My Website

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Site Map of Final Project

I will host this website on a sub domain of a website.

Home Page:

Using Flash, I will include seven floating icons (the point of having floating icons is to achieve a nonlinear presentation of these elements); each will take the viewer to a different page that represents an element of this website.

About this Website:

This page will include (1) the rationale behind designing this website, (2) information about me, (3) and instructions on how to use this website. Here is what these sections might say:

(1) The rationale behind it: 

I have designed this web site to function as a primary source for my 306J (Women and Writing) students. The theme of this course is focused on how acknowledging and historicizing difference and otherness contribute to our students’ literacies and their ongoing negotiations of their identities. The website experience provides a space for them to engage in this process.

For this website, I have collected images, stories, interviews, and descriptions of cultural practices that involve women across cultures and  have contextualized these materials in their historical contexts. I view this web site as an assemblage of different modes and forms—a space that is inclusive of difference in both content and form. My goal is to use associations and relations of different visual and alphabetical elements to create a coherent whole that tells stories of difference and help students position themselves in this conversation while resisting a linear patriarchal structure that highly values logos in both content and form; this can be noticed from the design of the website where all icons are floating in a nonlinear space. This is a dialogical space in which the power structure is horizontal rather than hierarchical—a space where identities are negotiated and renegotiated with the “Other” on equal grounds.

(2) About me:

I’m Lana Oweidat, a PhD candidate in Rhetoric and Composition at Ohio University. I’m interested in transnational and postcolonial feminist rhetorics, theories, and pedagogies and how they challenge and broaden our understanding of cultures, identities, texts, ourselves, etc. In addition to working on my PhD, I teach undergraduate writing classes and I’m currently working as Assistant to the Director of Composition.

(3) How to use this web site:

This section will provide a detailed description of how users of this web site can navigate it efficiently. I will include an icon that takes the viewer back to the home page. 

Activities:

I will create in-class activities that speak to the theme of the course. These activities will be uploaded as word documents or as PDFs. They might include images or videos for illustrative purposes, or they might ask students to compose a mini project that includes visual components.

I will include an icon that takes the viewer back to the home page.

 

Assignments:

This page will include the assignment that I worked on for this class. Perhaps I will create new assignments, or adapt ones that have been used by other writing instructors. An icon will take the viewer back to the home page.

Stories of Difference:

This section is the kernel of this website since it will provide students with different materials (interviews, YouTube videos, poems, images, music, etc.) that will expose them to experiences that differ from the norm. I will start this page with a brief introduction that gives an overview of the stories that I want to include here.

Using Flash, there will be three icons; each will represent a cultural practice: (Chinese foot binding?), (the veil?), and (honor crimes?). Each of these icons will take the viewer to a different page dedicated to one of the cultural phenomenon mentioned above. On this page, I will include an icon that takes the viewer back to the home page.

On the page of each cultural phenomenon, I will include an image of a woman representing that culture in addition to different cultural representations (poems, interviews, descriptions of the cultural practice). Also, I’m thinking of including an audio of the popular cultural music from the area (this all depends on the availability of these items for public use). Since I have less than half a month to finish this project and since I’m envisioning this as an ongoing project, I will work on three of these cultural practices for now and include more later. 

In order to immerse the student in a particular culture, I will try my best to let the “Other women” speak for themselves and include conversations in different languages to envelope them in that culture and then the student gets the experience of being the “Other.”

Theory, Pedagogy, and Praxis:

Since I envision this web site as the outcome of the marriage between the theory and pedagogy of transnational feminism and that of multimodal composition studies, I want to include an alphabetical literature review of the main theories that create the foundation for my project. Therefore, from transnational feminist theory and pedagogy, I will incorporate the work of the following scholars: Chandra Mohanty, Uma Narayan, Lila Abu-Lughod, Katarzyne Marciniak, Mary Queen, etc. As for multimodal composition studies, I will include articles that tackle themes of transnationalism, globalization, the linkage between technology and literacy, evaluating the uses of technology with a critical eye, etc. (C. Selfe and Wysocki touch upon some of those themes). This literature review will also emphasize the importance of being aware of the politics of representation and of reflectivity.  I will include an icon that takes the viewer back to the home page.

