Below you will find a link to the Prezi that Sam Herriot, Lacy Hope, and I composed last week in response to our reading of Jason Palmeri's Remixing Composition: A History of Multimodal Writing Pedagogy.
Later in this post, I will look to revise this Prezi in order to integrate Jonathan Alexander and Jacqueline Rhodes' ideas from On Multimodality: New Media in Composition Studies into a sort of layered multimodal response that weaves both texts together.
In On Multimodality, Alexander and Rhodes problematize existing applications of multimodality in composition studies, exploring many of the problematic and reductive ways in which multimodal composition has been both theorized and extended to the classroom in the past. For Alexander and Rhodes, multimodal pedagogies remain rather flat and almost formulaic insofar as they seem to disregard the breadth of rhetorical capabilities and affordances that comprise the media in which compositionists ask students to compose in favor of narrow iterations of multimodal composition that seem to perpetuate (rather than challenge) standard print-based literacies and practices. In this sense, multimodal composition is effectively hijacked or "colonized" by traditional compositional frameworks, frameworks that filter technologies, new media, and literacy practices through a sort of crucible of textual communication. Which is all to say that seemingly innocent (even transgressive) "techno-inclusionist" attempts to integrate new media and multimedia projects into the composition classroom ultimately undermine efforts to realize the prospects for agency, advocacy, and/or informed subjectivity if compositionists do not take the time to prepare students "to take full advantage of the specific rhetorical affordances of the media they are using" (19).
Alexander and Rhodes therefore seek to articulate a theory and practice of multimodal composition that looks beyond narrow conceptualizations of new media as a mere tool or thrall at the altar of traditional composition, a one-dimensional vacuum in which "appropriate and productive uses" might be unilaterally imposed or determined; rather, they seem to suggest that the virtues of multimodal composition are best realized when students (and everyone for that matter) understands the extent to which their unique and personalized uses of different modalities--whether in isolation or in conversation with one another--take place in and around "specific sociocultural contexts, bounded by intricacies of location, access, ability, and ideology" (34). In many ways, the will to contextualize serves as the coda through which Alexander and Rhodes' vision of multimodal composition can be understood. Indeed, much of On Multimodality seems committed to interrogating the myriad ways in which the dynamic interplay of new media and identity politics continue to rework and transform notions of ethos and subjectivity in ways that really demand more sensitive, concerted, and comprehensive approaches to multimodal composition, approaches that are more in touch with the critical and rhetorical possibilities of new media and the "soft infrastructure," so to speak, of the interfaces and ideologies that students might creatively navigate and manipulate as a way of interrogating the discursive underpinnings of identity in an increasingly multimodal "world."
Monday, September 21, 2015
Monday, September 14, 2015
Re-miiiiiiiiiix, or "Where I'm Calling From"
As I was reading Jason Palmeri's Remixing Composition: A History of Multimodal Writing Pedagogy, I realized something very important about my relationship to composition studies: namely, that I've reached a point in my young academic career where I'm clamoring to define "where I'm calling from," as Raymond Carver would have it, where I'm grasping for a pedagogy (or pedagogies) that in some way, shape, or form symbiotically match up to my general research interests in identity politics, digital literacies, political economy, and social justice. Throughout Remixing Composition Palmeri speaks to so many of the unanswered questions and stultifying anxieties that have comprised my efforts to integrate multimodal composing into my pedagogies while remaining committed to inclusivity, situated learning, and, perhaps most important, rhetorical theory and practice.
For Palmeri, "the study and teaching of multimodal composing must necessarily be an interdisciplinary endeavor" (155). Though effectively extolling the virtues (and, of course, the necessities) of approaching multimodal composing in an interdisciplinary manner and collaborating with scholars in different disciplines to study the creative process, he also makes it a point to articulate the specific ways in which compositionists might contribute to conversations about writing and education reform. By juxtaposing misguided and one-dimensional efforts to simply "teach students to become professional 'new media' producers" against the creative and productive tension that inheres in pedagogies that "engage [students] in reflectively considering how theories of rhetoric and process can travel across modalities" (153), Palmeri elucidates upon and appeals to a brand of multimodal composition that effectively and fervently contests "the rigid compartmentalization of knowledge in the modern university" (132). Indeed, much of what Palmeri discusses in Remixing Composition seems predicated on the notion that "considerations of new media should not be left to 'computers-and-writing' or 'technical communication' specialists alone" (94), a claim that he supports by framing multimodal composition as a practice (or practices) entrenched in the need to acquire dynamic understandings of audience and purpose and a recognition of the affordances and limitations of various media and genres.
