Volume 8, numéro 2, 2025 Multimodal Scholarship

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Introduction to the multimodal scholarship issue of KULA: Knowledge Creation, Dissemination, and Preservation Studies. The issue brings together two short films, a research comic, an audio essay, a video essay, and an exhibition article. The six works in the issue come from a variety of disciplines and fields of research including visual anthropology, science and technology studies, socio-gerontechnology, literary studies, library science, audiovisual anthropology, and games studies. Together, they exemplify the exciting range of possibilities for scholarship in different mediums and modalities.

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Digital health and social care innovations for older people embody specific ideas about “good ageing.” But what does good ageing mean to older adults themselves? And how do their ideas and practices relate to the ideas of good ageing that have informed the design of those digital tools that they are invited to engage with? Our research comic explores these questions by drawing on eight months of ethnographic fieldwork in three innovation initiatives that trial and implement health and social care innovations for older people in Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom.

Presenting our research in the format of a research comic is an explicit attempt at sharing everyday experiences of ageing and technology with a broader audience including researchers but also older adults, city and community councils, social workers, and technology developers with whom we collaborated in the field. The drawings, fieldwork quotes, and accompanying reflections illustrate the diverse and sometimes conflicting forms of good ageing that shape users’ engagement with proposed technologies. As such, the research comic invites the reader to question dominant perceptions of technologies as simple tools that facilitate good ageing. It highlights the importance and value of geographical, cultural, and affective closeness to the everyday lives of those for and with whom these technologies are designed. Such closeness, we argue, is a first step in being able to notice conflicts between different forms of good ageing and to adjust digital tools and services in such a way that they facilitate forms of good ageing that older adults themselves find relevant.

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Le innovazioni digitali per la salute e l’assistenza sociale rivolte agli anziani incarnano ideespecifiche di “buon invecchiamento.” Ma, secondo gli anziani stessi, cosa significa invecchiarebene? E come si relazionano le loro idee e le loro abitudini con quelle di buon invecchiamentoche hanno ispirato l’architettura degli strumenti digitali con cui sono invitati a interagire? Ilnostro fumetto di ricerca esplora queste domande, basandosi su otto mesi di ricerca etnograficaapplicata a tre iniziative di innovazione che sperimentano e implementano soluzioni per la salutee l’assistenza sociale per gli anziani in Italia, Spagna e Regno Unito.

Presentare la nostra ricerca in formato di fumetto rappresenta un tentativo esplicito dicondividere le esperienze quotidiane dell’invecchiamento e della tecnologia con un pubblico piùampio, composto da ricercatori, ma anche da anziani, consigli comunali e comunitari, assistentisociali e gli sviluppatori delle tecnologie con cui abbiamo collaborato sul campo. I disegni, lecitazioni raccolte sul campo, e le riflessioni che li accompagnano illustrano le diverse, e talvoltacontrastanti, forme di buon invecchiamento che influenzano le interazioni degli utenti con letecnologie proposte. In questo modo, questo fumetto di ricerca invita il lettore a mettere indiscussione la percezione dominante delle tecnologie come strumenti semplici che facilitano ilbuon invecchiamento. Il fumetto evidenzia l’importanza e il valore della vicinanza geografica,culturale e affettiva alle vite quotidiane di coloro per i quali e con i quali queste tecnologie sonoprogettate. Sosteniamo che questa vicinanza rappresenti un primo passo per essere in grado dinotare conflitti tra le diverse forme di buon invecchiamento, e per adeguare strumenti e servizidigitali in modo che facilitino forme di buon invecchiamento che siano ritenute rilevanti daglianziani stessi.

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En el campo de la atención social y sanitaria a las personas mayores, las innovaciones digitalesincorporan ideas específicas sobre el “buen envejecimiento.” Pero, ¿qué significa “envejecer bien”para las personas mayores? ¿Y cómo se relacionan sus ideas y prácticas con las ideas de “buenenvejecimiento” que inspiran las herramientas digitales con las que interactúan? Este cómic deinvestigación explora estas cuestiones a partir del estudio, durante 8 meses, de tres proyectosde innovación social y sanitaria dirigidos a personas mayores en Italia, España y Reino Unido.

