Jan Baetens

Baetens, J. (2003). Comic strips and constrained writing. Image [&] Narrative; Online magazine of the visual narrative. Issue 7. retrieved on 10/29/08 at http://www.imageandnarrative.be/graphicnovel/janbaetens_constrianed.htm

Boxes.

To constrain my thinking here, and this thinking evolves out of Jan Baetens, comic strips are exemplar models of how one is confined to a discourse to make meaning:

But the significance of comic strips for literary theory goes far beyond this. A second and probably much more important debate to which the analysis of comic strips can bring much clarity concernc [sic] the status of one specific type of constraints which literary theory often considers as "false" or "lacking of significance", namely the many material and institutional "obstacles" that are mostly defined as mere "handicaps" and almost never as creative tools. In the low-art field of comics strips (ruled less by Creative Geniuses than by the culture industry) obstacles of this kind are much more ubiquitous and drastic than in the high-art field of literature. Their example, however, could compel literary theorists to seriously reconsider what it means for creative production that a book is commissioned, edited, published, distributed, etc.

The creative mind, the artistic mind, the rebellious mind, the thinking mind, the abstract mind, the quirky mind and the innovative mind has always been in battle with the constraints of traditional discourses and what is deemed acceptable form, distribution, layout and structure. The comic strip, however, seen as "lower art" (cough cough. this is b.s.), brings to the forefront the tensions of what occurs when a thinker is contained and constrained within the shaping of one's discourse.

Humans make meaning by recreating their worlds into text-forms, art-forms, and verbal-forms. To take a Tao approach, writers wouldn't write, necessarily, because they would let the world simply "be" as the world is. Yet, in a competitive, Western tradition, the game becomes how one recreates the world in text form. All writers are contained and constrained by the tools they use, and the traditions of their discourse. Comic strip artists are no different.

She concludes: on the one hand the fact that a constraint is modified by the work on which it is imposed; on the other hand the fact that a constraint also modifies the form, the status, and the position of the so-called "remainder" of the work, i.e. those elements which are not directly linked with the operation of the constraint (but which the constraint inevitably produces during the elaboration of the work). One could even say, and this will be my conclusion, that an expanded vision of constrained writing (and comic strips make it more easy for us to envision such an expansion) not only establishes a less schematic definition of what a constraint really is and means, but also, and maybe even more so, changes the status of the non-constrained elements of a work which can now be analysed as negative constraints in their own right.

I conclude, too, in this frame.

Robert Watkins - using Scott McCloud

Watkins, Robert. (2006). Words are the ultimate abstraction: Towards using Scott McCloud for teaching visual rhetoric.
http://kairos.technorhetoric.net/12.3/topoi/watkins/index.html

Watching Watkin's video parallels the points I've tried to make with the few videos I've made: What Does Visual Literacy Sound Like? and Graceland. I agree, "multimodality and visual rhetoric are emerging genres of which compositionists should take note" Robert Watkins draws on the "pedagogy of punk = change" movement and notes that writers and compositionists should pay attention to this. In visual rhetoric, there might be the power that can change worlds.

He draws on Keith Kenny who says there are three things we do with visual texts: we identify its function, we access how well that function serves its purpose and we evaluate its legitimacy. We create the meanings from the shapes we use to communicate. This is why I feel Watkins work is important.

Interestingly, Watkins asks, "How do I show visual punctuation?" I would argue it is the same way movie makers have made their points within the cinematic discourses they use and that writers should pay attention to this. Times are exciting, indeed.

Using visuals, spoken word, music and video creates a multimediated text that challenges traditions while upholding them just the same. Written word has a lot of power. But, today, people create "mixes" of different sounds, different genres and with different formats to realign the power they use to argue. "AN ARGUMENT IS AN ARGUMENT. The underground can spew forth amazing pedagogical opportunities. Aren't we all just trying to spread understanding?"

Multimodal communication is another way to understand a multimodal world.

