Richard Smyth
Richard
Smyth, formerly an assistant professor of English at Hamline
University, is nopw Library Media Specialist at Cathedral High School in Boston. He finished his Ph.D. at the University of Florida in 1994
under the direction of Gregory L. Ulmer. His dissertation, "Renaissance,
Mnemonics, Poststructuralism, and the Rhetoric of Hypertext Composition"
defines "rhizography" as a new genre for hypertext.
As an example of this new genre, Genetis: A Rhizhography uses DNA as a metaphoric structure. Smyth takes advantage of Storyspace's capacity to name links and paths poetically in order to create a helical spire of memory paths that cuts through the text in the same way the double helix cuts throug a chromosome. DNA, in its capacity to "re-member" the physical traits of a species, becomes a genetic form of the memory palace.