Materials:

On this page, I will include the alphabetical texts that I require for this class. I will upload articles and links to books that my students will read for this class. I will include an icon that takes the viewer back to the home page.

I know that I’m being overly ambitious with this project, but because I think of it as an ongoing project I will complete as much of it as I can in the limited time frame.

Tentative Final Project Proposal

I want to work on a video project that helps students acknowledge and historicize difference and otherness. I will collect images, stories, interviews, and descriptions of cultural practices that involve women across cultures and contextualize these materials in their historical contexts. I’m thinking of  this video as an assemblage of different modes and forms (a collage). My goal is to use associations and relations of different visual and alphabetical elements (I’m resisting the linear patriarchal structure that highly values logos in both content and form) to create a coherent whole that tells stories of difference.

Here’s a tentative task list:

1. I need to do some research. I see this project as the outcome of the marriage between the theory and pedagogy of transnational feminism and that of multimodal composition studies. Therefore, I’m going to read works in both fields. From transnational feminist theory and pedagogy, I will incorporate the theories of the following scholars: Chandra Mohanty, Uma Narayan, and Lila Abu-Lughod. As for multimodal composition studies, I will look for articles that tackle themes of transnationalism, globalization, the linkage between technology and literacy, evaluating the uses of technology with a critical eye, etc. (C. Selfe and Wysocki touch upon some of those themes).
2.  I have to think of what stories, images, cultural practices, etc. are controversial / different and usually make the audience uncomfortable to a certain degree (I’m not aiming at something scary here nor my goal is to alienate the audience). Work on a storyboard?
3. I will use Creative Commons to find the materials. I need to familiarize myself with Movie Maker. I will type up some quotes that I think might enhance the video experience. Maybe include parts of interviews? Stories?
4. I want to emphasize the importance of being aware of the politics of representation, so I might narrate parts of this video and let the “Other women” speak for themselves. I might include conversations in different languages.
5. I will look for different cultural music (Creative Commons?) that corresponds with the stories/images I want to include in this video.

Revised Conference Proposal

Proposal (revised), University of Cincinnati Graduate Conference

Anxious Spaces: Constructing, Historicizing, and Contextualizing Images and Stories of Difference and Otherness

In her 1998 keynote address at the CCCC, Cynthia Selfe urged composition instructors to pay attention to the inextricable linkage between technology and literacy. Additionally, she joins Gail Hawisher, Brittney Moraski, and Melissa Pearson in their 2004 article in which they associate being literate in the information age with one’s ability to situate literacies of technology within “specific cultural, material, educational, and familial contexts.” Echoing this concern, many transnational feminists, such as Mary Queen, warn that technology is “often perceived, paradoxically, as a technology that connects us to others while it simultaneously remains disconnected from material reality.” These scholars agree that teaching our students how to pay critical attention to the issues generated by technology and their implications has become an ethical imperative for teachers. Therefore, in the teaching of writing about women across cultures, we and our students should be aware of how the media has helped construct the image of “the Other woman” while ignoring her lived material conditions. We should question: How can we utilize multimodal composition praxis to create a space beyond the binary of “self” and “Other” in the writing classroom? Although these concerns over technology are legitimate, I believe that incorporating a pedagogy of difference and otherness into the writing class via the creation of and the interaction with multimodal texts can result in a deeper understanding of the “Other woman.” My presentation introduces a web site that is constructed with these themes in mind. The web site is organized in a way that places images and stories about women across cultures within their historical contexts, encouraging students to acknowledge difference and find commonalities to relate to the “Other.” This provides a dialogical space in which the power structure is horizontal rather than hierarchal—a space where identities are negotiated and renegotiated with the “Other” on equal grounds. 

