conference paper

My conference paper has been posted on my blog. I made it a google doc and it offered to post on my blog. I htought it would just provide a link to it, but it is an actual posting:) Click title to go to my blog.

Final Project Ahoy

Here ya go...

(no frills)

(Re)Defining Rhetoric

Posted on Oakspace. YouTube said it was too big, as did the blog.

(Re)Defining Rhetoric: De-Scribing the Privileged Narrative with Digital New Media

(Re)Defining Rhetoric: De-Scribing the Privileged Narrative with Digital New Media

Our 15-minute iMovie questions traditional definitions of text and ways of reading, redefines digital text as auditory, visual, and intercultural, offers a new rhetoric through which to read new texts, and argues that rhetoric and composition pedagogy that disrupts privileged, linear narratives and requires digital, new media work benefits students by emphasizing critical thinking and multiculturalism.

Melanie will focus on intersections of auditory and visual rhetoric represented by Joan Osborne’s Spider Web and selected images and quotes, introduce Spider Web rhetoric as a way to read and compose digital new media texts. What distinguishes Spider Web rhetoric from other rhetorical theories is its ideological grounding: it originates from a pre-"historic" Pagan system of beliefs that value feminine and masculine principles equally and questions the origins of text.

Russ will focus on the importance of teaching critical thinking of new media and new media literacy because of the cultural emphasis upon it, how it shapes our identities, and the growing volume of communication within the associated domains. Furthermore, Teaching new media literacy leads to connections between affinity groups by encouraging the appreciation of their internal language and understanding their cultural/professional significance because of its ability to convey meaning in a more detailed, multi-modal way. Also, this opens the door to transfer problem solving methods from one affinity group to the next.

Todd will begin by focusing on traditional definitions of concepts such as rhetoric and text. After doing so, he will then move on to discuss how emerging technologies complicate our understandings of these concepts. In an age where digital media plays such an important part in so many of our lives, we, as rhetorical thinkers, must become aware of how and why certain rhetorics and texts maintain a privileged position in our society. The goal of his portion of the Imovie will be to demonstrate how we bring our own unique cultural backgrounds to texts. Through a brief exploration of hip-hop culture’s influence on American culture, Todd will explore how factors such as race, gender, and class play a part in our understanding of the rhetorical aspects of these texts.

PROJECT OUTLINE

"(Re)Defining Rhetoric: De-Scribing the Privileged Narrative with Digital New Media"

3 min

The Value of Text and its Origins

Montage: The thinking man, Aristotle (Orator MP3 too), quill, pen, pencil, press, Word Processing, web page, cuneiform, hieroglyphics, mayan alphabet, ogham script.

Make a distinction between traditional next and new media texts

Rhetoric = Text = Literacy (images of definitions)

• The Essay, its importance, its impact on ourselves as writers and our audiences.

3 min

But Technology Had Other Plans for Text...

Define: New Media Domain and Multi-Modal Discourse.

Montage(New Media Domains): Web pages (extensive list to be generated), video (extensive list to be generated), Power Point, etc.

• Volume of communication in New Media domains to be reckoned with. Also shows how text is at the foundations of these domains. Because text is at the foundation of these domains then English Studies cannot ethically turn away from educating students to think critically of New Media domains.

3 min

Now we have a question to ask ourselves. Are we ready to teach our English students (Digital) literacy in New Media domains?

• Resistance within English Studies to expanding New Media use and lessons. Irrational fear it will replace text? (McDavid quote – text will take on new purposes, “build recursively on its predecessor”)

Quote from C Selfe -

We have to embrace the technology and find out what it has to teach us.

Quote from Alexander -

Our youth are shaping their identities not so much in the classroom, but in the popular domains such as the internet and its various media.

Quotes from Sirc and Wysocki -

7-8 min

Implications (and where we get to stretch our legs a bit as individual group members).

• If we do expand teaching digital literacy in New Media domains...

1. This is where Todd will discuss how hip-hop culture can allow composers to redefine concepts of rhetoric, literacy, and textuality through new media.

2. This is where Melanie will discuss spider-web rhetoric as a vehicle for composers to redefine concepts of rhetoric, literacy, and image (as text) through new media.

3. This is where Russ will discuss how new media literacy leads to new uses and applications for traditional text. Furthermore, teaching new media literacy leads to connections between affinity groups by encouraging the appreciation of their internal language and understanding their cultural/professional significance because of its ability to convey meaning in a more detailed, multi-modal way.

