viz.

A new page has been posted to the Assignments section of Viz., a Guide to Teaching Visual Rhetoric that provides a brief overview of the theory and practice of visual rhetoric and offers some ideas for incorporating instruction in visual rhetoric into composition classrooms, as well as a number of resources.  The intoductory guide is designed to complement the sample assignments and theory pages.  If you are interested in including visual rhetoric into your classroom but aren't sure how, we hope this page will provide you with a useful resource for getting started.

by Tim Turner

What is Visual Rhetoric?

As a discipline of rhetorical study, visual rhetoric can refer to a wide variety of analytical and pedagogical practices.  Essentially, however, it refers to the practice of analyzing and/or describing how images communicate meaning or advance arguments.  It may be thought of as the rhetorical analysis of images using the familiar vocabulary of rhetorical theory (such as ethos, pathos, and logos), but with a supplementary vocabulary unique to the analysis of the visual (e.g., with reference to color, graphic design, iconography, etc.)  Although the object of visual rhetorical inquiry can be virtually limitless as long as images of some kind are involved, in rhetoric courses these subjects frequently include advertising, iconic or contemporary photography, film, maps, and web design.

Additionally, in a recent review article on the current state of visual rhetoric, Paul Messaris articulates four key questions for establishing the broadest framework of such study:

• Do visual arguments need captions?
• Are pictures more emotional than words?
• Are words more informative than pictures?
• Do photographs provide more trustworthy evidence than words or other types of pictures?

Each question aims to unsettle conventional wisdom about the difference between images and words, thus complicating the supposed "differentiation of the verbal and the visual" that David Blakesly has also challenged.

Aims of Visual Pedagogy

The basic paradigm for teaching composition (exemplified in the "controversy model" often employed introductory rhetoric courses) involves leading students first to describe and analyze the components of persuasive written arguments by others (rhetorical analysis) before leading them to write such persuasive arguments themselves (advocacy).

The aims of visual pedagogy are similarly twofold: by including instruction in visual rhetoric in the curriculum, instructors can help students

• Become more sophisticated, analytic, and thoughtful reader-interpreters of images;
• Create and/or deploy visual arguments in their own work.

Analysis as visual literacy: Today, digital technology, social media, YouTube, and the omnipresence of cell-phone cameras (among other developments) have made images a ubiquitous part of everyday communication networks.  As citizens-and as consumers-all of us are confronted with visual presentations of information and argumentation on a near-constant basis.  For this reason, instructors are encouraged to think of visual rhetoric not as a supplement to the curriculum, but as a vital component in the process of helping students become more literate participants in these networks.

Creation as visual competency: In addition to helping students become more literate and active interpreters of visual communication, visual pedagogy can also play a part in helping students become active participants in these exchanges by fostering visual competency. Here, the goal is to help students successfully deploy visual arguments of their own, either in support of mostly written arguments (e.g., using images or graphically presented statistical information to support the arguments of an advocacy paper) or in place of mostly written arguments (e.g., substituting a short film, slidecast, web site, or brochure designed using professional software in place of an advocacy paper).

Incorporating Visual Rhetoric in the Composition Curriculum

There are many ways to incorporate visual rhetoric and visual pedagogy into the curriculum for composition or literature courses.  The following breakdown distinguishes between short- and long-form projects.

Short-form projects (1 - 2 class meetings)

• Provide students with a short, introductory reading on visual rhetoric, such as the relevant chapter from the latest edition of Everything's an Argument.
• Ask students to find and rhetorically analyze an image on a topic chosen by the instructor relevant to class discussion. Either have them write up a one-page paper, or have them present on their images in class (or both).
• Using YouTube or another web-based video service, find and show in class a commercial relevant to your topic, and lead students through a discussion of its rhetorical dimensions.
• Ask students to write a short (1 - 2) page visual analysis of a specific element, determined by the instructor, of the visual rhetoric of a film shown in class or required for outside viewing.
• Have students visualize the pre-writing process by creating and presenting a MindMaps outlining the presentation of a written argument.
• Have students create and discuss an original Google Map connecting the topic of your course with local venues and locations.
• In class, break students into groups and ask them to spend a class meeting rhetorically analyzing the visual components of a web site relevant to the topic of your course; provide students with specific questions leading them to consider how visual and textual elements interact to produce meaning.  Ask them to discuss ways to improve its visual components.
• Ask students to include a visual element of some kind in their final projects, including either original photography or graphically presented information, such as the results of a survey.