Equipment needs: Internet access, projector, and speakers should be on.

Conference Proposal Draft

Proposal, University of Cincinnati Graduate Conference

Anxious Spaces: Constructing, Historicizing, and Contextualizing Images and Stories of Difference and Otherness

Many neoliberal feminists and scholars cheered the use of technology which provided a venue of expression for women in nonwestern countries, implying that these women had no agency prior to technology. Images and stories of these women have bombarded the Internet, and are consumed in a superficial manner that lacks consideration to materiality. Some have even imposed a political or a personal agenda on these materials. In 2009, Time used the photograph of a disfigured Afghani woman accompanied by the line, “What Happens if We Leave Afghanistan,” deliberately eliminating the question mark to manipulate the suffering of Afghani women for a political agenda. The media has helped to construct the image of the “Other woman” while ignoring her lived material conditions. Many transnational feminists, such as Mary Queen, warn that technology is “profoundly implicated in globalized capitalist practices” and is “often perceived, paradoxically, as a technology that connects us to others while it simultaneously remains disconnected from material reality” (473). Echoing this concern, Cynthia Selfe defines new media texts “in terms of materiality instead of digitality” (19). In the teaching of writing about women across cultures, we should question: How can we create a space that goes beyond the binary of “self” and “Other” in the writing classroom? How can technology promote tolerance and acknowledgment of the “Other” rather than alienate the student?

 Although these concerns over technology are legitimate, I believe that incorporating a pedagogy of difference and otherness into the writing class via the creation of and the interaction with multimodal texts can result in a deeper understanding of the “Other woman.” These projects provide our students with spaces that help them historicize and contextualize these images and stories rather than viewing them out of context—a practice that might lead to exoticizing and essentializing them. My presentation introduces a web site that is constructed with these themes in mind. The web site is organized in a way that speaks to human experience by placing images and stories about women across cultures within their historical contexts, which encourages students to acknowledge difference and find commonalities to relate to the “Other.” This provides a dialogical space in which the power structure is horizontal rather than hierarchal—a space where identities are negotiated and renegotiated with the “Other” on equal grounds. 

Equipment needs: Internet access, projector, and speakers should be on.

Blogs are Cool, but.....

The weekly blog posts give me a chance to synthesize the weekly readings, to think about the connections and the bigger picture these sources provide, and to push me to create a product by class time each week. Blogging about the readings makes me more aware of where I stand and determines which of the readings triggers a reaction in me and why.  In turn, I’m able to observe the reactions of others to the same readings and to comment and to challenge each other to think more in-depth about the reading. My classmates’ comments and replies increase my writing efficiency by providing a means of getting feedback on each blog post. In addition to providing emotional and professional support, their constructive criticism is very helpful to improve my next blog post. 

Although I have my reservations with the issue of considering blogs and wikis egalitarian spaces, I appreciate the opportunity of having a personal, a (non-threatening?) writing space of my own in which I can voice my opinions and comment and respond to different ideas and thoughts. By visiting, reading, and commenting on my classmates’ blog posts, I feel like a member of a community of learners (Dr. Rouzie and my classmates); however, I know that my immediate environment is not my only audience.

In addition, the search for images and videos that correspond with my post can be sometimes time-consuming, but I have discovered that browsing for images trigger other related ideas that could be included in a blog post. For example, while I was browsing Google images for an image that captures the theme of the child’s innateness of multimodality to include in my blog post, I came across this image (click here), which made me think of how this innateness was suppressed by the educational system and the need to standardize citizens. 

Unlike wikis, blogs are not collaborative educational tools, or perhaps they are collaborative in a different way—through the sharing of links, resources, ideas, etc. I find it helpful to read the blog posts before class because they usually highlight certain points that I didn’t pay attention to in the readings, show different understandings of the same material, introduce new perspectives, and provide me with a good recap of the readings. Also, the immediacy of the nature of the blog means that I don’t have to wait months for feedback or for publication.  

