Matthew Kirschenbaum is a tireless campaigner for digital literacy. The associate director of the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities has received a lot of attention for his commitment to increasing digital literacy in the humanities, not only from colleagues and administrators, but also from media outlets such as The Chronicle of Higher Education and WAMC's Kojo Nnamdi Show. Kirschenbaum's work addresses the new ways we read, write, and practice criticism in the 21st century.
His highly-touted Mechanisms: New Media and the Forensic Imagination (MIT Press, 2008) "examines new media and electronic writing against the textual and technological primitives that govern writing, inscription, and textual transmission in all media: erasure, variability, repeatability, and survivability." Mechanisms has won the 2009 Richard J. Finneran Award from the Society for Textual Scholarship, the 2009 George A. and Jean S. DeLong Prize from the Society for the History of Authorship, and the 16th annual MLA Prize for a First Book.
Kirschenbaum's latest endeavor is directing a new Living and Learning Program in Maryland's Honors College. Digital Cultures and Creativity is "designed for the 21st century student who was born into the world of windows and the web... [providing] an innovative curriculum and learning community that combines art, imagination, and global citizenship with new media and new technologies."
Links:
[1] http://www.english.umd.edu/profiles/mkirschenbaum