Yet, what I found most compelling and important about Palmeri's project in Remixing Composition, was his general commitment to answering the enthusiasm and supposed liberatory potential of multimodal composition with an important challenge to the "field's tendency to fetishize 'new' technologies," a move that he suggests, "problematically works to reinforce racist and colonialist narratives of progress" (12). In this sense, efforts to locate "transferable composing skills" that speak to school, civic, and workplace contexts are always tempered by a call for trepidation, a call for teaching methodologies that integrate matters of racism, classism, sexism, and so forth into the very infrastructure of multimodal composition pedagogies. This seeming call for teaching methodologies resonates with me, because it accentuates multivalent issues of access, literacy, social justice, and stakeholders, not as an after-thought or sub-section to multimodal composition theory and practice but as the very metric by which compositionists organize and students engage with assigned/required technologies, course content, and major inquiry projects.
Questions for Jason Palmeri about Remixing Composition
1) Much of Remixing Composition seems to extol the virtues (and historical precedents in the field) of compositionists being promiscuous, so to speak, in their efforts to form multimodal composition pedagogies around productive intersections between composition and the allied arts. You even go so far as to say that "considerations of new media should not be left to 'computers-and-writing' or 'technical communication' specialists alone" (94). As English departments (or universities), like that of WSU, continue to maintain and/or develop rather prominent programs in digital, technology, and culture, and technical writing (courses that many instructors are granted opportunities to teach in addition to FYW) alongside their composition program, of course, how might instructors who are interested in multimodal composition go about crafting pedagogies and approaches to new media/multimedia composing in a way that will embrace the liberatory potential of multimodal composition while also remaining sensitive and hyper-aware of the different rhetorical and disciplinary demands/expectations that comprise these programs and their respective courses?
(Note: I do not necessarily ask this question with the intention of keeping these programs and courses in compartmentalized discursive and pedagogical spaces; rather, I approach this issue from the perspective of a graduate student and instructor whose research and pedagogical interests stretch across a disciplinary continuum ranging from FYW to digital, technology, and culture to technical writing (and beyond). As opportunities to teach different courses across these disciplines emerge in the future, I will certainly my enthusiasm for multimodal composition and new media/multimedia writing to the fore of my pedagogies, though I wonder, too, how I might make enough distinctions between these pedagogies where I am not simply exporting or re-tooling activities and major inquiry projects from one course to another.)
2) In Chapter 3 of Remixing Composition, you caution compositionists against "painting all young students with the same broad brush" (114) in making assumptions about their existing functional, rhetorical, and critical literacies in using new media in and around prospective classroom activities. Beyond the prospects for assigning literacy narratives and/or "video documentaries," what other measures can compositionists take to speak to the obstacles that students face with material limitations, physical or mental impairments, and/or developing literacies?
(Note: In asking this question, I don't pre-suppose that a "purified" or "all-inclusive" pedagogy exists in which all of these and other obstacles are answered; rather, I hope to gain more insight into the ways in which compositionists might better tailor their classrooms, assignments, curricula, etc. to increase the prospects for dynamic learning opportunities and robust forms of participation among the broadest, most diverse student population possible.)
For Palmeri, "the study and teaching of multimodal composing must necessarily be an interdisciplinary endeavor" (155). Though effectively extolling the virtues (and, of course, the necessities) of approaching multimodal composing in an interdisciplinary manner and collaborating with scholars in different disciplines to study the creative process, he also makes it a point to articulate the specific ways in which compositionists might contribute to conversations about writing and education reform. By juxtaposing misguided and one-dimensional efforts to simply "teach students to become professional 'new media' producers" against the creative and productive tension that inheres in pedagogies that "engage [students] in reflectively considering how theories of rhetoric and process can travel across modalities" (153), Palmeri elucidates upon and appeals to a brand of multimodal composition that effectively and fervently contests "the rigid compartmentalization of knowledge in the modern university" (132). Indeed, much of what Palmeri discusses in Remixing Composition seems predicated on the notion that "considerations of new media should not be left to 'computers-and-writing' or 'technical communication' specialists alone" (94), a claim that he supports by framing multimodal composition as a practice (or practices) entrenched in the need to acquire dynamic understandings of audience and purpose and a recognition of the affordances and limitations of various media and genres.