Blogs are wonderful and everything, but I don’t trust them! Blogs delude us to believe that they are safe and reliable spaces. Let me explain. For me, the writing process itself doesn’t take place directly on the blog. I do it on a word document and then copy and paste it to the blog. Last year, while I was fixing the sound effects of one of my blog posts, everything was erased and then the blog saved an empty page automatically! I had to reconstruct the visuals, hyperlinks, etc. from scratch. Another problem that I have with blogs is the same as the one that I have with wikis and with other open-source applications: lack of closure, which, I think, functions on the positive and the negative level. In “Working with Wikis in Writing-Intensive Classes,” Michelle Cleary et al. report that one negative aspect of the wiki according to one student is that “wikis made the student feel like class was never out of session.”  Blogs are demanding! They demand our attention most of the time. We need to compose, read, respond, think, reflect, search for images, etc. in order to effectively engage in this activity.

Over all, I feel that the blog experience has been useful for me to develop as a critical thinker and writer. It makes me aware of the diversity and the similarities that we have as a community of learners. 

With Reservations!

Kara Poe Alexander argues that revising multimodal texts is not an easy task, but it can be done by conducting “well-structured peer reviews provided in carefully designed studio sessions that focus on rhetorical issues” (137). I find the forms, the sample multimodal assignments, and the advice she provides very helpful; however, I feel that the ghost of the alphabetical text haunts Alexander’s notion of responding to and revising  multimodal projects—perhaps this is why revision and peer-review of multimodal texts as presented by Alexander seem like a daunting task. The basic difference between alphabetical texts and multimodal projects relies on the fact that in writing alphabetical texts/essays, synthesizing sources and reaching a conclusion is essential while composers of multimodal texts collect and juxtapose different modalities (words, images, colors, sound, etc.) without necessarily reaching a conclusion (Douglas Hesse makes this distinction). In multimodal projects, the modalities intersect, but I don’t see them interact (they remain separate entities) the way I see the author of an essayistic essay synthesizing her sources and the ideas of others to form an argument. Therefore, I feel that there is a need to redefine the redefinition of responding to students’ multimodal projects as presented by Alexander. I don’t have an alternative framework in mind for now, but it’s an invitation to think of responding to students’ works in a different way.

 Since multimodal texts are not only constructed by the audience, but also “recomposed”/"reconstructed" by them, here, I think, revision goes beyond the global level of essayistic prose. For example, one of Alexander’s recommendations for those who are working on scrapbooks or collages is to keep them in a “semi-fluid state until the peer-review is completed” (123). This semi-fluid state declares the death of the author/composer. The audience becomes the composer/the receiver/ the decision maker/ the real agent. I’m all for empowering the audience, but I, as an author/composer, don’t want to reach a point where my text doesn’t belong to me anymore and is not revised/composed and recomposed by me. Sometimes we, as authors, feel the need to affix words/objects on a page and defend our stance. Our thesis statement is the glue that affixes our words/objects in our work. Although Alexander’s notion of multimodal revision is practical, I think it overempowers the audience at the expense of the author/creator/composer.

Another point that has raised questions for me from last week’s readings is Branscum and Toscano’s conclusion:

“Teachers do not need to invent completely new teaching practices to integrate multimodal composition assignments into their classes. Their own comfortable approaches and practices may, however, need to be altered slightly to make room for the kinds of open-ended exploration that multimodal composing can involve” (98).

                                         

I have a problem with the word “slightly.” The more I read about composing/ assessing/evaluating /teaching/learning multimodal projects, the more I feel that requiring students to work on multimodal compositions and designing multimodal assignments is A LOT of work. Teachers need to give up “their extensive knowledge of genre, their finely tuned understanding of composing processes, and their familiarity with composing tasks and outcomes,” and partake in, what Church and Powell call “an exciting opportunity to join students as fellow learners” (152). I doubt that all of this can be considered a slight change in the theories and pedagogies that constitute our field.