• If we don't expand teaching in new literacy domains...

Ø We will have a society of inactive thinkers and media will shape us rather than we will shape media.

MATERIALS (MEDIA) LIST

Collection

Montages –
The chronology of writing instruments shows not just evolution of writing, but a strong dependence on the foundation of it all, text: (thought to oration?) quill to pen, to press, pencil, type writer, word processor, web page (power point, video, audio recording?)

Images to accompany Hip-Hop rhetoric: instruments, bard, orator, (folklore, storytelling?), MC, Hip-Hop culture

Buzz words, military, law, politics, plumber, stocks, music, art


REMAINING DEVELOPMENTS

Interview shots? – Should each contributing author state some of their arguments grounded in an interview shot, maybe interspersed with montage and reference clips?
*-this is effective in how it humanizes the argument (can also be done with just a photo too)

The Poeticomic - Dave, Lydia, and Brett

In order to better understand the rhetorical possibilities of combining print media and new media, our project will take existing poems of ours and translate them into hypertext-laden comics. Within the comic-book-esque renditions of the poems themselves will be links to pertinent scholarship by Gunther Kress, Albert Rouzie, Myka Veillstemig, and Scott McCloud. The associative nature of this project stems from our interest in the traditional personal essay, and our belief in the lyrical, poetic possibilities of “the new essay” as defined by Viellstimig.

Our homepage will situate the poetry on a picture of a musty, yellowing book. Within the poems, numerous links will take us to discrete comic book scenes that will also be able to be viewed as a cohesive story.

We hope to be able to make this experience interactive; our three poems will line up thematically in a way that should allow the user to choose-her-own poem, choose-her-own-comic, choose her own way through the web of print media, new media, hypertextual link, traditional scholarship, and visual argument.

For instance, clicking on the first line of Lydia’s poem may bring us to a scene in a bowling alley. That page may have two linked options: continue in the poeticomic bowling alley, or choose the next line and comic scene from Dave’s poem (which will be thematically-linked and probably set in an Applebee’s). A third click might take the user to a picture of Albert Rouzie, animated: text here might read “POW KAZAAM, Take that you serio-villains; always be LUDIC. BLAMO.” The word “ludic” will link the user to a funny line from Lydia’s poem, back in the bowling alley (but this time with Zombies). We foresee productive challenges with this method that we will reflect on in “Dave Wanczyk Law Blog,” “Critical Pickle,” and "A Metanarrative."

To make our website, we will become well-versed in Dreamweaver, Comic-Life, Photoshop, and Photo Booth; we also hope to take advantage of the technology in the @lab for rendering our images.

Our process will be logged on RouzieWiki as well as RouzieBlog.

Comments and constructive criticism welcome.

A further note about our process: We will be drawing on some of the scholarship mentioned above to theorize our experience and its implications. I think Geoffrey Sirc's box logic will be particularly relevant and helpful, considering the many boxes involved in our potential project: boxes within the comic form, boxes as links, the blog and the wiki as separate but connected boxes, also we have begun to learn from our friend David Grover, and a bit from our virtual tutor Garrick Chow, about the invisible boxes containing our web design and floating above it to provide links to our other boxes. Boxes abound. We'll see what we can make of them.

Proposal Draft for Craig, Jules, and Rebecca

Snapshot and Snap Judgment:
Pulitzer Photographs, Theorists, and Interaction ... Oh My!

Pictures and figures have increasingly become a major component of literacy studies. Every day we see hundreds of images that provide information (news) or tacitly ask us to purchase a product. Sometimes, however, images are given stronger context by the text displayed with them such as the details surrounding the events of that brief moment in time. This presentation will explore the impact of textual notation on Pulitzer winning images between 2000 and 2007. Further, it will also explore impressions of these pictures without the textual explanations and how text changes the interpretation and meaning of the photographs. By using visual examples, this presentation will allow web surfers to interact with images both with text (thus, context) and without (con)text and also provide opportunities to discover how others interpret the same visual images.

Visual texts, photographic essays, and visual portfolios now pepper several composition and writing texts because they offer another option for teachers to engage students. To better utilize these compositions, we need to understand the psychological effect of images. Some images stop viewers and they want to know more. Others “provoke,” as Roland Barthes writes, “polite interest” (27). What is the fundamental difference between pictures that grab us and those that do not? One possible answer is provided by Barthes, he suggests, “Photography evades us” (4). The meaning of the image is lost because viewers are more dismissive of images. People see so many images; they are likely to make snap judgments about them, their context, and their meaning. This indifference distorts the realism of the image. This presentation will use a user-guided interface on the Web to solicit impressions of images, then provide original context for the images, and finally offer a space for viewers to detail their thoughts about the differences.