Yet, what I found most compelling and important about Palmeri's project in Remixing Composition, was his general commitment to answering the enthusiasm and supposed liberatory potential of multimodal composition with an important challenge to the "field's tendency to fetishize 'new' technologies," a move that he suggests, "problematically works to reinforce racist and colonialist narratives of progress" (12). In this sense, efforts to locate "transferable composing skills" that speak to school, civic, and workplace contexts are always tempered by a call for trepidation, a call for teaching methodologies that integrate matters of racism, classism, sexism, and so forth into the very infrastructure of multimodal composition pedagogies. This seeming call for teaching methodologies resonates with me, because it accentuates multivalent issues of access, literacy, social justice, and stakeholders, not as an after-thought or sub-section to multimodal composition theory and practice but as the very metric by which compositionists organize and students engage with assigned/required technologies, course content, and major inquiry projects.
Questions for Jason Palmeri about Remixing Composition
1) Much of Remixing Composition seems to extol the virtues (and historical precedents in the field) of compositionists being promiscuous, so to speak, in their efforts to form multimodal composition pedagogies around productive intersections between composition and the allied arts. You even go so far as to say that "considerations of new media should not be left to 'computers-and-writing' or 'technical communication' specialists alone" (94). As English departments (or universities), like that of WSU, continue to maintain and/or develop rather prominent programs in digital, technology, and culture, and technical writing (courses that many instructors are granted opportunities to teach in addition to FYW) alongside their composition program, of course, how might instructors who are interested in multimodal composition go about crafting pedagogies and approaches to new media/multimedia composing in a way that will embrace the liberatory potential of multimodal composition while also remaining sensitive and hyper-aware of the different rhetorical and disciplinary demands/expectations that comprise these programs and their respective courses?
(Note: I do not necessarily ask this question with the intention of keeping these programs and courses in compartmentalized discursive and pedagogical spaces; rather, I approach this issue from the perspective of a graduate student and instructor whose research and pedagogical interests stretch across a disciplinary continuum ranging from FYW to digital, technology, and culture to technical writing (and beyond). As opportunities to teach different courses across these disciplines emerge in the future, I will certainly my enthusiasm for multimodal composition and new media/multimedia writing to the fore of my pedagogies, though I wonder, too, how I might make enough distinctions between these pedagogies where I am not simply exporting or re-tooling activities and major inquiry projects from one course to another.)
2) In Chapter 3 of Remixing Composition, you caution compositionists against "painting all young students with the same broad brush" (114) in making assumptions about their existing functional, rhetorical, and critical literacies in using new media in and around prospective classroom activities. Beyond the prospects for assigning literacy narratives and/or "video documentaries," what other measures can compositionists take to speak to the obstacles that students face with material limitations, physical or mental impairments, and/or developing literacies?
(Note: In asking this question, I don't pre-suppose that a "purified" or "all-inclusive" pedagogy exists in which all of these and other obstacles are answered; rather, I hope to gain more insight into the ways in which compositionists might better tailor their classrooms, assignments, curricula, etc. to increase the prospects for dynamic learning opportunities and robust forms of participation among the broadest, most diverse student population possible.)
Monday, August 31, 2015
Defining a (Sub-)Field: Multimodal Composition in Six Keys
In "NCTE Position Statement on Multimodal Literacies," the authors who composed the statement at the National Council of Teachers of English attempt to at least begin to formalize discursive and learning spaces in which instructors and students alike might value multimodal composition as "the interplay of meaning-making systems" (17). According to the position statement, framing multimodal composition in this way requires that instructors and students buy into the notion that "all modes of communication are codependent" (17) and that more stock is placed in "read[ing] critically and writ[ing] functionally, no matter what the medium" (Kist qtd in. 18). In order for multimodal composition to flourish, though, the position statement insists that instructors ought to develop curricula standards and assessment practices in collaboration with their students, who are "often more literate in the technical aspects of digital production than many of their teachers" (19).
