Current Book in Progress: From Ecology to Generosity
From Ecology to Generosity: Advocating Traditional Ecological Knowledge to Grapple with Digital, Classroom, and Community Crises joins the scholarly conversation at the moment when three spaces scholars have discussed using ecological and other natural metaphors are mired in decades-long worsening crises: digital spaces, as a result of rapidly increasing disinformation, hate, and toxic masculinity; classroom spaces, as a result of rapidly declining student mental health, quite possibly in connection to the digital spaces we are asking students to use; and local communities, as a result of rapidly increasing wealth disparities, food insecurity, and bigotry. Each of these spaces are, like their natural counterparts, facing human-caused existential challenges that I believe we in rhetoric and composition and communications-related fields have a moral and ethical responsibility to address through the three pillars of academic work: scholarship, teaching, and service.
In order to grapple with these crises, I frame my discussion with the principles of Indigenous traditional ecological knowledge, which considers the natural world and non-human entities to be co-equal with humans and teachers. As Robin Wall Kimmerer (2013) explains, humans are the youngest of all creatures; we have a responsibility to listen and the most to learn. Traditional ecological knowledge is closely aligned with the principles of environmental justice, which focuses attention on systems of power and reveals systemic inequities, including in terms of how people have approached, harmed, understood, lived in, and been excluded from ecologies.
Discussions of ecologies and nature inevitably lead to discussions about sustainability, a metaphor that some scholars in our fields have also employed. Those discussions have been framed by western conceptions of sustainability, which more often than not considers environments to be subservient spaces that can be exploited for human use. Traditional ecological knowledge considers sustainability a moral and ethical endeavor, grounded in restraint and care, which results in long-term health. Western approaches to the environment have contributed significantly to the scourge of climate change and have yet to suggest effective means of approaching healthy spaces. Just as the environment is faltering under western conceptions of ecology and sustainability, so too are our valued online, classroom, and community spaces faltering as we use only western scientific-informed metaphors to approach them.
Traditional ecological knowledge asks us to prioritize generosity in the form of gratitude, reciprocity, care, healing, and a moral imperative to ensure the health of humans and non-humans. A traditional ecological knowledge framework requires education and reflection, for, as Wahinkpe Topa (Four Arrows) and Darcia Narvaez (2022) acknowledge, the “shift from the dominating worldview . . . takes some decolonizing of the mind. Our minds have been suckled on the milk of civilization’s domination and coercion of life, with industrialization and capitalism increasing disconnection and alienation from earth consciousness” (9). In the case of the ecology and sustainability metaphors, the first step in that educational and reflective process is to reveal, understand, and accept the disturbing history and damaging impact of non-Indigenous, western colonial conceptions of ecology and sustainability on natural resources and people—especially those who have been marginalized, often violently. A traditional ecological knowledge framework necessitates that, in order to address the crises in the spaces we value, we must first confront and interrogate the western conceptions of ecology and sustainability that have informed the ecology and sustainability metaphors in rhetoric and composition and other communications-related fields.
You are welcome to download the latest version of my CV (.pdf).
book projects
Wolff, W.I. (in progress). From Ecology to Generosity: Advocating Traditional Ecological Knowledge to Grapple with Digital, Classroom, and Community Crises. Invited for consideration by the Pittsburgh University Press Series in Composition, Literacy, and Culture.
Wolff, W.I., Ed. (2017). Bruce Springsteen and Popular Music: Rhetoric, Social Consciousness, and Contemporary Culture. New York, NY: Routledge.
Meloni, J, & Morrison, M. (2010). Sams teach yourself HTML and CSS in 24 hours. W. Wolff (Tech Ed.). Indianapolis, IN: Sams.
recent articles
Buchanan, E., Clark-Parsons, R., Vie, S., & Wolff, W.I. (2023). A Conversation on Ethical Research Practices for Hashtag Activism. In Hashtag Activism Interrogated and Embodied: Case Studies on Social Justice Movements edited by Melissa Ames and Kristi McDuffie.
Wolff. W.I. (2017). Twitter Archives: A Discussion of Systems, Methods, Visualizations, and Ethics. Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy.