Susan Sontag explains, “Reality has always been interpreted through the reports given by images” (349). Thus, pictures report reality to us. How images are interpreted is important because it is our construction of reality—in that one moment. That one moment may be supported by context or not, and the generation of that story—that (non)fiction of reality—needs to be explored. Sontag also writes, “Reality itself has started to be understood as a kind of writing” (354). The text, I think, she refers to is the context explored in this presentation. If Web viewers choose, this website will have a theoretical section where a discussion takes place by three theorists (portrayed by the designers/presenters) where they discuss a photograph based on their respective theoretical positions.

Therefore, this presentation will focus on some key questions. What impact does an image by itself have? Does this impact change with text? If so, in what ways? How does a viewer’s emotional response change with textual explanation or more information? How do theorists such as Sontag, Barthes, and Mitchell see the use of images? In responding to these questions, this work will provide an analysis of how visual literacy is exercised within our daily lives and through several theorists' interpretation. The goal of this presentation is to engage web viewers with how they interpret images and how a theoretical framework supports those interpretations.

A Web site will be created that will include interactive and theoretical components that demonstrate how "new" media and "old" media can combine to be productive facets of the proactive classroom.

Prospective audience: students and teachers of visual rhetoric, especially instructors who want to incorporate "new media" and visual rhetoric into the classroom but are unsure of the theories, books, images, or assignments available. This website will not only provide an interactive interpretive experience for the casual viewer, but will also provide instructors with an introduction to visual rhetoric and photography through (text)book reviews, helpful links, as well as entry-level assignments that have proven effective in the classroom.

Review of Marcel O'Gorman's Book

As part of my review, I have completed an assignment found in the O'Gorman text. Please, if you have time, review this link before class on Tuesday.
Thanks!
http://sites.google.com/site/introecrit1/Home

Best,
Craig

Destination Final Project - my thumb is up

Hi folks! I am looking for collaborators and I have an idea for the final project. However, I am also open to helping someone out with an already existing plan or working out a hybrid plan. I'm very interested in creative video work and I have a knack for editing on a/v software timelines. I also have audio skills (recording, editing, and music composing) and can provide soundtracks without copyright worries, cool sound effects, and doctor the inevitable crappy audio recording on software like sound forge or acid.

For the final project I hope to integrate some video work of course and I'd like to present some arguments regarding literacies within domains--perhaps hip-hop artists, gamers, or some other craft? Something I wrote about on the wiki was that there needs to be a greater understanding of professional/cultural literacies in order to function more efficiently as a society. Sharing the literacy of a certain affinity group with outsiders may lead to a more realistic (rather than stereotypical) representation and thus greater convergence, respect, tolerance, and empathy in in the world. Acquiring another domain's literacy even on a basic level may also provide learners with "transfer" as Gee puts it, helping them solve problems and articulate themselves better in other domains.

Rouzie Hits, He Scores! Serio-Ludic Points in At Play in the Fields of Writing

Melvidal Troisvoix*—Book Review
792E Computers & Composition Pedagogy
Dr. Albert Rouzie
October 22, 2008


Albert Rouzie’s At Play in the Fields of Writing: A Serio-Ludic Rhetoric makes a valuable contribution to English studies and language arts. It provides an important resource for faculty interested in connections between writing process pedagogy, rhetorical theory, computer-mediated communication (CMC), new media technologies, and multimodal literacies.

I say this not only because I am a student in Dr. Rouzie’s graduate Computers & Composition Pedagogy course at the same time that I am reading his book and composing this review. Or because my partner, David, a professor of English for 20+ years, has read and praised it. Or because I agree with Dr. Rouzie’s claim that opportunities to play in English studies open spaces for fruitful, curative (re)vision of relationships between rhetoric and poetic, work and play, verbal and visual, self and others. Or because I believe that connections “between texts and the dramatic effects of visual and aural media” (128) deserve attention. I say this because the book cleverly demonstrates the subversive, “serio-ludic” quality it espouses.

