In the last five years that I have dedicated to the study of English literature, first at the undergraduate level and now in a graduate program, I have engaged with the work of many scholars published in print journals and books. As I have become acquainted with the "big ideas" in my fields of interest, so too have I become familiar with the "big names" in those areas. Those names follow me wherever I go: in class, it's "How does that idea fit with Gallagher's argument? Would Armstrong agree or disagree?" and on paper it's, "Borrowing from Gilbert and Gubar.... French feminists such as Irigaray contend that...." These thinkers inform, of course, the way in which I formulate and defend my own readings. And professional success in the academy requires familiarity with the work of many prominent scholars and expertise on several of these figures.
The emphasis placed on knowing scholars' work, though, stands in contrast to the disinclination to knowing the people who authored the work. Nearly all of the articles I have read in scholarly print journals provide twenty to thirty pages of text, prefaced by a two- or three-line author "bio" that states name, rank, and affiliation and sometimes mentions a recent publication or work in progress. The placement of these bios may differ among journals: some locate them at the beginning of an article, others at the end, and sometimes the bios of all the authors featured in that edition are listed together at the end of the journal. Regardless of these various locations of the bios, use of the name-rank-affiliation formula itself is enforced almost uniformly among scholarly print journals.
Because of the limitations imposed on authorial self-representation in print publications, I would argue that print media disembody the author. They relegate the authorial presence to the margins (the bottom of the article, the jacket of a book). In turn, that presence is reduced to a spartan formula that, rather than breathes life into the author by investing her with traits that distinguish an individual, instead locates the author in an academic monolith. The author is a name in a department at a university.
As scholars achieve prominence in the world of print publications, fissures in the "bio" formula may begin to appear. An academic's third or fourth book may include a photograph of the author on the book jacket and list the author's other publications. Some publishers may even include non-professional details, such as where the author lives. These expansions of the author bio only appear, however, once a scholar has established himself with several successful publications.
In the 1980s, some scholars began to widen these fissures by arguing for the incorporation of the personal in the professional. Commonly associated with but not limited to feminist and multiculturalist scholars, this movement emphasizes the role that personal narrative can and should play in academic discourse. The movement values authorial identity and experience and urges its inclusion in scholarly discussion and writing. Among its notable proponents are Jane Tompkins and bell hooks.
In light of these types of fissures that have occurred in the formulaic representation of scholarly authors, electronic journals published on the Web are significant in the new and different kinds of opportunities they furnish for authors to represent themselves. Though still in their relative infancy, the journals contain articles that usually include a link to the author's electronic mail account, rendering the author accessible to the reader directly and immediately in a way that print articles cannot. More important to my argument, most electronic journal articles feature a link to the author's home page or to some other Web site that the author has designed as a gesture of self-representation. Few similarities among these home pages appear that would indicate any formula for self-representation to which authors are subscribing, as in the traditional author-rank-affiliation triad adhered to in print journals. Rather, these sites reflect the range of personal interests and life experiences among people who write on the Web.
Electronic Web journals offer a new arena in which to relate academic writing and personal representation, thus marking an important development in dismantling the professional - personal dichotomy that has dominated academic discourse. Unlike print journals that traditionally disembody the author, Web journals, by furnishing authors the occasion to link personal pages to their texts, embody authors.