The second session of the day is: Keeping the Focus on Rhetoric
Pat Sullivan, Lisa Ann Robertson, Ben McCorkle, Susan Delagrange

Lisa Ann Robertson uses a classical rhetorical lens to teach digital media. She studies Romanticism, the body, and cyberculture. When she teaches digital media, she teaches it *strong* at the very beginning of the semester and then all semester long they practice and practice it. You can access two of her classes from the link to her homepage above.

She referred to a Daniel Anderson article in Kairos that she uses. She also uses political cartoons and miscellaneous other resources rather than just one particular text. She doesn’t just teach how to use the software, but rather audience analysis and what audiences a particular software is geared for.

In her class they talk about general argumentation, but then integrate digital media as intro, thesis, or conclusion.

In class discussion, she refers to James Brown’s, autobio, The One. She asks students to imagine what it would be like if James Brown were to use Audacity to explain The One.

She said that once students have to make just a visual argument, without words, they realize how much words can mean. Then students construct an audio argument with Audacity. She may combine these assignments next time.

When students start to combine images and sound, they feel really empowered by the arguments they are able to create.

Ben McCorkle talked about Burke and digital media. He says, Burke hated tech, so why use his theories to talk about digital media? It comes down to motive. Burke’s pentad may help us describe what happens in digital media. Ben says Burke said, I should have made it a hexad and then that might have accounted for attitude.

Ben played a video from JibJab.

Susan Delagrange spoke about feminism and digital media. A feminist approach will enable us to look at power and difference issues and whose interests are served by certain “textual” representations.

She talked about google maps and how people who use public transportation aren’t served by the map. Hotels, banks, large stores — those are the places that are mentioned.

She compared the map of Chicago with the map of her town, Jeromesville, Ohio and how there isn’t a detailed view of her town. Also, she noted that the maps of small towns aren’t updated very often.

Pat Sullivan said that the problem with teaching digital media is graduate students. Or, rather, that graduate students teach it, but then they leave and so it brings up a problem of continually finding people to teach it.

She passed out a handout on terms for use in digital composition including repurposing, customizing, appropriating, montage, sampling, recycling, composting, and poaching. Several people in the audience liked the nuances with these terms rather than the term remediation, which several people don’t like.

She talked about an assignment that asks students to design a powerpoint or kiosk assignment describing their experience at the university that the admissions department could use to recruit students.

As an aside, she said that students like contests, so often they make it a contest that the best presentation gets to be used by the admissions department.

And now, a break and more studio time this afternoon…