Texts that are composed in a playful manner are a particular kind of rhetoric that assume a playful reader. Certain kinds of resistant texts can be playful, yet make serious points. I have called texts/rhetoric that combine playfulness and seriousness, "serio-ludic." Students can be asked to compose playful texts that also are effective rhetorically.

But those texts will not much resemble conventional texts.

In addition to drawing upon theory from Bakhtin to Wysocki and discussing his experience composing collaborative, new media projects, Dr. Rouzie’s At Play in the Fields of Writing analyzes data gathered from eight, junior-level 1994-95 University of Texas at Austin Computers and Writing courses with consistent awareness of its material and theoretical influences. It generates an experiential, rhetorical theory to bridge ideological polarities that diminish composition and English studies. And it illustrates “serio-ludic” rhetoric through lighthearted, instructive moments, such as Dr. Rouzie’s description of his transition “from stodgy” to “somewhat playful writing instructor” in the computer-mediated classroom as “the funky chicken doing the swim to stay afloat” (5). What exactly is “serio-ludic” rhetoric?

As I understand it from Albert’s book, serio-ludic rhetoric is writing activity that taps into the play impulse yet accomplishes “serious” writing—or “work.” The book shows this happening mostly in computer writing environments, especially in the use of hypertext tends to open the writer up to playful tendencies that he/she wouldn’t try in a traditional writing format. I think if you can get students to tap into that playfulness, you can get them to engage more completely and sincerely in a writing task. If engagement is sincere, then by definition they will learn. It occurs to me as I write the play element can make the writing authentic. If the writing task that they engage in is also “relevant,” if it accomplishes “work” that needs to be done for a class or for an assignment, then both teacher and student see that activity as useful. It seems that it is at this point—when the teacher and student recognize that progress has been made—when the serio is attached to the ludic.

Serio-ludic rhetoric encourages teaching and learning with new media in effort to bridge “the work/play gap” (Rouzie 22) and (re)vise ways we produce and perceive writing. To that end, it draws on Myka Vielstimmig’s “New Essay,” “Petals on a Wet Black Bough. The book title’s play with words is serio-ludic: it combines serious intentions with playful composing. In it we find the invention of a new word describing a new rhetorical theory and an allusion to field games that doubles as a metaphor for diverse areas of English studies involving writing. Conversely, “fields of writing” may also allude to field work. And that’s part of its appeal: it probably means both.

At Play in the Fields of Writing explores the following questions:

What does playful discourse and composition accomplish?

What is good, interesting, and productive about it?

Why should composition instructors be interested in play and what should they do with it?
How can instructors prepare for play?

What kinds of playful discourse are most valuable and why?

How does play figure in emergent forms of literacy?

What is the relationship between play and the composing process? (Rouzie 21-22)


Part of a New Dimensions in Computers and Composition series edited by Gail Hawisher and Cynthia Selfe, At Play in the Fields of Writing features a green and red spiraly swirling cover design that bleeds bottom and left into the spine and out of which white font announces its title, author, editors. In this way it resembles many scholarly books in English studies. Its solid theoretical groundings are social constructivist; its arguments rest upon relationships between individuals and their work, individuals and groups in learning communities, and how work (and play) are categorized, defined, and valued in western culture. Chapters begin with epigraphs and contain subtitles that transition between sections. The text’s linear form is disrupted by plentiful notes, signaled by superscript numbers within chapters that correspond to information at the end of each chapter. These superscripts act like hyperlinks, inviting readers to leave the place they appear, jump ahead to read additional information, and then return to the text. This is not unusual.


However, At Play in the Fields of Rhetoric breaks with English studies tradition by including numerous figures: images accompany most chapters, adding visual depth to verbal scope. Figures range from verbal excerpts of InterChange transcripts to screen shots of student projects in HyperCard that include line art, illustrations, photographs, heads, subheads, short textual blurbs, icons, hyperlinked text (and, we are told, sound)--compositions uniting aural, visual, and verbal elements in the spirit of play.

The book also breaks tradition by privileging a dialectic that values play as part of, rather than separated from, work, especially the work of writing, as it undergoes a rapid technological (r)evolution. The result, as I hope my chapter summaries below show, is fun academic reading, especially for those who enjoy disrupting traditional mores. It is full of examples and practical ideas for creating occasions conducive to “serio-ludic” classroom discourse with a variety of emergent technologies. How might these work?

