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.