Very clever Wysocki... To take something scary and exclusive like "new media" and to incorporate both digital and print mediums into a larger, inclusive definition is a very smart move. I find myself thinking back to a presentation I attended with Dr. Kathleen Hayle (who is a wonderful person by the way and one of the front runners of post-humanism literary theory). Hayle discussed how English departments needed to move away from the traditional demarcation of different literary periods in time periods (Renaissance, Medieval, modern, victorian etc.) and instead move to a medium based approach. Thus, instead of saying I was studying Renaissance literature, I might study the manuscript, or the early printing press media etc. I think it is a bit of a pipe dream and I am not sure what this new arrangement offers but I think it would sit well with Wysocki. It seems that Wysocki wants us to spend less time arguing over content and more time examining how the medium and form the content is displayed on effects the message within. I don't know if my summary makes sense, but I like the heart behind Wysocki's message.
Why do I have everything left justified in my paper.
Why
does
every
word
follow
the last
?
Nonetheless I always fall back to the form I know and am comfortable with at the end of the day, but it is interesting to think about. We think about form, style and format in poetry but rarely in composition class (as Anne rightly points out). I like that Wysocki is not just trying to get digital media infused into the composition course, although of course that is a sub-objective. Instead, she is trying to ask us to recognize the constrictive force of medium and form on our writing regardless of whether we acknowledge it or not, so we might as well acknowledge it. In that vein I thought the crayon activity was awesome (pg. 27)! Any activity that uncovers cultural pre-conditioning (crayons are childish and silly) is a favorite of mine. I am not sure how the subsequent exercises would go over in class (redesign the computer for cockroaches?). I also thought the idea of a visual argument showcase with the students rotating between pieces and guessing at the arguments was really interesting and something I might try when I transition into my unit IV multi-model argument.
Selfe seemed to be playing off of Wysocki's same arguments. I thought that her evaluation hand-outs were really interesting and would probably work really well in a peer review situation (they were visual themselves, which was interesting). I also thought her assignment that adapted a research paper and transformed it into a visual argument was very similar to what I plan on suggesting for my students multimodel essay. Overall, I thought these readings were both theoretically rigorous and very practical!
Now, I dare someone to blog on this article just using visual media!
Drew, I liked hearing about how you are looking forward to tying in Renaissance literature with the digital humanities. So often we think of Renaissance and Medieval focuses as old-timey (and I mean, rightly so) but now with all this emerging technology, it's amazing how modern advancements can speak to and enhance texts that were created centuries ago. I'm thinking specifically about Elizabeth Chang's idea of creating a digitized garden that recognizes different fauna for the Victorian novel The Secret Garden--fascinating! I wonder if you could recruit some new Renaissance scholars by using digital technology in your classroom when you become a literature professor.
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