In "Contending with Terms: 'Multimodal' and 'Multimedia' in the Academic and Public Spheres," Claire Lauer illustrates the ways in which "[d]efining terms is a situated activity" (22) by making important distinctions between "multimodal" and "multimedia" as they are applied in "academic," "professional," and/or "hybrid spaces." For Lauer, these terms exist on a continuum between "design/process" and "production/distribution," a continuum that dictates how a term and its attendant meanings will or will not be valued in different spaces. The term "multimodal" generally finds a home in academic spaces, where "design/process" is a focal point of the work that students do, a point of emphasis that represents a move away from "grammatical correctness and rigid, formulaic structures for writing" (38). The term "multimedia," on the other hand, remains integral to spaces outside of academia, where "production/distribution" are "most valued because it is only by way of production that companies are able to meet the needs of their clients and stay economically viable" (38). Ultimately, Lauer urges instructors to avoid using these terms interchangeably, and to help students understand the rhetorical dimensions that dictate how terms like "multimodal" and "multimedia" are used, thus using "multimedia" as a "gateway term" of sorts.
In "The Still-Unbuilt Hacienda," Geoffrey Sirc juxtaposes Composition's seeming conservatism and its willingness to serve as a sort of "pre-professional discourse" or "Corporate Seminar" since the 1980s against the more fluid, indeterminate, and liberatory potential that inhered in Composition during the late-1960s. Sirc draws on a contingent of Composition theorists and experimental artists in and around the late-1960s, in order to answer Composition's "narrowing bandwidth" with a call for instructors to imbue their teaching with a more potent and creative approach that speaks to Composition's roots as a decidedly avant-garde discipline. Ultimately, Sirc seems to suggest that the prospects for realizing "Composition's Hacienda" rests on "a crucial need to understand the irreverence, the disgust, for old forms, as well as the passion for rethinking forms" (58).
In "Made Not Only in Words: Composition in a New Key," Kathleen Blake Yancey narrates a moment in composition studies in which discourses around literacy have attempted to move beyond the narrow and stultified annals of strictly written and textual literacies. Indeed, Yancey urges compositionists to embrace and create unique and personalized discursive spaces that are sensitive to shifts in our understanding of literacy, and accommodates the electronic and "screen literacies" that comprise Web 2.0. Ultimately, Yancey's call for curriculum reform rests on a model of composition in which students can reflect more astutely and critically about the role that "real world" genres and different media play in communicating ideas and entering into conversation with a writing public.
In "A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies: Designing Social Futures," The New London Group problematizes existing conceptualizations of literacy pedagogy that seem to ignore the prospects for effective and legitimate forms of communication outside of textuality and language. For The New London Group, the notion of "multiliteracies" is therefore predicated on recognizing these different forms of communication as unique and potent gateways for advocacy and social participation. They propose designing literacy pedagogy around four components: Situated Practice, Overt Instruction, Critical Framing, and Transformed Practice. For The New London Group, the notion of "multiliteracies" remains an indispensable concept to enact in its capacity to create a "productive diversity" in and around combined literacy practices, a forum for "learners [to] juxtapose different languages, discourses, styles, and approaches [in such a way that] they gain substantively in meta-cognitive and meta-linguistic abilities and in their ability to reflect critically on complex systems and their interactions" (69).
In "From Analysis to Design: Visual Communication in the Teaching of Writing," Diana George extols the virtues of extending literacy pedagogy to include visual literacies in a more robust and meaningful way. For George, existing literacy pedagogies fall short in their seeming incapacity to more explicitly include visual rhetorics in their understandings of the notion of communication and design. Though she is certainly interested in making the relationship between text and image more central to literacy pedagogies in the composition classroom, she seems to meditate on and/or entertain the prospects of re-framing visual literacies as a legitimate and pregnant form of communication in its own right.
