Weeks 1 & 2: Post A Response To An Argument by Jason Palmeri

Remixing Composition: A History of Mulitmodal Writing Pedagogy by Jason Palmeri (2012)

From Amazon Books

Week 1:  Acknowledgments, Prologue, and Introduction

Reseeing Composition History

Part One.  Composition Has Always Already Been Multimodal

OKAY, let's get started!

This is my first BLOG.  This is my first ever Bread Loaf School of English BLOG post!  So, here's to new beginnings.  Here's to opening a new chapter in life.  Here's to working on the M.Litt. degree as I compose and play with images, collages, sounds, and words on walls.

And, guess what?  I am not alone.

I normally don't read the Acknowledgements section in books because I probably won't know anyone.  I won't see any familiar names.  But, this time I did.  As it turned out, I recognized several people, real people, good people, people practicing multimodal composing from Bread Loaf.  They included: Andrea Lunsford and Beverly Moss.  Do you know that Beverly's middle name is Janine? We spell it the same way!


Adam Banks came to our Students' of Color meeting in the Blue Parlor to introduce his work and read poetry.
 
Brenda Brueggemann -- I took Brenda's class in the summer of 2018 at Bread Loaf Vermont on "Teaching, Writing and Publishing."  (Images courtesy of Bread Loaf)

As I read through the first pages of the Remixing Composition book, it occurs to me that the teaching of writing is a political act.  It has always been and always will be.  There is some agency and power to it.  On page 1, Palmeri states, "When I engaged students in writing critically about social hierarchies of race, class, and gender, I felt confident that I was continuing in the tradition of other compositionists -- critical, feminist, and cultural studies pedagogues -- who had long been arguing that the teaching of writing is a political act." It's about ACTION.

Asian/Asian American Studies Poster -- Student Leadership and Community Action

Furthermore, on page 3, Palmeri writes, "I came to understand that multimodality was not a new fad in composition studies -- that compositionists have attempted, as least since the 1960's, to articulate alphabetic writing as a multimodal process that shares affinities with other artistic forms of composing."  In other words, multimodal composition predates the digital turn because other media technologies -- "the slide projectors, the super 8 cameras, the televisions, the photocopiers, the tape recorders" were already in use (p.11).  I might add the use of overhead projections with transparencies (remember those?), comic strips, cartoons, calligraphy, music and other art works.  All of these forms help students and writers to "draw connections between writing, image making, speaking, and writing" (p.10).  In other words, let's not be afraid or fearful because this is not a new teaching strategy and tool. (Oh, are there too many negatives in a sentence?  Okay, how about this positive sentence -- Don't be afraid of multimodal composing -- we're already doing it in our classrooms).

Please go to this link to see multimodal composing in action:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlOSn0jk1Z0

Here are key words, phrases & concepts that popped out in Week 1:

--move beyond the alphabetic
--writing teachers must move beyond the printed word
--alphabetic literacy is our past; multimodal composing is our future
--inspired by avant-garde art traditions
--interrelation of aurality and writing instruction
--multimodal turn requires us to move beyond our past

--we have a great deal to learn from other allied arts fields

--alphabetic writing and reading are deeply embodied, multisensory processes
--alphabetic writing is always already multimodal
--emerging digital technologies open up new possibilities for integrating multimodal activities
--adopt the associative logic of the remix as a historical storytelling strategy
--crucial role that multisensory mental imagery plays in alphabetic writing process
--multimodal heritage can be a powerful inventive resource

An Example of Student Work "Asian Pacific Americans in U.S. Politics on You Tube"

On page 30, I found another relevant quote I highlighted: "Flower and Hayes demonstrate that both alphabetic and visual creativity entail a willingness to intensively explore material -- to "rearrange" and "play with alternatives." As a result, the writer is engaged as expressed in the above piece of work. I discovered that my community college students are visual learners who enjoy multimodal composing.  Today, I gently encourage a growing, educationally underrepresented segment of society (i.e., low income, immigrants, ethnic minorities, multi-lingual, academically under prepared, undocumented, and first generation college students) in higher learning, and at the same time, contribute to social and cultural diversity in the Humanities at Laney College in Oakland, California.

Students Engaged With Their Projects Share Knowledge With Others
Don't They Look Proud of Their Display Board?  

While working with students from diverse backgrounds can be challenging, it is also very rewarding. But because of my own ethnic heritage, academic interests, and teaching experience, working with and incorporating multimodal assignments and projects is second nature to me. 

Week 2:  "All Media Were Once New" 

or The Technologies Composition Forgot

Chapter 3:  The First Time Print Died:  

Revisiting Composition's Multimedia Turn (1967-74)

Palmeri on page 110 proposes:

Whenever we consider incorporating a new technology into our pedagogy, we should use this moment as an occasion to ask again such crucial questions as:

What is the role of the teacher in the classroom?
What is the role of the student?
How do we evaluate the quality of student texts?
How do we conceptualize such key terms as audience, invention, revision, process, originality, style, editing, and research (to name a few)?
How might our learning outcomes need to be revised to account for this newer form of writing?

Also, on page 111, he proposes assigning students to keep a

DIGITAL COMMONPLACE BOOK

--I will be thinking about these questions this summer at Bread Loaf Santa Fe!

Here are key words, phrases & concepts that popped out in Week 2:

And, to this, I say, "Right on."

                          --transforming definitions of writing

--technologies of writing contributed so quickly to the creation of new genres
--blend images, words and sounds

--rethinking of composition's exclusive focus on linear, alphabetic text

--new media

--identity crisis

--altered ways we acquire, structure and express our knowledge of the world around us
--music, visual posters, costumes, and other nonverbal modes of persuasion

--develop a new rhetoric to serve this age

--penalized with red pen for making errors

--creative juxtaposition

--Montage

--composition as assemblage

--Xerography

--Refrain 1, Refrain 2, Refrain 3

--radically rethink our assumptions about teaching (p.110)

--newer form of writing

--the so-called "digital generation"

What are Multimodal Projects?

From Amazon Books

A mash-up of multiple and mode

Examples: 

A Dissertation is a multimodal text (p.2)

A Performance is a multimodal text (p.2)

A Web Site is a multimodal text (p.2)

A Twitter Feed is a multimodal text (p.7)

A Tabbed Brochure is a multimodal text (p.10)

A Map is a multimodal text (p.16)

A Data Table is a multimodal text (p.17) 

From Blind Men & Elephant Parable

A Learning Outcome:
My Role As A Teacher --
As a woman of color, I have an insight into many diversity issues as a result of direct personal experience that I can apply to my teaching and writing projects to enhance the learning environment inside and outside of the classroom.

A Learning Outcome:
Our Role As Global Citizens --

Validating multicultural voices through multimodal composition allows active engagement and exchange about how to be a global citizen, but this takes a lot of time. We can’t be lazy.

What Mask Are You Wearing?

https://thelaneytower.com/2013/10/24/kamala-harris/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3_6BMokoog

http://web.peralta.edu/blog/aaas-library-display-at-laney-college/


See the above links "For a Participatory Culture" online (Jenkins) as stated in Palmeri, page 114.