“Don’t take yourself … too seriously”

Reading the piece by Dickie Selfe and the chapters in Multimodal Composition was eye-opening to me as a composition teacher who would like to integrate the use of technology EFFECTIVELY in my writing classroom. These scholars warn us from taking things to the extreme (too much fun and too much seriousness are no good). In their informative pieces, they call for the critical examination of our uses of technology as many teachers incorporate technology into their writing classroom without giving much thought to the dynamics and practices of their pedagogies. For example, many teachers believe that making multimodal texts available for students’ consumption (showing YouTube videos in class) would mark their classes as technologically advanced. However, for the authors of the chapters we read for today, the real challenge for teachers is to teach students how to analyze, criticize, and compose mediated texts. The passive consumption of multimodal texts DOESN’T make students savvy creators/ producers/viewers/composers of multimodal texts. The real challenge is to help students become critical receivers and composers of mediated texts and to help them understand how technology functions within their culture and in their material lives.  Here, I’m reminded of Wysocki’s emphasis on the importance of understanding one’s materiality and positionality as a writer/composer.

 In chapter 5, “Thinking Rhetorically,” Daniel Keller gives us some hints of how to teach our students to be good rhetoricians who are capable of deploying any number of modes of expression and media to make meaning. As teachers, we’re going to teach them to use all available means to accomplish responsible rhetorical ends. Keller provides us with detailed descriptions/discussions of two multimodal compositions of his students as he points out “how difficult it can be to describe the effects of a multimodal composition … with words alone” (60), and that “each modality does have certain affordances—capabilities of representing meaning in particular ways and in certain contexts” (60). Keller claims that he is not privileging one medium over the other, but he emphasizes that each medium has its own strengths and limitations and that choosing the right medium is a rhetorical choice—a skill that we should teach our students.

What I find interesting is that comp teachers should teach a skill that students had before being standardized and institutionalized as students and citizens by an educational system that over-emphasizes testing and requires following a specific format of writing. Don’t kids use words, drawings, and sounds simultaneously to  express themselves and to reach meaning?

Multimodality, I think, is something innate, organic, and 

“natural.” Our responsibility as teachers is to restore a skill that has 

been suppressed rather than teach/initiate the ability of composing multimodal texts. 

 A long the same lines, in his essay, Dickie Selfe provides us with is a list of reminders of important pedagogical guidelines. Here are my favorites and my responses to them:

"Don’t let the technologies themselves drive your pedagogy"

I can’t agree more with this statement. We’ve read the works of many scholars, such as the Selfes, who emphasize the importance of developing critical technological literacies rather than just incorporating technology into the writing classroom with no apparent pedagogical reason just because we want to be high-tech teachers! Technology enriches our pedagogies rather than replaces/dominates them. We should be able to read and/or evaluate our performances in the classroom. How does the use of technology affect/limit/improve our performance/thinking as writing teachers, and then adapt our use of technology accordingly?       

"Don’t take yourself and your efforts too seriously"

I know that I want to leave room for play/experimentation/clicking on stuff randomly/getting the feel of this new technology, but at the same time, I’m struggling with how this “license to play” would challenge my confidence and authority as a teacher. 

I don’t use confidence and authority in the traditional way. Perhaps I’m thinking of ethos here.

“All uses of technology in the classroom are experimental”

It is reassuring to think of using technology in the classroom as experimental because rather than feeling “ashamed” that I don’t know the answer to a technological question or that I don’t know how to use an application, I become more driven to know and even ask the high-tech students in the class to teach me. I think it is here that the collaborative spirit manifests itself in the classroom.  

“Do We Teach to Life or to College?”