[I will post my visualization a bit later when I can get the image function in blogger to work.]
In "Contending with Terms: 'Multimodal' and 'Multimedia' in the Academic and Public Spheres," Claire Lauer illustrates the ways in which "[d]efining terms is a situated activity" (22) by making important distinctions between "multimodal" and "multimedia" as they are applied in "academic," "professional," and/or "hybrid spaces." For Lauer, these terms exist on a continuum between "design/process" and "production/distribution," a continuum that dictates how a term and its attendant meanings will or will not be valued in different spaces. The term "multimodal" generally finds a home in academic spaces, where "design/process" is a focal point of the work that students do, a point of emphasis that represents a move away from "grammatical correctness and rigid, formulaic structures for writing" (38). The term "multimedia," on the other hand, remains integral to spaces outside of academia, where "production/distribution" are "most valued because it is only by way of production that companies are able to meet the needs of their clients and stay economically viable" (38). Ultimately, Lauer urges instructors to avoid using these terms interchangeably, and to help students understand the rhetorical dimensions that dictate how terms like "multimodal" and "multimedia" are used, thus using "multimedia" as a "gateway term" of sorts.
In "The Still-Unbuilt Hacienda," Geoffrey Sirc juxtaposes Composition's seeming conservatism and its willingness to serve as a sort of "pre-professional discourse" or "Corporate Seminar" since the 1980s against the more fluid, indeterminate, and liberatory potential that inhered in Composition during the late-1960s. Sirc draws on a contingent of Composition theorists and experimental artists in and around the late-1960s, in order to answer Composition's "narrowing bandwidth" with a call for instructors to imbue their teaching with a more potent and creative approach that speaks to Composition's roots as a decidedly avant-garde discipline. Ultimately, Sirc seems to suggest that the prospects for realizing "Composition's Hacienda" rests on "a crucial need to understand the irreverence, the disgust, for old forms, as well as the passion for rethinking forms" (58).
In "Made Not Only in Words: Composition in a New Key," Kathleen Blake Yancey narrates a moment in composition studies in which discourses around literacy have attempted to move beyond the narrow and stultified annals of strictly written and textual literacies. Indeed, Yancey urges compositionists to embrace and create unique and personalized discursive spaces that are sensitive to shifts in our understanding of literacy, and accommodates the electronic and "screen literacies" that comprise Web 2.0. Ultimately, Yancey's call for curriculum reform rests on a model of composition in which students can reflect more astutely and critically about the role that "real world" genres and different media play in communicating ideas and entering into conversation with a writing public.
In "A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies: Designing Social Futures," The New London Group problematizes existing conceptualizations of literacy pedagogy that seem to ignore the prospects for effective and legitimate forms of communication outside of textuality and language. For The New London Group, the notion of "multiliteracies" is therefore predicated on recognizing these different forms of communication as unique and potent gateways for advocacy and social participation. They propose designing literacy pedagogy around four components: Situated Practice, Overt Instruction, Critical Framing, and Transformed Practice. For The New London Group, the notion of "multiliteracies" remains an indispensable concept to enact in its capacity to create a "productive diversity" in and around combined literacy practices, a forum for "learners [to] juxtapose different languages, discourses, styles, and approaches [in such a way that] they gain substantively in meta-cognitive and meta-linguistic abilities and in their ability to reflect critically on complex systems and their interactions" (69).
In "From Analysis to Design: Visual Communication in the Teaching of Writing," Diana George extols the virtues of extending literacy pedagogy to include visual literacies in a more robust and meaningful way. For George, existing literacy pedagogies fall short in their seeming incapacity to more explicitly include visual rhetorics in their understandings of the notion of communication and design. Though she is certainly interested in making the relationship between text and image more central to literacy pedagogies in the composition classroom, she seems to meditate on and/or entertain the prospects of re-framing visual literacies as a legitimate and pregnant form of communication in its own right.
[I will post my visualization a bit later when I can get the image function in blogger to work.]