Well, chat seems to make students approach discussion with a little more playfulness. I have tried using chat in Blackboard for discussion only a couple of times so far. It seems to lead to playful banter and laughter—especially if I participate in a playful way. But I haven’t yet had a sense that students have emerged from a chat having made visible progress with a concept or assignment. (I’m planning a chat for today, so maybe I’ll see such progress.)

Today has passed. I had two classes discuss a basic comp concept, in a brief chat. One class was silent as they typed; the other class’ session was punctuated with giggles. While one class (and they are the “better” class) was outwardly more playful, in both classes students broke discussion protocol, but they came back to the topic:

Benjamin Boaz Iv: she understands what she is writing about and puts in words Oct 21, 2008 12:38:09 PM EDT

Aaron Robinson: anybody home? Oct 21, 2008 12:39:05 PM EDT

Coleman Tramill: nope at school Oct 21, 2008 12:39:16 PM EDT

Aaron Robinson: did anyone see my post? Oct 21, 2008 12:39:18 PM EDT

Victoria Jenkins: way to break the ice squirt Oct 21, 2008 12:39:20 PM EDT

Jordan Patsalides: nope Oct 21, 2008 12:39:23 PM EDT

Aaron Robinson: i'm confused because he states fragility Oct 21, 2008 12:39:27 PM EDT

And both classes moved in the course of 10 minutes to an understanding close to what I was hoping for.

Chapter 1, “Play, Pleasure, and Writing Instruction,” conceptualizes serio-ludic discourse, discusses its performative nature, and suggests its unifying potential for English and composition studies. This chapter also outlines the book’s remaining chapters and discusses two student projects, “How Do Women Get represented? Through Words and Body Parts” and “The Sants Home Page” as examples of serio-ludic discourse that “(dis)orient the reader to a different reading experience” (Rouzie 159). Serio-ludic discourse, characterized by its dramatic opening, metacommunicative signal, and conversion of language into symbolic action via CMC environments, often integrates the aural and the visual with the verbal. It requires audience interaction. CMC offers an ideal location for serio-ludic discourse since it provides composers with multidimensional tools that enable multilayered, new media essays to be experienced, rather than merely read.

Dr. Rouzie notes that current, prevailing academic culture resists this move from old to new ways of thinking about writing and maintains the work/play split. What is the source of this resistance? Have you experienced it?

As I try to recall other attempts to incorporate playful activities, I realize how few I have actually done, even though I have been consciously intent on using more after reading Albert’s book. I think this suggests a resistance despite my awareness of how beneficial it could be. This may reflect the reluctance in students. I remember giving a class the option to summarize a reading from The DaVinci Code in text message format. I gave them a summary of Romeo and Juliet done this way. Only one student tried; all of the others opted for a standard written summary. I think they didn’t want to risk looking silly (as the teacher may not want to risk students not taking him/her seriously), and
they have clear ideas of what should go on
in class.

I have posted a section on my developmental ed e-community entitled “Play.” I don’t know of anyone that has looked at it. I distributed Lex Runciman’s essay “Fun” to all writing instructors more than a week ago. Only one person has mentioned it to me.

Another factor that will work against successful play in the classroom is that as soon as it becomes “assigned,” it is no longer really play. Albert makes this point, about the necessity of play remaining subversive to be energizing and effective in the work / play dialectic. So when I ask students to watch and analyze an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which I have been doing in English 101 for two years now, I intend that the assignment will emerge from a playful place. In fact, the episode itself, “Hush,” is serio-ludic. But most students approach it as just another assignment, at least outwardly. I have noticed that students who begin with the idea that the assignment is silly, usually express surprise at the depth they find writing through it. This may be the serio-ludic at work.

Chapter 2, “Healing the Work/Play Split: A Serio-Ludic Rhetoric for English Composition Studies,” theorizes the origins of western culture’s work / play bifurcation, argues that play is a powerful component of personal growth and social rejuvenation, and offers serio-ludic rhetoric as a bridge between the work/play gap, embodied in English studies by the rhetoric/poetic split. This chapter considers computer-based and non-computer-based environments that are conducive to play and asserts that serio-ludic literacy can emerge in either. It argues that some forms of play, such as thoughtfully designed video games, cultivate critical thinking skills and facilitate social awareness in a pleasurable learning context. Well-designed video games embody a kind of ready-made serio-ludic learning tool that deserves educators’ attention.

It seems that communication based in the visual is devalued. So it's no wonder that students respond to a visual assignment as a form of play--not only in the way that it presents "freedom/possibilities" but in the way that "anything goes."