Wolff, W.I. (2015). Springsteen Fans, #bruceleeds, and the Tweeting of Locality. Transformative Works and Cultures. 19. http://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article/view/589/478
Wolff, W.I. (2015). Baby, We Were Born to Tweet: Springsteen Fans, the Writing Practices of In Situ Tweeting, and the Research Possibilities for Twitter. Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy. 19(3). http://kairos.technorhetoric.net/19.3/topoi/wolff/index.html
Wolff, W.I. (2014). Springsteen, Tradition, and the Purpose of the Artist. BOSS: The Bi-annual Online Journal of Springsteen Studies. 1(1). pp. 36 – 73.
Wolff, W.I. (2013). Interactivity and the invisible: What counts as writing in the age of Web 2.0. Computers & Composition. 30. pp. 211 – 225. (pdf download from Acadamia.edu)
Courtney, J, Tweedie, S., and Wolff, W.I. (2010). What exactly is this major?: Creating a Writing department’s identity through an introductory course. Advance(d) Composition: Undergraduate Majors and the Future of the Discipline. Eds. Tom Moriarty and Greg Giberson.
Wolff, W.I. (2009). Systems of classification and the cognitive properties of grant proposal formal documents. Technical Communication Quarterly. 18(4). pp. 303 – 326. Nominated for the 2010 NCTE Best Article Reporting Qualitative or Quantitative Research in Technical or Scientific Communication
Wolff, W.I., Fitzpatrick, K., and Youssef, R. (2009). Rethinking usability for Web 2.0 and beyond, Currents in Electronic Literacy.
Wolff, W.I. (2008). “‘A chimera of sorts’: Rethinking educational technology grant programs, courseware innovation, and the language of educational change.” Computers & Education, 51, pp. 1184 – 1197.
recent conference presentations
Wolff, B. (submitted). Advocating Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Environmental Justice Sustainability Practices. Computers and Writing Conference. UNC Charlotte, June 4-6, 2026.
Wolff, B. (2024). Prioritizing College Student Mental Health. Computers and Writing Conference. Texas
Christian University, June 21-23, 2024. Presented online.
Wolff, B. (2022, accepted but COVID). “This Land is Your Land,” The River Tour, and Springsteen’s Emerging Calls for Engaged Citizenship. Bruce Springsteen’s The River: An International Symposium. Monmouth University, NJ.
Wolff, B. (2020, accepted but COVID). The Digital Researcher as Activist: Thoughts on Objective Observation. Computers and Writing Conference. East Carolina University, May 2020.
Wolff, B. (2019). Toward an Anti-Hate Digital Ethics. Computers and Writing Conference. Michigan State University, June 20 -22, 2019.
Wolff, B. (2019). Ethics, Activism, and Scholarly Practice in the Age of Disinformation. Digital Rhetoric/Digital Media in the Post-Truth. University of Alabama, March 1-2, 2019.
Wolff, B. (2018). Archives, Bots, Fake Accounts, and the Emerging Ethical Complexities of Social Media Research. Computers and Writing Conference. George Mason University, VA.
Wolff, B. (2017). On the Ethics, Methods, and Publication of Publicly Private #notokay Election Tweets. Computers and Writing Conference. Findlay, OH.
Wolff, B. (2016, May). On the Decisions, Methods, and Visualizations
of Social Media Archives. Computers and Writing Conference. Rochester, NY.
Wolff, B. (2015, May). “In the Quick of the Night”: Fanzines, Analog Technologies, and the Processes of Writing from the Margins. Computers and Writing Conference. Stout, WI.
Wolff, B. (2014, June). Writing on the Edge of the World: Springsteen Fans and the Writing Practices of In Situ Concert Tweeting. Computers and Writing Conference. Pullman, WA.
Wolff, B. (2013, November). Born in the E.U., I was Born in the E.U.!: Bruce Springsteen, European Fan Tweets, and the Importance of Locality. European Fandom and Fan Studies Conference. University of Amsterdam.
Wolff, B. (2013, May). Baby, We were Born to Tweet: #Springsteen, Concert Tweets, and an Emergent Transmediated Composing Community. Computers and Writing Conference. Frostburg, MD.
Wolff, B. (2012, September). “OMG I GOT AMAZING SEATS!!!! FREAKING OUT!!!!!!!! Bruce Springsteen, here we come!!!!”: #Springsteen, Concert Tweets, and the Evolution of Fandom Glory Days: A Bruce Springsteen Symposium. Monmouth, NJ.
Wolff, B. (2012, September). In Defense of Influence: Springsteen’s 2012 SXSW Keynote and the Literary Tradition of Poetic Creativity. Glory Days: A Bruce Springsteen Symposium. Monmouth, NJ.