Politics of Composing: "Traditional" vs. "Multimodal"

Dear All,

Here is how I'd like to divvy up next week's reading among the class:

• We will all read George's "From Analysis to Design" (in Cross-Talk) and Hood's "Editing Out Obscenity"
• I'll invite you to read Miller and Shepherd's "Blogging as Social Action" in segments, according to your interests.
• Interested in the origins of blogging? Read pp. 1-6, 11-14
• Interested in blogging as a social or cultural phenomenon? Read pp. 1-6, 9-10, 14-15
• Interested in blogging as a(n art) form? Read pp. 1-9

I'm going to make Ridolfo and Rife's "Rhetorical Velocity" optional. It's a cool case study, and I highly encourage you to check it out as a potential source for your final critical essay. But, I think we'll have enough frameworks to contend with by using just these first three articles.

There is no TiRP due with this reading, so I suggest taking it in stages rather than tackling it all at once. You will likely see some explicit overlap between Hood and Miller/Shepherd, and we will work together in class next week to consider how George's advocating for design might actually support the other two projects, even if she offers a different perspective on the visual and on composing.

Also, here are some key terms for your syllabus to guide our next couple of weeks:

• Composition
• Design
• Genre
• Intertextuality
• Mode
• Multimodality
• Pedagogy 
• Visual Literacy

Finally, by the end of the day next Monday (10/19/15), remember to send me an e-mail message -- a paragraph or so in length -- in which you articulate your idea for the final critical essay in as much detail as you can manage at this point, including your research question or dilemma (a.k.a. "contact zone"), tentative sources, and other ideas.

Enjoy!
-Prof. G