Long-form projects (from several class meetings to semester-length projects)

• Provide students with in-depth reading on visual rhetoric, including the relevant chapters from a visual rhetoric textbook, such as Picturing Texts (available in the CWRL library), as well as sample essays demonstrating visual analyses, such as one from the collection Visual Rhetoric: A Reader in Communication and American Culture.
• Plan a unit focusing entirely on visual rhetoric, with readings, exercises, and an assignment asking students to analyze and/or create visual arguments relevant to the topic of your course (see the sample unit on propaganda at http://viz.dwrl.utexas.edu/node/265).
• Have students maintain an ongoing course blog dedicated entirely to issues in visual rhetoric related to the topic of your course, so that all blog posts either analyze existing visual content or present original content created by the student.
• As a final project, have students work in groups to create short (4 - 6 minute) documentary films advocating a particular position on the issues they have been researching in your class; allow this film to substitute for the written advocacy paper.
• Have students create slidecasts involving original documentary photography to advocate for a particular position; ask students to write a document accompanying the slideshow, thus bringing together image and text.
• Working individually or in groups, have students design and implement web sites presenting their research and their advocacy of a particular position, combining visual and textual elements.

Available Technologies and Applications

Flickr - Massive database of images, many of which are licensed using Creative Commons.

Google Maps - Using "My Maps" or Google Earth, the creative possibilities here are almost limitless.

InDesign - This professional Adobe software is used for desktop publishing of items like pamphlets (how-to guide).

iMovie - Software for editing and creating films (how-to guide).

MindMapping - This software enables students to brainstorm by creating visual representations of the thought-process (how-to guide).

Viz. - This web site, maintained by the visual rhetoric project in the CWRL, includes an ongoing blog on visual culture, a visual rhetoric assignments database, and introductory pages on theories of visual rhetoric.

YouTube - This ubiquitous site doubtless needs no introduction.  A virtually endless resource for video content.

Additional Resources

Viz.: A web site for visual rhetoric, visual culture, and pedagogy, maintained by the DWRL

Viz. collection of visual rhetoric assignments

Viz. bibliography of resources on visual rhetoric

No Caption Needed: Iconic Photographs, Public Culture, and Liberal Democracy

Sociological Images: Inspiring Sociological Imaginations Everywhere

Information Aesthetics: Where form follows data

"Visual Rhetoric" (Wikipedia)

"Visual Rhetoric" (Wikibooks)

"What is Visual Rhetoric, and What is its Tradition?" by David Blakesly

"What's Visual about Visual Rhetoric?" by Paul Messaris // Quarterly Journal of Speech 95.2 (This review article is available as a full-text PDF through JSTOR)

Andi, I enjoyed reading your post from Saturday, as I'm struggling myself to think about how to teach visual rhetoric in my classroom-although, the concerns I'm undergoing are much different from yours.  There may be ethical concerns about using podcasts to teach a variety of songs united around a different theme, but most of what I do will involve looking at pretty pictures.

Image Credit: Peter Davis, Hearts and Minds

This past week my students and I were considering the representation of the Vietnam war in network news coverage and in documentary films such as Peter Davis' Hearts and Minds (1974).  Several of the images we considered depict bodies in pain or men, women, and children dead or dying.  As we discussed the appeals to the emotions of the viewer at work in these images, the conversation gradually turned to the ethics of the photographers and filmmakers but I left the classroom wondering about the ethics of teaching these images.

This weekend, partly out of personal interest and partly in relation to a project I'm working on for the CWRL, I saw the new documentary Food, Inc. What follows is a brief "review" of the film (in other words, my scattered response to it) and some ideas for incorporating the film in the classroom (I assume it will be released on DVD sometime in the fall). I won't be discussing the visual rhetoric of the film in depth, but will instead focus on the film as the visual presentation of an argument about food.

*****
The opening credits of Food, Inc. present viewers with a tour of the modern American supermarket and the cornucopia of brightly colored packages filling it. The audience is later informed by voiceover narration that this supermarket contains somewhere around 47,000 products. In one of the film's more sardonic moments, we are also informed that an astonishingly high number of these products are made with elements derived from a single ingredient: corn. This arc covered by the film, from the universal supermarket to the particular kernel, establishes its intention of uncovering the origins of the American food supply. Food, Inc. tells the story of industrial agriculture for an audience that, it presumes, is largely unfamiliar with where (or what), exactly, its next meal is coming from.