In “Box-logic,” Geoffrey Sirc proposes a new media pedagogy that values annotation and collection as a means of composing multimedia texts. Like other scholars, such as Wysocki and Selfe who are interested in using new technologies in the composition classroom, Sirc voices his “pedagogical dilemma:” “just what do I do in the classroom, what do I teach (111)?” As he moves away from the essayistic genre that carries with it the legacy of linear thinking, he considers the "formal and material concerns [that] guide a newly-mediated pedagogical practice" (114)—a pedagogy that values association, “desire and lack,” metonymy, aesthetics, “personal symbologies(cool term, but huh?),” juxtaposition, and design (117). For Sirc, the student writer is a "dissatisfied collector, one impatiently seeking pleasure" (117).

  

“The Arcades Project” Activity is 

a very informative yet entertaining

genre/ activity. I like how Sirc allows students

to break away from “doing old-fashioned note cards

for the term paper,” and adopt a much more interesting format.

I find Sirc’s theory and pedagogy of box logic interesting and inspiring, but I’m not sure how much writing (actual writing, how much of the 20-page requirement) do students write in the freshman comp course based on this pedagogy. If the focus on this pedagogy is collection and annotation then what students actually learn is researching, summarizing, and responding to entries (quotes, images, sound, songs, etc.), what happens after that? I mean, what happens when we ask students to write an essay? Do they know how to do so?  I agree with Sirc when he writes that there is "something increasingly untenable about the integrated coherence of college essayist prose" (123) in the 21^st century, but shouldn’t writing teachers focus on the basics (mastering the “traditional” essay) first and then, when students master that, we can take them to another level? Perhaps his pedagogy can be more useful with juniors since there is an underlying assumption that they know how to write “homogenous” essays. 

Sirc claims that the composition essay hides behind an "easy falseness of a unified resolution" (123). Do we really believe that? I know that many of us think of our students’ “final” drafts as first drafts and that we highly value the process of wallowing in the complexity of the topic. I think that Sirc here oversimplified what a comp essay entails. Also, I find it problematic that Sirc doesn’t take into consideration that students need to learn how to write a 10-page well-argued essay in order to survive and pass other classes that rely on comp teachers to teach students how to write a well-argued essay. 

 If each teacher works individually without considering the consequences of their adopted pedagogies/models, then, we are jeopardizing the students’ success in her academic life/college life so we could teach her something about life. This is not to deny the importance of Sirc’s model, as I said, I find the box model for the early stages of writing essays and researching, what Sirc calls "search strategies and annotating material" (122), particularly useful. And I’m a strong believer in empowering students in finding their own voices in writing, but if we want to translate Sirc’s model into a more realistic one that correspondences to the requirements of our comps classes, we should work on a comprehensive vision that values experimentation and nonlinear thinking and redefines essayistic prose not only on the college level, but also on the university level so students would not be at a disadvantage. Unfortunately, on the university level, the "genre" of note-taking/collaging/archiving, etc. is not as prominent as the genre of the argumentative essay. I think that the university is far from adopting the box-logic model as a primary model for its freshmen level comp classes.

My “Readerly” Experience of Sorapure’s piece

I think that Sorapure’s “Five Principles of New Media: Or, Playing Lev Manovich” is a true manifestation of the marriage of theory and practice, and how multimedia can teach and entertain us simultaneously. It was an interesting experience reading this scholarly article and interacting with the text. As noted from the title, Sorapure’s piece illustrates the five principles of new media as articulated in Lev Manovich’s book, using multimedia technology. While reading this piece, I spent most of my time figuring out how to read it, deciphering the visual images, clicking all over the images, reading the students’ examples, looking for possible hidden directions/clues here and there, and making choices during the interaction. For example, when I was reading the definition of the first principle "numerical representation," I was impressed with this principle at work! I was moving the mouse over the image and I was watching the mouse coordinates change, while the eye in the background was gazing at me. The interaction between me (the reader) and the text played out visibly on the keyboard and on the screen. What usually takes place in my mind while reading a printed text was visible and external.