A Multimodal Representation of My Relationship to Writing
Let me preface all of this by saying that the images featured in this post of the multimodal representation of my relationship to writing do not necessarily encapsulate the multimodal representation that I created during class last week. I will explain the implications of these transformations a little later in my post, but it would make more sense to describe the thrust of my multimodal representation and how, specifically, it evokes my relationship to writing.
On either side of a divider is a "Hello Kitty" sticker that represents me as a student, on the one hand, and an instructor, on the other. Both student as well as instructor are being urged to "run," highlighting in many ways the manner in which the demands and expectations of each role are dictated by a pace that is not always comfortable for me to follow. On either side of the divider are eyes and reminders about completing assignments, paying bills, attending events, etc., nodding to the role that audience perpetually plays in and around the work I compose, and the looming deadlines and obligations that comprise balancing academics, professionalism, and economic realities. Underneath the divider, you will find two blown-up balloons that represent "family" and "friends." While these balloons in some ways threaten to collapse the careful and precarious balance that comprises my relationship to writing, they are also that which I seek to be closest to, the constituencies that seem to always hang in the balance as I work to enact and maintain my relationship to writing.
Though the first iteration of my multimodal representation included blown-up balloons that further accentuated the precariousness of my relationship to writing, the once-prominent balloons are now virtually deflated in the iteration this is featured in this post, looking more like dried-up grapes than the vibrant and vital constituencies that they are supposed to represent. Previous to my composing this post, I had plans to purchase new balloons, in order to restore my multimodal representation to its original form. However, many of the demands and expectations that materialized this past week prevented me from doing so. Perhaps, though, I think that is what my relationship to writing is all about: making time to perpetually resuscitate my relationship to my family and friends.
[I am having trouble inserting images on my browser, so I will have to insert my images later on a different computer.]
On either side of a divider is a "Hello Kitty" sticker that represents me as a student, on the one hand, and an instructor, on the other. Both student as well as instructor are being urged to "run," highlighting in many ways the manner in which the demands and expectations of each role are dictated by a pace that is not always comfortable for me to follow. On either side of the divider are eyes and reminders about completing assignments, paying bills, attending events, etc., nodding to the role that audience perpetually plays in and around the work I compose, and the looming deadlines and obligations that comprise balancing academics, professionalism, and economic realities. Underneath the divider, you will find two blown-up balloons that represent "family" and "friends." While these balloons in some ways threaten to collapse the careful and precarious balance that comprises my relationship to writing, they are also that which I seek to be closest to, the constituencies that seem to always hang in the balance as I work to enact and maintain my relationship to writing.
Though the first iteration of my multimodal representation included blown-up balloons that further accentuated the precariousness of my relationship to writing, the once-prominent balloons are now virtually deflated in the iteration this is featured in this post, looking more like dried-up grapes than the vibrant and vital constituencies that they are supposed to represent. Previous to my composing this post, I had plans to purchase new balloons, in order to restore my multimodal representation to its original form. However, many of the demands and expectations that materialized this past week prevented me from doing so. Perhaps, though, I think that is what my relationship to writing is all about: making time to perpetually resuscitate my relationship to my family and friends.
[I am having trouble inserting images on my browser, so I will have to insert my images later on a different computer.]
Tuesday, May 12, 2015
Final Project Proposal and DTC 101 Syllabus
Below you will find links to both my Final Project Proposal as well as my DTC 101 Syllabus. Both projects were composed using wix, which, I;m finding now, is a truly incredible platform for hosting Web sites.
Composing the Final Project Proposal was more difficult than I anticipated. While I thought that my Final Project Presentation was pretty solid, shifting my ideas to a different interface was a challenge. Regardless, I am very happy with the product that emerged from all of this.
Composing the DTC 101 Syllabus, surprisingly enough, was actually easier than I anticipated. While I certainly struggled earlier on in the semester with composing assignments, I actually had quite a bit of fun putting them together. I chalk most of this up to composing on wix.
At any rate, thank you so much for all of your support. I hope you enjoy my Final Project Proposal and DTC 101 Syllabus!
Final Project Proposal
DTC 101 Syllabus
Composing the Final Project Proposal was more difficult than I anticipated. While I thought that my Final Project Presentation was pretty solid, shifting my ideas to a different interface was a challenge. Regardless, I am very happy with the product that emerged from all of this.
