education and publishing studies.
“The value of a liberal arts education applied to the study of digital publishing is that it puts people in a position to do an amazing amount of good in our studies,” Ball stated.
Ball highlighted that digital publishing as a liberal art can teach the importance of building communities through multimedia platforms and can also give insight to the necessity of teaching writing in “use-contexts,” such as when to make certain texts digital as opposed to print.
Ball earned an master’s degree in poetry from Virginia Commonwealth University, where she was the school’s first person to submit an electronic interactive thesis.
Ball displayed the table of contents from the aforementioned thesis, which appeared to be an intricate web-like design. She described how her poetry utilized hypertext, which allows the reader to choose their own path.
“This mapped out all different poems and how they connected with each other,” Ball said.
Ball also shared some of her accomplishments during her career. She included how she was a Fulbright Scholar, editor of an online journal and how in 2015 she received a donation of $1 million to build a digital publishing platform.
“I list these accomplishments not to brag, but to give students a sense of what is out there,” Ball said. “But you can make a lot of change in a short amount of time.”
Ball also detailed some excerpts of her life and how she referred to herself as “someone who gets things done.” She shared an anecdote from when she was 12 at a summer camp and was assigned to mixing Kool-Aid. Finally, when she had asked too many questions, her counselor looked her in the eyes and said, “Cheryl, take some initiative.”
Ball said that this was a pivotal moment for her; it started a transformation for her to branch away from the person who was “good at getting things done” to someone who took initiative.
Ball had one final piece of advice for the audience: “Be flexible. Take initiative. Get hands-on experience. The field of publishing is constantly changing in the digital world. Your vision will come if you cultivate it.”