viz.

As the year closes, we're reflecting on the ways our posts have connected visual rhetoric, digital literacy, and pedagogy. We've presented lesson plans that use programs like Animoto, iMovie, Sound Slides Plus, Xtranormal, etc.  There are longer posts that detail how these programs were used available on the blog, but in the first part of this post, Elizabeth will focus on those that present ideas for using iMovie in the classroom. In the second part of the post, Ashley will explore one of the broad themes our posts this year have addressed and talk about the ways in which we are theorizing the connections between embodiment and pedagogy.

Elizabeth: In  Megan Eatman's RHE 309k: The Rhetoric of Tragedy students used, among other media, iMovie to make visual arguments in the form of narrated slideshows. In one of two posts detailing how she used iMovie in the classroom, Megan wrote The use of images often plays a large part in determining whether something registers as "tragic" in public discourse, so constructing visual arguments allowed students to build on their participation in extant conversations through engaging with the visual rhetoric already surrounding their event." Students were given time to experiment with iMovie during class and were not required to use images related to their topics while learning the program. This created a low-stakes atmosphere in which they could learn the program comfortably. Megan also constructed her own video as a model that could be shown to students. Students then had the option of using iMovie as well as other programs such as Photoshop to create multimodal arguments.

Here is the model Megan created and a link to her lesson plan:

I also began to think about how iMovie could be used in the classroom. I noticed that I was writing a lot of posts about how images and digital media were being used to enhance online experiences of poetry and bring poetry to new audiences. In particular, I was taken with this piece by poet and scholar and UT alum Susan Somers-Willett in which she worked with a photographer to create a series of docu-poems. (Sidenote: there will be an interview with Susan available on our “Views” page.)

In Verse: Women of Troy from InVerse on Vimeo.

In Verse: Women of Troy from InVerse on Vimeo.

I wanted to create an exercise that would allow students to think about  documenting their own engagement with poems of their choosing. Creating iMovie files that include their reading of poems they interpret critically allows for a visual record of that interpretation and a public performance that goes beyond rote memorization. 

Ashley: This marks the first year of aggressively using Google Analytics to track activity on the blog, and the data that we have gathered shows not only a growing audience for viz. but offers us a better sense of what readers are responding to.  Posts that dealt with various representations of the body tended to be the most popular for all of the reasons you can imagine, but as we marked that trend, we talked about using those responses to shape a socially responsible and relevent set of posts on the theme of embodiment.  These posts point to the ways in which bodies and representations of bodies function as a powerful form of visual rhetoric in our culture, and that importance has significant pedagogical implications.  Our students operate in an image saturated world in which bodies are constantly circulating, so understanding how image producers and image subjects engage with their intended audience is an important part of building visual literacy. 

Megan's post on American Apparel advertisements and Mike's post on the use of pornographic images in PETA ads focused on sexualization and exploitation.  Both posts point to the ways in which the use of stereotypical, oversexed images may actually work against the rhetorical purposes of their creators.  As Mike says of a PETA campaign that visually links nude women to animals and/or cuts of meat, "The message these images convey is simple: women are sexy animals. I suppose PETA wants us to treat animals with as much respect as we, as a society, treat women. Since, however, PETA seems perfectly fine with the sexual objectification of women and the insistence that they always be beautiful and naked, their message becomes incoherent."

As a counterpoint to those posts, I explored the work of two photographers who use nudes or partial nudes in very different ways.  The first was Howard Schwartz and Beverly Ornstein's The Athelete, which uses images of male and female Olympic athletes to make a point about the variety of bodies that excel at particular kinds of physical activity, broadening our idea of what a fit, healthy, or athletic body looks like.  Later in the semester, I had the opportunity to interview award-winning New York-based photographer Substantia Jones, who photographs nude or partially nude men and women who self identify as "fat" as part of her Adipositivity Project.  Jones's project is explicitly political.  She aims to challenge our notions of what constitutes a normal or even healthy body by depicting subjects whose bodies are typically either inivisible or vilified in the media and celebrating thier physicality. 

The interview provided powerful insights into the ways in which a photographer can engage with her subjects in a way that celebrates rather than exploits their bodies.  All of Jones's models are amateurs, many of whom approach her about participating in the project.  Jones talked about how she establishes a rapport with a photographic subject who is obviously placing him or herself in a very vulnerable position:  "By the time someone contacts me and asks to be an Adiposer, I presume they've already done all the "Can I really drop trou for a stranger's camera?" work.  Many lose their nerve during the scheduling phase (far preferable to losing their nerve during the me-ringing-their-doorbell phase, which has happened).  But I think when (and if) they open the door, they see a smiling fellow fatty--a comrade--who wants the experience to be good for all involved.  What we're doing is indeed ridiculous, so we usually laugh at lot.  That helps.  As does a cocktail."

This interview brought over 1500 unique visitors to our site in the first 24 hours, and the posts mentioned above have been among the most popular blog entries of the entire semester.  Naturally, that raises questions about how we ought to use NSFW (Not Safe for Work) or pornographic content on the blog and in the classroom.  Obviously, we would be irresponsible to present such images merely for the sake of titillation or provocation, but the widespread circulation of these images speaks to a greater need for dialogue both with the public and with students about the effectiveness and responsibility of using bodies to make arguments.