These sites offer Web users a glimpse at aspects of the author's identity that are not conveyed in the print bio formula. Most of the Web articles that I have examined include this link between an author's scholarly presentation and one's more personal self-representation. Certainly the nature of this association varies among authors, but the linking of some type of personal representation with professional work is a shared phenomenon. If the inclusion of an author's photo on a book jacket or an author's place of residence in his or her bio marks a fissure in conventional models of authorial self-representation, then this trend among Web writers of linking personal pages to their professional work merits further attention for its new and significant departure from the disembodiment model. The presence and accessibility of personal details about authors, ones which the authors themselves create and furnish for us, serve to embody the author, in contrast to the authorial disembodiment that is characteristic of print journals.
Embodiment occurs on both figurative and literal levels.
The fluidity that emerges between personal and professional helps construct an authorial identity or body. Literally speaking, too, electronic journals can embody authors when they include photographs on authors' personal pages. Electronic journal representations can thus furnish us with a glimpse of the author's physical body, which contributes to our sense of authorial embodiment more generally. It is important to consider the trend I have observed among electronic journals in light of the movement among scholars to engage personal narrative in academic discourse . Unlike the writings of Jane Tompkins, bell hooks, and other members of this school, the electronic articles under discussion do not uniformly reflect a tendency toward including personal elements within the article itself.