A group of students and faculty in the English and ITP programs recently launched the Writing Studies Tree.  This Drupal site shows scholarly relationships in Composition and Rhetoric and adjacent disciplines and traces networks of mentorship.  It creates a social map of the field of writing studies (see image, right) that displays scholar/student connections.

The Writing Studies Tree was seeded in 2011-2012 by a team of students and faculty at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY): Ben Miller (project leader and site administrator), Amanda Licastro (project administrator), Sondra Perl, Jill Belli, Diana Epelbaum, Chris Leary, Erica Kaufman, Andrew Statum, Lisa Vaia, and Dominique Zino. The tree and network visualizations were written by Matt Miller, a graduate student at Pratt Institute.

… having planted the seeds, we want your help to make the Tree grow! Our chief design goal has been to make it easy to pool our collective knowledge and time. In March of 2012, we are presenting the system at the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) as a Featured Session in the A block; we will also have a booth set up throughout the conference where visitors can get our help in adding information. If you would like to contribute, you are welcome to do so! Simply create a free account … and follow the instructions on the FAQ page.