The one thing that I didn’t do well, I think, was reading the alphabetical text because the interactive part was far more engaging and sometimes distracting, which made me wonder if I had enough training reading interactive texts to do so effectively. Sorapure comments on the challenges that she faced in composing this article. She writes:

“This article is itself a new media composition, and the five principles described by Manovich certainly can be seen here. There are also some unique challenges involved in composing an academic article in Photoshop and Flash, in combining almost 3500 words of text with graphics and interactivity.”

“Aside from the matter of coding and designing the article, the most difficult challenge for me has been presenting text in a way that's detailed and yet compact, with short independent units combining to form a coherent argument and with interactivity that enhances rather than distracts from the text.”

I wanted to learn more about these challenges as I felt that Sorapure cut this discussion short (for formatting reasons, maybe? Would she have done the same if this article was a traditional one?). How can we prepare our students for these challenges? Are these challenges unique to multimedia texts? From a pedagogical perspective, I feel that managing time should be one of the challenges since, obviously, Sorapure's article represents hours of hard work (there are a great number of images and codes embedded in this article). Also, this article shows great literacy and competency in designing and composing new media texts. Where do we draw the line between experimenting with form and disorienting or distracting the reader? While reading (is reading the right word? Should we substitute it with browsing?) I was tempted to click on the link that said “You can also read a text-only version of the article in PDF format,” but I resisted doing so to experience this multimedia text in its fullest potential. As I was nostalgic to read an essayistic text, I was reminded with Clark’s thesis in “Making the Case for a 21st-Century Pedagogy:”

“In our nascent digital culture, the traditional essayistic literacy that still dominates composition classes is outmoded and needs to be replaced by an intentional pedagogy of digital rhetoric which emphasizes the civic importance of education, the cultural and social imperative of ‘the now,’ and the ‘cultural software’ that engages students in the interactivity, collaboration, ownership, authority, and malleability of texts” (1).

Interesting choice of words! Why did she use the words “imperative,” “outmoded” and “replace,” not “incorporate?” Why do scholars believe that in order to push their agenda forward they need to trash the current practices and call them “outmoded” and “traditional?” Although I found interacting with Sorapure’s article engaging and original, my readerly experience was interrupted, which makes me wonder if I’m ready for Clark’s “pedagogy of digital rhetoric.”

What's New about "New Media?"

In “Openings and Justifications,” Anne Wysocki  defines “new media texts” as those “made by composers who are aware of the range of materialities of texts and who then highlight [that] materiality”(15). Her definition of “new media texts” requires attentiveness in designing texts to acknowledge the fact that “any text—like its composers and readers—doesn’t function independently of how it is made and in what contexts” (15). Wysocki’s understanding of “new media” extends it beyond forms that are digitally produced since new media compositions can appear on paper. Her definition of new media focuses on how the author/composer shows awareness, attentiveness, and alertness of how the materiality of her text (her use of sound, image, background, color, layout, etc.) contribute to meaning and reveal the values she embodies as a member of a certain community (15). Here, I’m wondering about the issue of form and content in Wysocki’s definition of new media and how this shift of using “new media,” particularly in the way Wysocki defines it, would affect/ is affecting our concept of the writing process and product and our perception of composing texts. Is there an inclination in Wysocki’s definition to value product over process? How does she define product? Is product for her an ongoing process since whenever I read a text that I have composed, I feel the urge to modify/edit/ revise/ reorganize/ reshape/ reformat my text. I identify strongly with my work, like other writers, because I “own” it (as in it belongs to me). Since texts don’t function independently I feel both protective and vulnerable because I’m aware of how much my personal identity and my membership to different communities are exposed.