Composing the DTC 101 Syllabus, surprisingly enough, was actually easier than I anticipated. While I certainly struggled earlier on in the semester with composing assignments, I actually had quite a bit of fun putting them together. I chalk most of this up to composing on wix.
At any rate, thank you so much for all of your support. I hope you enjoy my Final Project Proposal and DTC 101 Syllabus!
Final Project Proposal
DTC 101 Syllabus
Friday, May 1, 2015
Reflecting on My Development of Digital Humanities Literacies
In a lot of ways, I feel as if the trajectory of my engagement with the digital humanities has been marked by my attempts to understand the relationship between theory and practice within the discipline. In my first presentation of the semester, I was still struggling in many ways with how to translate digital humanities theory into digital humanities practice, recognizing more instances in which this process "failed" subjects, artifacts, and end-users than those that adequately and meaningfully engaged content. Which is not to say that I necessarily saw (or see) theory and practice as compartmentalized discursive spaces, but I just needed to really believe in the digital humanities and discover digital humanities practices that spoke more directly to my own sensibilities and those sensibilities articulated by Tara McPherson and Matthew Kirschbaum and Alan Liu, Olin Bjork and Melanie Kill, N. Katherine Hayles and Jason Farman, and so forth. In short, I really needed to engage in digital humanities practice myself before I could really see and understand all of the ways in which theory and practice are entangled and overlapping within the digital humanities.
In my most recent presentation regarding my final project proposal, though, I feel as if I finally got it. In predicating much of my presentation on the social, cultural, and historical context in which Cuba generally developed into an insular and surveiled geographical space, and relating these circumstances to the emergence and relative inaccessibility of digital technologies in Cuba, I finally found what I was looking for in the digital humanities: a unique and profound performance of digital humanities theory. Indeed, I argued in my presentation that the manner in which Cubans navigated obstacles in and around material access, in order to actually use digital technologies, escape surveillance, shirk hardware and infrastructure limitations, and exchange information, constituted a form of (h)ac(k)tivism that embodied digital humanities theory. Cubans in Cuba, I found, were performing the digital humanities by virtue of their very acquisition of unique and personalized digital literacies.
It was not until after my presentation, though, when Doctor Christen Withey indicated that my social, cultural, and historical context was, in fact, my project, that I truly understood that I, too, was performing the digital humanities, and that I had unearthed and revealed that point of contact between theory and practice that I longed for at the beginning of the semester. My own digital humanities literacy is still in development, but I am excited to really take ownership of my contextualized approach to my project on the topic of Cuban digital literacies, not as a "brief and reductive timeline," but as the very fabric of an important and timely project in the digital humanities.
In my most recent presentation regarding my final project proposal, though, I feel as if I finally got it. In predicating much of my presentation on the social, cultural, and historical context in which Cuba generally developed into an insular and surveiled geographical space, and relating these circumstances to the emergence and relative inaccessibility of digital technologies in Cuba, I finally found what I was looking for in the digital humanities: a unique and profound performance of digital humanities theory. Indeed, I argued in my presentation that the manner in which Cubans navigated obstacles in and around material access, in order to actually use digital technologies, escape surveillance, shirk hardware and infrastructure limitations, and exchange information, constituted a form of (h)ac(k)tivism that embodied digital humanities theory. Cubans in Cuba, I found, were performing the digital humanities by virtue of their very acquisition of unique and personalized digital literacies.
It was not until after my presentation, though, when Doctor Christen Withey indicated that my social, cultural, and historical context was, in fact, my project, that I truly understood that I, too, was performing the digital humanities, and that I had unearthed and revealed that point of contact between theory and practice that I longed for at the beginning of the semester. My own digital humanities literacy is still in development, but I am excited to really take ownership of my contextualized approach to my project on the topic of Cuban digital literacies, not as a "brief and reductive timeline," but as the very fabric of an important and timely project in the digital humanities.
Monday, April 20, 2015
In Whispers and Furtive Glances: Assessing Digital Literacies and (H)ac(k)tivism in Post-Embargo Cuba
In Whispers and Furtive Glances - Created with Haiku Deck, presentation software that inspires
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