Opportune Moments is designed to facilitate your experience of the Virtual Martin Luther King project (vMLK) and its rhetorical function and consequences. The vMLK Project is a digital project for the public that is centered around a transmedia recreation of Dr. King’s “A Creative Protest [Fill Up the Jails]” speech, given in 1960. Opportune Moments is built on a platform designed to facilitate the experience of reading about and exploring the project and its multimedia assets. We recommend that you begin with our introduction, where we define the term kairos and theorize it as an opportune moment in civic life. Think of the introduction as a gateway for 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 to explore and evaluate its manifestations 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 uses have changed. The design of Opportune Moments invites you to investigate and contend with kairos and the vMLK Project’s Kit of Parts through three unique entry points.
The linear option is most similar to the experience of reading a book. Pursuing this option will take you through the entirety of Opportune Moments following a traditional model wherein key arguments are laid out and developed in each section, with digital assets embedded throughout. There are two parts within this linear structure, each composed of three sections. The first three sections present a distinctive theorization of kairos in relation to time, place and community, in the development of the vMLK Project. The next three sections then examine how these aspects of kairos may be put into practice, highlighting the publicly engaged implementation and impact of the project. This structure allows you to begin with an exploration of the fundamental aspects of kairos theorized as opportune moments and transformations in a digital age, and then move to engaging with experiences and explorations of the communicative acts that actualize these elements.
Our work is animated by flexible, iterative approaches to kairos, to community engaged work, and to digital humanities principles. Consistent with this animation and with the iterative ethic of a Kit of Parts, we propose themed trajectories or pathways for readers who are looking to find support for their specific academic or community interests, projects, or teaching applications. Use the following prompts to determine which trajectory or 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 scholars or students of rhetorical practice with particular interest in the study of kairos and technology, we recommend this trajectory. It centralizes public address as experience as an outgrowth of our theorization of kairos and foregrounds 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 opportune 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.
If you are interested in how technology can help us to engage in civic life…
Readers interested in how and to what extent technology may help us engage with past, present, and future social action will find this trajectory to be fruitful. It showcases how the confluence of time, place, community, and ideas leads to transformation.
If you are interested in how historical context and community collaboration shape a digital humanities project…
Anyone interested in digital humanities projects, and particularly, scholars developing public-facing or community-oriented projects will be interested in this trajectory. It details how community partnerships and historical precedent shape successful directing of and development of project outcomes and scholarship.
The asset galleries experience of this project is most akin to an exhibition or archival showcase. This pathway 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 point of 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 consider the ways in which we developed the project and its assets in and with community.