Scott McCloud

In 2004, several students approached me and an art teacher at my school and wanted to create a "comix club." Interested in story telling (and art), I obliged and every monday afternoon, several students, the art teacher, and I would meet, doodle, and try to create "framed" ways of knowing. Scott McCloud's insight, advice and brilliant illustrations brought all of us closer to the genre/discourse we were trying to perfect.

Through this work, I became interested in revisiting Art Spiegelman's Maus, David B.'s Epileptic and Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis I & II. What I learned from this work is that being concise in comic strips is a brand of genius the traditional linguist, English teacher and academic does not know enough about. It is the visual literacy that I've grown to love.

What does Visual Literacy Sound Like? (Intro)

Distracted last night, I somehow opted to cut up a project I did over the summer and to post it on another blog I've been keeping. The twenty-minute video is meant as a podcast, but as I asked myself what "visual literacy" sounds like, I realized I couldn't divorce the visual because I am a visual creature. Both text and images are interconnect here and I think the project is what I was after when I set out to ask such a necessary question. I failed at making a podcast, however.  I made a videocast of my thinking (which, at the University, has to be academic), instead. Even so, I think it makes sense. If you are intrigued by the introduction, you can watch clips 1 - 19, and the finale at my RETHINKING VALIDITY blog that was created for Dr. James Rolling in Art Education at Syracuse University. This project, which makes me happy, couldn't have happened without his influence, nor the wonderful mind of Kathie Maniaci, who had me thinking overtime this summer about the importance of visual literacy in America's classrooms.

Comstock & Hocks: Voice in the Cultural Soundscape

Comstock, M. & Hocks, M.E. (accessed 2008); Voice in the Cultural Soundscape: Sonic Literacy in Composition Studies, http://www.bgsu.edu/cconline/comstock_hocks/index.htm

Here's a quote from Comstock & Hocks that I love, "we argue further that sonic literacy changes and transforms how we view text and images. Therefore, teachers of composition need to begin developing sonic literacies just as we have with visual literacies--by starting small and encouraging our students to do the same. In the following discussion, using research in film studies, music, psychoacoustics, and audio technology as a starting point, we will focus on what our students and our own experiences with creating voice-over narratives and musical soundtracks tell us about the process and effects of sonic literacy in the composition classroom." - BINGO. Let's extend this a bit to the high school classroom. How would encouraging students to write the audio of their life benefit the writing goals of a k - 12 program? How do we bring our schools to update themselves to the 21st Century? Better yet, how do we stop horrible State assessments and exchange them with performance writing that is more in line with what students in 2008 do?

To Comstock and Hocks, "sonic literacy" is "a critical process of listening and creating embodied knowledge, of understanding our soundscapes as cultural artifacts, of achieving resonance with particular audiences, and of developing the technological literacies involved in recording, amplifying, layering, and mixing sound."

In the age of the i-pod, and the history of NPR radio, why aren't we totally going hog-wild about the potential of teaching writing for audio outlets!?

They conclude, "Adding sonic literacy to the composition curriculum does not substitute for textual or visual literacies, however; instead it relies upon and enriches them."

I wish I could read this to you so you could hear it instead.

Krause - Broadcast Composition

Krause, S.D. "Broadcast Composition: Using Audio Files and Podcasts in an Online Writing Course"; Eastern Michigan University;
http://www.bgsu.edu/cconline/krause1/index.html

I tried a podcast over the summer. Bought a mike, hooked up my Mac, and gave up. I was too stupid for Garageband. Correction. I was too chained to the clock on my cellphone - I couldn't teach myself in the two week span. The result was a visual podcast called, "What does Visual Literacy Sound Like?"

Krause is addressing podcasts (thankfully), and is setting a definition. Nice job. What I link onto, however, is that students need a script before they set out to cast themselves in the pea-pod world of audio technology on the web and this is what intrigues me. The question becomes, "How do we teach our student writers to be better planners for a technological audience?" In other words, what awareness do they need to address audience awareness, but also audio expectations for a podcast."

I am a huge fan of downloading NPR's podcasts because I'd rather run to news and stories than to music. No, I'm not Rocky and there are no eye of the tiger in my step. Even so, I love listening to the stories because I like to think about how a writer must anticipate a reading, but also plan a story that is to be heard. Amazing and exciting if you ask me.

