Opportune Moments is a born digital monograph with a platform purposely designed to facilitate your experience of reading and of experiencing/examining the digital assets that make up this publication. We recommend that you begin with our introduction, where we define the term kairos and further theorize it as an opportune moment in civic life. Think of the introduction as a gateway for beginning your exploration of the other aspects of the publication.
Moving from the introduction, the text of Opportune Moments illuminates different dimensions of kairos and invites you as a reader to explore and evaluate its instantiations within communities and through communicative acts. The publication’s design reflects a Kit of Parts, which, drawing from design thinking, we articulate as a theoretical or creative project composed around a flexible and multifaceted combination of assets that, in turn, sustain and maintain a central purpose or set of arguments. The Kit of Parts as a design principle has animated the vMLK project from its inception, enabling us to adapt and develop new iterations of the project as technology and technological affordances have changed.
You will likely find that the Linear option is most similar to the experience of reading a traditional scholarly book. Pursuing this option will take you through the entirety of Opportune Moments following a traditional model of key arguments laid out and developed in each section, with digital assets embedded throughout. There are two parts within this linear structure, each composed of three chapters. The first three chapters – Part 1 – present a distinctive theorization of kairos, with each chapter presenting a conceptual frame that foregrounds this theorization (time, place, and community) in the development of the vMLK project. Part 2 then argues for how these aspects of kairos can be practiced by highlighting the publicly engaged implementation and impact of this theorization for rhetorical practice in academic, community and civic life. This structure allows you to begin with an exploration of the fundamental aspects of opportune moments and transformations in a digital age, and move towards engaging with experiences and explorations of the communicative acts that actualize, or put into practice, these fundamental elements of kairos.
Our work is animated by flexible, iterative approaches to kairos, to community engaged work, and to digital humanities principles. Consistent with this animation and the iterative ethic of a Kit of Parts, we are also pleased to propose some potential pathways for readers who are looking to more precisely find support for their specific academic or community interests, projects, or teaching applications. The following questions or prompts are useful for determining which alternative path you might wish to pursue:
If you study kairos and are curious about the rhetorical possibilities and consequences of (re)creating opportune moments…
For those of you who are scholars or students of rhetorical practice with particular interest in the study of kairos and technology, we recommend this trajectory. This trajectory will help to centralize public address as experience as an outgrowth of our theorization of kairos and foreground the possibilities and consequences of this kind of rhetorical practice.
Crafting Communal Moments for the Future
If you are interested in creating opportune moments within your community…
This trajectory is well suited for those who are interested in leveraging rhetorical skills within their community-oriented work. By placing the historical building of opportunine moments (particularly by black communities in North Carolina during the civil rights movement) in context with contemporary legacies of activism, this trajectory explores avenues for creating change within communities through individual, small group, and community experiences.
Creating Opportune Moments
The Asset experience of this project is most akin to an exhibition or archival showcase. This entry will be most fruitful for readers interested in experiencing each of the primary project assets, utilizing this project as a pedagogical tool, or seeking to explore an archive of materials related to the Virtual Martin Luther King project. This entry into the publication features each of the six experiences of the speech recreation, the data that we utilize in our arguments and discussions, as well as an archive of historical materials. This option allows readers to explore the assets and further consider the ways in which our experiential arguments are developed.