In her opening chapter, Wysocki lays out five openings that she sees enacting in her own practices:

1.      The need, in writing about new media in general, for the material thinking of people who teach writing

2.      A need to focus on the specific materiality of the texts we give each other

3.      A need to define “new media texts” in terms of their materialities

4.      A need for production of new media texts in writing classrooms

5.      A need for strategies of generous reading (page 3)

What I find interesting about these five openings is that she embraces the concept of “new media” to accommodate writing rather than digitalize writing to accommodate “new media.” Her approach to “new media” promotes a deeper understanding of the materiality of the texts we produce that “help use hold present what is at stake: to look at texts only through their technological origin is to deflect our attention from what we might achieve mindful that textual practices are always broader than the technological” (19). In other words, Wysocki’s definition of new media encourages an approach that AVOIDS technological determinism and sees “the apparently growing emphasis on the visual in our culture and time” as “a historically situated process” (16). Interestingly enough, Wysocki highlights a theme similar to that echoed in Wesch’s video “Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us”:  

“[Technologies] are in our world and they have weight—but we probably ought not give up our own agency by acting as though technologies come out of nowhere and are autonomous in causing effects” (19).

       

This emphasis on human agency in interacting with technology and molding it to serve our needs rather than acting like passive receivers of technology empowers the composition teacher as an expert who knows how people compose, use, and exchange texts and why they “make these combinations of material.” She then uses her knowledge and expertise to inform new media and extend composition pedagogy toward the visual (19).

               

In contrast to Wysocki’s broad definition of new media, Cynthia Selfe emphasizes the visual elements in her understanding of new media as she believes that new media texts are created in digital environments and that aural and video composition “articulate meanings students struggle to articulate with words” (2-3).  Selfe makes it a point to mention later in this chapter that “the multimodal compositions are not dependent on digital media” (10).  However, she acknowledges the fact that some may accuse her approach of sounding like “technological determinism,” which entails that “our professional work and values should take into account changes and developments in communication technologies” (3). She justifies that by stressing the importance of keeping up with the ways in which students communicate (3). Although I think that Wysocki’s and Selfe’s definitions of “new media” support the new trend of extending our concept of literacy to include a deep understanding of the relationship between form and content, I see Wysocki’s definition more relevant to and more inclusive of non-digital applications and compositions that can be interactive without the integration of technology. 

 

While reading Wysocki’s chapter and before reaching the end of it where she has included a number of creative classrooms activities, I was contemplating how attention to materiality can be taught to students who are very much part of what Wysocki calls “the consumer culture” that “uses visual representations to create unselfconscious and uncritical consuming desires” (16). After reading the activities and noticing the way she lays out this chapter (her use of a variety of font type and size and her experimentation with side notes and page numbers and titles), I now have a better idea of how form and our choices of form indicate the cultural structures and practices that mold us into certain individuals and allude us to believe that we have CHOICES.

 
My favorite classroom activity from 

Wysocki’s chapter is the one in which

students are asked to work on visual 

arguments. This motivated me to

include some visual arguments that 

I found online.

An example of these structures is patriarchy and its value of seriousness, authority, and standardization (Times New Roman, font 12). In other words, we are disciplined to desire and “choose” the very things that we are limited to by these structures. Free will, for example, is a necessary delusion for the existence of patriarchy, which brings me to these questions: Do our students really have choices to compose freely while there are higher structures that entail the implementation of certain criteria for evaluation and assessment? How much can we, Teaching Assistants (given our limited access to resources and our "inferior" status in academia), provide our students with spaces that actually produce people who can identify the social, cultural, and political forms that shape them and provide them with the opportunity and agency to make change without walking into, what Selfe calls, "minefields," whether on the university level or the political level? And does this opportunity/agency translate into a sociopolitical one?

Welcome to My Blog

I’m Lana Oweidat, a PhD candidate in Rhetoric and Composition at Ohio University. I’m interested in transnational and postcolonial feminist rhetorics, theories, and pedagogies and how they challenge and broaden our understanding of cultures, identities, texts, ourselves, etc. In addition to working on my PhD, I teach undergraduate writing classes and I’m currently working as an assistant to the Director of Composition.