Krause is interested in style and technology. Here, he explores audio with his online classes and finds mixed success to humanize the off campus, distant classroom.

The Point about Power

Does form own us or do we own form? I ask this, because it seems to me that good form, no matter what that form, will not serve us well if a) we don't know what we're doing, b) what we hope to do is lacking through our preparation, c) we don't edit ourselves with expected questions and critiques and d) we ignore human creativity, innovation and good ol' American rebelliousness.

Powerpoint does limit what an individual can present, but it also helps them focus, get to the point, organize and hook a more visual audience. As a teacher, I learned that I could never assume what one's presentation skill would be and Powerpoint was a part of the learning curve. The way a presenter varies their presentation with such a tool says an enormous amount about the presenter. One thing that Tufte (2006) failed to critique in his The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint: Pitching out Corrupts Withinis the atrocious habit of some presenters who print out their slides and hand them to an audience to take notes. Why do I critique this? It does the work for participants and conjures the notion, why do they need a presenter.

Tufte claims that "Powerpoint is presenter-oriented, not content-oriented, not audience-oriented, which is odd. Powerpoint is a tool. If a presentation is not content-oriented, nor audience aware, it is the fault of the presenter, not the presentation technology. A good rule of thumb I use when presenting is, "What am I going to do if my technology fails? Inevitably it will fail from time to time?" I answer this question with: I have a back up plan. I don't rely on Powerpoint to be the focus of what I'm there to say. I use Powerpoint as a prop, not as the content. Tufte may not be this creative (although his text, use of visuals, analysis and writing style was highly creative - I challenge him to put it in Powerpoint form to prove my point).

Like Tufte, I hate predictable presentations where bullets design the presenter, instead of the presenter designing the bullets. That is a presenter problem, however, and not a tool problem.

So, I agree with Don Norman (2008): http://www.jnd.org/dn.ms/in_defense_of_p.html "Bullet point slides often lead to poor talks, but the problem is with the talk, not with the tool." (2). It is a presenter problem because not all presenters present what they know well. That is why teachers must TEACH how to present well and this includes how one uses, if they choose, a technology platform such as Powerpoint.

Ian Parker (2001) http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2001/05/28/010528fa_fact_parker?currentPage=all quotes Clifford Nass, a professor of Sociology, as claiming that Powerpoint takes away the process. I disagree. Powerpoint and technological presentation: including blogging, building websites, using keynote, creative video, designing podcasts, etc. are a part of the process that educators must now address within their pedagogy.

Tufte, E.R. (2006). The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint: Pitching out Corrupts Within,
Connecticut: Graphics Press

Margaret Syverson - What is an Ecology of Composition?

Syverson, M. (1999). Introduction: What is an Ecology of Composition, in The Wealth of Reality; An Ecology of CompositionCarbondale: Southern Illinois Press. pp 1 - 27

Syverson suggests that an ecology is a 'set of interrelated and interdependent complex systems' (3) and the ecology of a complex system is 'a network of independent agents - people,atoms, neurons, or molecules, for instance - act and interact with each other, simultaneously reacting to and co-constructing their own environment.' (3)

Without a doubt, the writing process: thinking, drafting, composing, editing, rewriting, rethinking, revisiting, publishing, etc is a complex system of writer, editors, publishers, audiences, peer reviewers, self, other, bureaucracies, fate, luck and chance - an ecology of much interaction, all the time. yet, the web is vast and it isn't as isolated as traditional writing venues. Time magazine claimed "YOU" were the person of the year, and when I look at that, that means ME. I can write as I wish when I wish to on what I want to and send it out into the great whatever.

I suppose, though, a new question becomes, so what? Do only those who write to be published in traditional venues deserve credit as the genuine writers, or can Sally Mae Wigginbottom of Boise, Idaho, who has kept notebooks and journals since the age of seven and who has never published be considered a writer, too? What should writing instructors really push from their writers? Do we want to push for a power hierarchy like that which already exists?