The group of assignments below present a number of opportunities to train students to think visually about the writing process. Although they are not explicitly designed to teach visual rhetoric, or to inculcate the skills of rhetorical analysis with visual subjects, they are nonetheless implicitly designed to offer students fresh perspectives on the writing process. "Perspectives" is a key term, since these projects ask students to use visual processes to reorient themselves to their writing, by producing visual objects such as annotated outlines, mindmaps, and other brainstorming projects that are more than text-based. The skills sets required here range from the simple (using the highlighting or track changes features of Microsoft Word) to the more complex (using NovaMind or OmniGraffle to conceptualize written arguments). These assignments are offered as a sample of the kinds of methods an instructor interested in visual rhetoric might adopt in the classroom in order to bring the techniques of visual analysis and visual processing together with writing pedagogy.

Organization Using NovaMind by Catherine Bacon (.pdf download)

Outlining Essays Electronically with bubbl.us – A Web-Based Solution by Ty Alyea (.pdf download)

Peer Review and Commentary with Microsoft Word by Michelle Jerney-Davis (.pdf download)

Text Coloring Assignment by Catherine Bacon (.pdf download)

Using NovaMind to Brainstorm for Papers by Liz Jones-Dilworth (.pdf download)

Using Track Changes for Peer Review Assignment by Lena Khor (.pdf download)

An article this week on Stinky Journalism, Danielle Mastropiero's "Photoshopped Images Booted from Press Photo Contest," calls to mind a couple of other similar incidents in recent memory: first, Adnan Hajj's laughably bad Photoshop manipulations of smoke plumes over Beirut during Israel's summer '06 bombing campaign; and second, Iran's equally laughable manipulation of publicity photos from their summer '08 test missile test launch.

Image source: Stinky Journalism.org

Click on 'voteringen' in the menu of this Flash-animated comparison of Christensen's submitted photographs, their RAW files, and the Photoshop auto-corrections.

Thanks to the hard work and creativity of instructors in the Computer Writing and Research Lab here at UT, we at viz. have been able to expand and update the assignments section of our site with a number of new classroom activities oriented around visual rhetoric and culture. If you are looking for new ways to include multimedia, visual, and digital environments in the classroom, or for ways to encourage students to produce multimedia projects of their own, please take a look at the new offerings. First-timers and veterans alike will find a number of great projects.

In the coming weeks, we hope to add a few more assignments to the pages, and to that end, we encourage assignment submissions by viz. readers. Have a successful assignment or classroom activity on visual rhetoric and culture that you'd like to share with the world? Please use the contact page to get in touch with our editors. Pending review, your assignment would be posted, with attribution, for other viz. readers to adopt and adapt for their own classes.

We would also be interested in hearing about successful tweaks to existing viz. assignments, many of which are designed as templates for implementation in more specific classroom contexts. For example, our friends over at www.auburnmedia.com found a way to tweak the Comparison and Rhetorical Analysis assignment by pairing it with a video about the developing world called "The Other Side of the Coin is Rusting."

Derek Mueller over at Earth Wide Moth posted an interesting meditation on Google's recent mapping of the famously lost city of Atlantis.


Google's spokesperson addressed interest in the image by clarifying the lines, taken for ruins, that mark the ocean floor. S/he said in an email: "What users are seeing is an artifact of the data collection process...The fact that there are blank spots between each of these lines is a sign of how little we really know about the world's oceans."

Derek's post (found here) focuses on this very issue of method, of the discovery of the trace even if it is not the trace of a lost civilization. Instead, on the map, we are left with signs or remnants of the mapper. Derek says:

"The conspiracy doesn't interest me all that much. Instead, I'm struck by the impression: the stamp left by the "systematic" tracing, the residue of the surface-to-sea-floor method (a term others have smartly untangled it into meta-hodos or something like 'beyond ways', even 'ways beyond'; this etymological dig lingers with me). The deep blue grid of "bathymetric data" elicits questions: why don't we see these in the adjacent areas? What was it about this boat, this collection process, this translation from sound to image, that left behind the vivid trails?"

In the fall of 2008 Viz. contributor Nate Kreuter interviewed Robert Hariman and John Louis Lucaties about their book No Caption Needed and their blog of the same name. Here is the transcript of that interview.

* * *