On Wednesday, October 24th our seminar will be discussing visual rhetoric*:
Drs. Barnes, Fontaine, and Ratiu will lead discussion contextualizing visual rhetoric theory from the required reading and lead an exercise to develop assignments and documents.
Among our goals for the seminar is to explore the historical/contextual theory of visual rhetoric, specifically acknowledging the presence of visual modes in our current pedagogy and contrasting that to our years of teaching prior to Georgia Tech, our pedagogical training in grad school, and even our experiences as students in the classroom before that. In addition to talking points from the reading, we invite responses below to this post for continued discussion in the seminar on Wednesday.
Another goal is meant to capitalize on gains made this semester: In particular, we want you to select a student assignment or project that you find outstanding, something submitted to you where the visual mode, form, or presentation is exemplary, something you would like to see replicated in future student submissions for the same assignment of project. We will collaborate as a cohort to revise our assignments or lesson plans with the intention of replicating the ideal assignment we’ve each selected. We recommend you bring your laptops (or hard copies) to provide easy access to your assignment documents and the student example you select.
Required Reading:
Barthes, Roland. “Rhetoric of the Image.” Visual Rhetoric in a Digital World: A Sourcebook. Bedford/St. Martin’s: 2004. 152-163.
Handa, Carolyn. Ed. “Introduction — Placing the Visual in the Writing Classroom.” Visual Rhetoric in a Digital World: A Sourcebook. Bedford/St. Martin’s: 2004. 1-5.
Hill, Charles A. “Reading the Visual in College Writing Classes.” Visual Rhetoric in a Digital World: A Sourcebook. Bedford/St. Martin’s: 2004. 107-130.
McCloud, Scott. “From The Vocabulary of Comics.” Visual Rhetoric in a Digital World: A Sourcebook. Bedford/St. Martin’s: 2004. 195-208.
*In attempting to revise and update this post, I inexplicably deleted all the content (twice). What you see here is my (second) attempt to reconstruct the original content plus the additional material from memory after midnight of a twenty hour day (minus the visuals, ironically, because they seem to be responsible for blog’s inability to post content). My apologies for the gaps, lacuna (albeit necessary), and errors that have made their way into this reconstruction. -PAF