Syverson notes that our system is also adaptable. It can change.

On audience awareness, Syverson writes this: "...we would take a similar approach to the co-construction of the writing process by readers, who are not merely passive recipients of the text in this ecology of composition but active constituents of it: situated, like writers and texts, in a physical, psychological, social, temporal, and spatial network of relations. Even in this extremely abbreviated overview, we can readily admit that such a view of the composing situation is indeed complex." (7)

There are four attributes to the ecological system that can lend itself to composition: distribution, emergence, embodiment and enaction (7).

"We bring forth a textual world as we are writing it." (16)

Syverson has me thinking on many levels and I love her for that. i will end, though, with "Typically, composition research has posited a triangle of writer, text, and audience and has tended to single out the write, the text or the audience as the focus of analysis." (23). Yet, as Syverson notes, these traditions often ignore the psychological, social, temporal or physical dimensions of writing.

I hear my good ol' friend Gina Amaro screaming, EVERYTHING IS POLIITICAL. Yes, and language is even more political. The fact that I am using cyberspace to think about readings from a class at a Private University where students pay a big chunk of money to attend (and that I come from a place that was outside of the discourse spoken there) is highly political. Of course, I type in English, too, which is the latest in the ever-evolving Western World: post industrialization, post imperialism, post Chaucerian, etc. That I do this is because they did that.

I want to buy this book in its entirety.

Wysocki & Johnson-Eilola: Blinded

Wysocki, A. & Johnson-Eilola, J. (1999). "Blinded by the Letter: Why Are We Using Literacy as a Metaphor for Everything Else?" Passions, Pedagogies, and 21st Century Technologies. Eds. Gail E. Hawisher and Cynthia L. Selfe. Urbana, Ill.: NCTE, pp. 349-368.

It is nice to see someone point out that literacy is much denser and more complicated than realized. It is messy, and the ol' saying, the more we know, the less we know is accurate as literacy arrives as "New Writing" (NCTE, 2008).

They write, "When we speak then of "literacy" as though it were a basic, neutral, contextless set of skills, the word keeps us hoping - in the face of lives and arguments to the contrary - that there could be an easy cure for economic and social and political pain, that only a lack of literacy keeps people poor or oppressed" (355).

Like the invention of a snowmobile to Northern landscapes, literacy is a tool, and once it is introduced, it has a rippling effect on the ecosystem of individuals that become literate (including the power game that language plays in all we do).

They continue, "And when we believe this - that poverty and oppression result from a lack of a simple, neutral set of skills we have trouble understanding why everyone and anyone can't acquire the skills there must be something wrong with someone who can't correctly learn what most of us acquired easily, in our early years in home or school." (355)

Literacy is a red herring, I agree, that is also a diversion of larger social and political situations, in which schools, those powerhouses of measurement, assessment and grading, use literacy as a major tool for advancing a society for tomorrow (This is why social justice makes sense to me -- teaching literacy as a means to create change is optimistic, as opposed to teaching literacy to prove one can be like those before them in history (IE: literary analysis as a means of writing assessment alone).

Literacy is used to "encompass everything we think worthy of our consideration (360).

Big quote: "The connotations of literacy...suggest a process of mechanical and passive individual reception: the book gives us who we are, the book sets the limits for who we allow into realms of privilege. If we understand communication not as discreet bundles of stuff that are held together in some unified space, that exist linearly through time, and that we pass along, but as instead different possible constructed relations between information that is spread out all before us, then...lviing becomes movement among (and within) sign systems (365).

I'm loving this article. Also, "Under this understanding of relationships, then, we could describe literacy not as a monlithic term but as a cloud of sometimes contradictory nexus points among different positions. Literacy can be seen as not a skill but a process of situating and resituating representations in social spaces" (367).

I wish to shout out to Alex Shulz who gave me the task of assigning his classmates an essay prompted by one word. This was brilliant, but it took me a few years to realize this. Connotation versus denotation. Every word has a story, but that story can not be assumed to be true for all story tellers ; ).