Our culture (and therefore, students) tends to divorce work
and play, so that play is seen as "anything goes." In reality, play
is rarely anything goes or free play. Children's play is very fluid,
shifting from moment to moment. The rules may change suddenly but
that does not mean there are none. There usually are. Games are a
form of play, very rule-bound. Play can be quite open-ended but
rules and structures usually emerge as one goes along.

The rule-bound nature of play makes me think of the polar bear and the husky: http://www.nifplay.org/polar-husky.html

I think the language of reading (active) vs. viewing (passive) implies the binary often associated with masculine/feminine, and corresponds to the work/play split. Bizarrely, playing video games is regarded as mindless, if not passive. Like a lot of things when working with students with ingrained habits, it seems you have to “trick” them into doing something different. Playful activities and assignments have that potential. If an activity that seems to have no point, or at least no serious educational point, as they see it, turns out to help students move their assignments forward, they may open themselves up to other ways of thinking creatively.

Chapter 3, “Conversation and Carrying-on: Play, Conflict, and Serio-Ludic Discourse in Synchronous Computer Conferencing,” investigates selected segments of serio-ludic discourse in Deadalus InterChange transcripts. It encourages instructors to engage students in regular synchronous conferencing and follow-up analysis of transcripts, paying special attention to conflict, intersections of gender and communication, power negotiations, and playfulness. This chapter proposes that collaborating in synchronous environments creates productive spaces for play in work. In addition to discussing productive examples of synchronous conferencing, it discusses unproductive examples and suggests playful ways to redirect students. Dr. Rouzie calls for instructors to become critical users of technology in order to make pedagogically effective decisions regarding how and what kinds of computer technology best serve their academic programs.

Chapter 4, “Play in Hypertext Theory and Practice,” explores the dramatic and transformative qualities of play within the realm of hypertext and details Dr. Rouzie’s experiences collaboratively composing two postmodern influenced hypertext compositions, This Is Not a Texbook and Hypertext Ear. It analyzes graduate student hypertext compositions, including the mysterious “experience” of Zaum Gagdet (129). Hypertext’s associative, dramatic, interactive, polyphonic, multimodal character makes it an ideal choice for serio-ludic composing. This chapter considers hypertext theory in concert with serio-ludic theory and discusses the grammatical constructs and rhetorical consequences of HyperCard, StorySpace, and World Wide Web. Web authoring, with its complex and limitless material choices, requires a more directed and purposeful approach to serio-ludically aware composition than composing in HyperCard or StorySpace. Dr. Rouzie notes that “the challenge . . . is getting students to work both with and against the grammar of the Web” (153).

Most students are visual learners until they have been indoctrinated in the word. So they like the visual. But they don't value it and seem not to think it could be appropriate for serious work.


Who can blame them? How are adults who read comic books generally regarded? Academics who focus on televisual texts all have stories about the puzzled responses they get from colleagues. A few weeks ago we had turn off your tv week. Why don't we have a close all your books week? What would we think of the mother who told her child to put down her book and go out and
play?

I don't think most students do well at reading image texts or think of images critically. Some years back, my first year comp class was analyzing
some ads. One was a tourism ad for Jamaica that showed a
beach, white people being served tropical drinks by
attractive black people. Some students got to the
point to where they could read this ideologically
through race, class, a bit of colonialism, US
consumerist tourism etc., but some just
would not buy it.

Nothing wrong with it at all.

Horses, water etc.

Chapter 5, “The Composition of Dramatic Experience: The Play Element in Student Electronic Projects,” analyzes selected serio-ludic, HyperCard, MOO, and Web hypertext student compositions from eight sections of the computers and writing course. Goals for the assignment were to increase students’ awareness of computer technology’s “cultural and social effects,” to apply rhetorical strategies and create “effective written composition,” to gain experience with collaborative composing and hypertext software (Rouzie 162). Play figures prominently in the creation of these projects and constitutes an important rhetorical element. Hypertext composition requires authors to consider “the reader’s role in experiencing the document” (Rouzie 160). Emphasis on the need for an experiential way of composing and “reading” these compositions appears in this chapter, recalling Wysocki’s call for a spirit of generous reading. The idea of how composer/ audience interactivity changes composing process and product is discussed. This chapter claims that performative hypertext enacts Burke’s dramatistic theory. Student projects discussed include “The Land of Animation,” “The New Bit,” “Anatomy of a Flame War,” “The Next Step in Education,” and “The Village Square.”