Presentar nuestra investigación en forma de cómic de investigación es un intento explícito decompartir las experiencias cotidianas del envejecimiento y la tecnología con un público más amplio,que incluya a investigadores, pero también personas mayores, ayuntamientos y comunidades,trabajadores sociales y desarrolladores tecnológicos con los que colaboramos. Las imágenesasí como los extractos del trabajo de campo y las reflexiones que las acompañan, ilustran lasdiversas, y a veces contradictorias, formas de envejecer bien que configuran los usos que hacenlos usuarios de las tecnologías propuestas. Como tal, el cómic de investigación invita al lector acuestionar la percepción dominante de las tecnologías como simples herramientas que facilitanun buen envejecimiento. Destaca la importancia y el valor que tiene la proximidad geográfica,cultural y afectiva a la vida cotidiana de las personas mayores en el diseño de las tecnologías.Dicha cercanía, argumentamos, es un primer paso para poder advertir conflictos entre diferentesformas de buen envejecimiento y ajustar las herramientas y servicios digitales de tal maneraque faciliten otras maneras de envejecer bien que las personas mayores consideren relevantes.

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Created by a team of literary scholars, students, and a librarian, Orlando: A Podcast on Womenʼs Writing comprises twelve informal interviews that synthesize and share scholarly work on womenʼs writing from medieval times to the present, with capacious definitions of “women” and “writing.” The podcast is closely connected to Orlando: Womenʼs Writing in the British Isles, from the Beginnings to the Present (Cambridge UP, 2006–), a textbase of original scholarship on womenʼs writing encoded with a bespoke XML tagset. Examining the interplay between the podcast and textbase within our broader scholarly landscape, this audio essay focuses on issues inherent in translating knowledge between written and oral forms in the podcast lifecycle, from the process of creating a lively and accessible scholarly interview to the difficulties of transcription. This discussion mirrors the content of the podcast: feminist critics like Diane Watt, whom we interview about medieval writer Margaret Paston, have challenged the idea that women needed to read the written word in order to be considered literate, arguing that dictation could constitute an alternative form of literacy. By challenging text-based representation as the primary legitimate form of scholarship, we foster a more inclusive view of scholarly communication that speaks to the existing tradition of multimodality in feminist writing. Providing insight on the affordances of the podcast medium and library partnerships for advancing the aims of feminist scholarship and the preservation of new forms of scholarship, the essay explores our reflections on networked knowledge production and multimodal representation, which make scholarship accessible in and beyond academic contexts.

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Rule N°5: The Library Is a Growing Organism is a collaboratively created installation located in NYU’s main library that centers the voices of library workers in six sculptures. The work takes its name from Ranganathan’s five laws or “rules” of library science published in 1931 and focuses on how the spirit of the fifth rule or law, which reads “the library is a growing organism,” continues to inform the life and work of the library. As an interactive audio experience, Rule N°5 invites listeners to open doors and drawers, plug in, and push buttons to explore what it means to collect the world’s knowledge, preserve the past, and shape the future. Rule N°5 examines practices and objects that shape how we can search, who we will find, and what we remember.

In this article, the makers behind the installation share stories of the project’s creation and a deeper inspection of the invisible labor and conversations about questions of power, authority, and the politics of seemingly innocuous library work that inform the work.

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Video games set in or inspired by early modern or medieval Europe have historically featured almost entirely white casts of characters, a decision often defended on the grounds of historical accuracy. This video essay examines how the myth of an all-white European past emerged and how it has shaped both video game design and gaming culture more broadly. It then explores how diversity is represented in the For Honor and Chivalry series as case studies of the "historical accuracy" framing in video games. Ultimately, the essay argues that including a diverse cast of characters is not only appropriate but necessary for achieving true historical accuracy.