I wonder what the limits of learning in visual
rhetoric are if limited to reading. Wysocki and others
are suggesting that doing it, producing visual rhetoric, is essential
to becoming a better reader, but also a composer with a sense of the available materials.

Chapter 6, “Conclusion: The Changing Fields of Writing,” notes that postsecondary faculty and other workplace professionals are positioned at a “critical crossroads” to decide “what values we will pursue, what choices we will make to lead us into which directions” (Rouzie 193). This chapter considers how serio-ludic rhetoric impacts English studies and departmental culture, rhetoric and composition, computers and the “fields of writing.” It offers 11 suggestions for putting serio-ludic pedagogy into practice. It stresses that time and experience are necessary for faculty to learn how to use the quickly-changing array of computer technology available to them for multi-modal composing, and that this lack of time is an obstacle to effective computers and composition pedagogy.

Dr. Rouzie observes that “College English instructors are currently so overworked that they don’t have the time needed to become comfortable with computer-based teaching, much less to explore how play can be used to enrich composition and communication” (192).

Nevertheless, he claims, they “cannot afford to ignore the visual and reject the expanded sense of writing as authoring (or composing)” that new media fosters, and in this new concept of composing, defining, and experiencing text, play interfaces most appropriately (Rouzie 195). How to evaluate these shapeshifting, serio-ludic, new media compositions without institutionalizing (and thus terminating their spontaneous impulses) presents a challenge for faculty and students negotiating playspaces in new media “fields of writing.”

All of the playful elements I have tried to incorporate have been in the service of traditional essay assignments. So for me the evaluation remains the same. The course outcomes must be met; students must be prepared for the next class—many of which probably won’t allow them to demonstrate their learning in alternative, playful texts. But encouraging the students to be playful in the process, even if the final product is not, may be something. I still hope to work in an alternative text as product—if there’s time, time, time.

Does the traditional way of looking at constructing and evaluating rhetoric and composition restrict students and faculty? Does traditional essayistic emphasis at the expense or exclusion of emergent new essay ideas and technology bog students and teachers down with irrelevant (busy)work that actually limits learning in today’s technology-rich realities outside of academe?

This evaluation point is where I offer humble critique. It would be helpful for Dr. Rouzie to have included examples of how he evaluated his students’ new media compositions, strategies for evaluating serio-ludic compositions, a rubric of some kind. As an instructor eager to learn and use new media technologies successfully in my teaching, to design pedagogically effective and challenging assignments, it is at the evaluative junction that I become most anxious. I recognize that I am struggling against outdated English department competencies that privilege traditional, essayistic writing modes. My sense is that evaluating these new media compositions would disrupt these norms, ease my grading load, and create openings for revising and updating English composition course competencies.

Another point I would make about the book is that it is clearly written for those who possess grounding in theory; some of its more densely theoretical “serio” sections require careful rereading—not that there’s anything wrong with that . . .

Hey, I got through it.

At Play in the Fields of Writing: A Serio-Ludic Rhetoric is a home run. If laughter is the best medicine, than serio-ludic rhetoric may well be the cure for what ails English studies, rhetoricians and poets. I would highly recommend this book to colleagues interested in broadening their teaching repertoire and having fun in the process. ☺

Rouzie, Albert. At Play in the Fields of Writing: A Serio-Ludi Rhetoric. Gail E. Hawisher and Cynthia L. Selfe, eds. Cresskill: Hampton Press, 2005.

Vielstimmig, Myka. “Petals on a Wet Black Bough: Textuality, Collaboration, and the New Essay.” Passions Pedagogies and 21st Century Technologies. Gail E. Hawisher and Cynthia L. Selfe, eds. Logan: Utah State UP, 1999. 89-114.

Wysocki, Anne Francis. “OPENING NEW MEDIA TO WRITING: openings & justifications.” Writing New Media: Theory and Applications for Expanding the Teaching of Composition. Wysocki, Anne Frances, Johndan Johnson-Eilola, Cynthia L. Selfe, Geoffrey Sirc. Logan: Utah State UP, 2004. 1-41.

* Troisvoix is French for three voices. Melvidal includes the electronic writing partnership of Melanie Lee, David Fritts, and Dr. Albert Rouzie. This collaborative review was inspired by Melanie’s rereading of Myka Vielstimmig’s “Petal on a Wet Black Bough: Textuality, Collaboration, and the New Essay.” Melanie wishes to thank Dr. Albert Rouzie for allowing her “serio-ludic” space and David Fritts for giving her hours of his time.

Is Literate Lives Readable?

Literate Lives in the Information Age: Narratives of Literacy from the United States by Cynthia L. Selfe and Gail E. Hawisher catalogues 20 oral histories of computer use.

Primary Thesis: “[W]e hope to emphasize the importance of context—how particular historical periods, cultural milieus, and material conditions affected people’s acquisition of the literacies of technology”(7).

Problems:

Because the sampling of writing instructors and computer workers isn't representative, Selfe and Hawisher admit that making wider points about computer use is near impossible.

That leads to many obvious assertions, mostly about how our contexts influence who we are.


Some of the oral histories are compelling. They allow the participants to be co-authors which adds an interesting dynamic and its own set of problems.

Collaborative writing issues?

To what extent does collaborative writing keep our most provocative arguments at bay and lead to easily agreed-upon truisms?

Chapter One. The oral history of Damon Davis, a student who struggled in class but excelled at designing websites, gives us a taste of what the authors value. They write, “Damon chose not to subscribe [. . .] to the conventional print literacy values and practices” (54). They generalize this point later.


Chapter Two. Selfe and Hawisher include the stories of three women—Mary, Paula, and Karen—born in the 1960s, and remind us again of the radical changes that computers have made: “We suspect that with this generation, for the first time in our history, literacy practices became inextricably and irrevocably tied to computers and one’s ability to make them work” (26).

Chapter focuses on gender.

Interesting definition of literacy points to the social activism instincts of the authors:
“If we define literacy as the power to enact change in the world, we cannot—must not—ignore the women, and men, who struggle to come to literacy in the information age” (82).


Chapter Three introduces the idea of “technological gateways” (26). For the authors, these are progressive “sites and occasions for acquiring digital literacies but vary across people's experiences and the times and circumstances in which they grew up” (26).

Race and poverty are factors here.
Curiously, some of the participants, including Carmen, remain anonymous. Some sensitive information.

Chapter Four holds much of the same but does include a debate about the ways computers unify us versus the way they divide us.

Tom Lugo says, “I hate—this is one reason why I don’t think I’ll ever use the Web for a lot of research—I hate just staring at the screen. I want to have something in my hands” (123). He believes he speaks to his family and friends less because of computers, as well.

Another woman, Melissa, “participates enthusiastically in online worlds, constructing community and meaningful relations through written, online exchanges” (128).

The authors seem to side with Melissa.

Chapter Five. In the most compelling set of oral histories, three Black women from the same family but of different generations describe their experiences with computers. The authors write, “Although these stories should, in an ideal world, outline a narrative of promise, of steadily improving conditions for the practice of literacy in general, and digital literacy, more specifically, they do not” (133).

Public schools are indicted in this chapter.

Access is not the only problem. Teachers must be trained and must actively use technology in classes to promote media literacy.

The theme of Chapter Six is that, in Deboarah Brandt’s words, “Literacy is always in flux” (181). To illustrate this, Selfe and Hawisher include the stories of three women who came of age in the sixties. These stories help them to draw a parallel between movements of social change and revolutionary movements of literacy.

Chapter Seven: The Future of Literacy.

Selfe and Hawisher (let's call them Hawisher and Selfe for once) finally ask the big questions near the end of the book. Where are we going and How do we get there?:

They want to show us the best of what can be done on the Internet if young people have the appropriate training. They employ extreme examples of people with vast technological literacy in this final chapter.

*Secondary Thesis*: “[I]t is clear that [young participants] consider the reading and composing skills they acquired informally in electronic environments—literacies marked by the kinesthetic, the visual, the navigational, the intercultural; by a robust combination of code, image, sound, animation, and words—to be far more compelling, far more germane to their future success than the more traditional literacy instruction they have received in school” (205).

This is the book's strongest point. But it troubles me. It undervalues a literacy—book reading—marked by the imaginative. It suggests that without all stimulation, there is no stimulation. And it unrealistically relies on the example of astoundingly bright students who has already mastered baseline literacies.

Final evaluation: This is by no means a great book—bogged in truism as it is—but Selfe and Hawisher valuably ask us to remember how quickly computer technology has developed, how thrillingly it opens its gateways, and how, chillingly, those opportunities remain out of reach for so many.