Converging the ASS[umptions] between U and ME; or How new media can bridge a scholarly/creative split in English studies
I think the controversy between the high art and low art and literature with a capitol “L” is really interesting and important to know about. We studied this a lot in the children’s literature department and I find it fascinating how in order for the English department to gain credibility within academia they had to shed their feminine/childish image and “grow up”. That’s when the canon formed and they had a call for the “man book”. Its very exclusionary and elitist in many ways, and purposely wants to leave out those they feel are “beneath them”. And if this is the case, what does that say for the English classroom? We want to leave people below us behind? We want to look more intelligent than others? There is just too much to point out here for all the negative consequences that could come from this type of thinking! If the high art leaves out postmodernism, which it does from my knowledge, then I wouldn’t want anything to do with it! I embrace pomo texts and theory and cannot imagine a literature classroom without it. I wonder why they devalue pomo so much, maybe because it takes away from the professor as the one who has all the answers and makes it seem like anyone could teach a text and they want to keep it more exclusionary?
The parts that talk about high and low brow art are the ones that stood out to me the most because it’s a point that I studied quite a bit as a CHL person. So this may be a little bit of a rant on my part, but talk about exclusionary! If education has always been a means to teach students high brow from low brow, and to teach the “acceptable” forms of reading, writing, and thinking, then we apparently have only been trying to homogenize our children and make them fall into line with social norms. Why not teach them to question everything? To think on their own in new, unique, and radical ways? Maybe if we taught this more often the world wouldn’t be falling apart, we wouldn’t have so much waste and pollution. How about instead of focusing on who’s better than whom, let’s focus on working together to make the world a better place. Grr. That makes me mad. Some people in education really seem to have their priorities all wrong. I mean, in some ways, who cares about “taste and sensibility”? as long as students are reading and writing, does it really matter whether it is viewed as high brow art? My Manga-loving students are some of my smartest, but a lot of people take them to be garbage texts and don’t take the texts or the students who read them seriously. What are we telling students if we continue to do this?
I like that they mention creating more of the “remix” culture in order to help students learn in a scholarly way. Mostly because this is my research project, but I agree that it has the potential to be incredibly helpful to students and the way they learn. I also thought it was cool how there were hyperlinks in this text, it really stood out to me as being an important facet of the 21st century and the texts we read. If I didn’t know who Wesch was, or the Web 2.0 they authors were talking about, I could click on their links and BAM! I am all caught up. It truly shows how the nature of literacy is changing. I wonder is there is a program that is semi-permanent I could have my students work on to create something like this- a “professional” article with links to outside sources. Would it just be a Wiki or blog? I’m not sure, but it seems cool! I also liked the mentioning of Scott McCloud, while I clicked on the hyper-link a few times, it never let me listen to the podcast, or whatever it was, I think my wireless internet was being picky, but the fact that they mentioned McCloud as a way to kind of bridge the high and low debate was really great in my mind. And I agree, we need to teach new media with new media and compose in new media. It’s the only way to get students accustomed to the more professional ways of using technology. Even though they’re considered “digital natives” doesn’t mean much as most of our other literature has pointed out.
Voice in the Cultural Soundscape: Sonic Literacy in Composition Studies by Michelle Comstock
I really liked her point that, “Even with the renewed emphasis on visual and digital rhetoric, however, we as writing teachers are still very text-centered in our classrooms.” Even though we have been so excited to incorporate technology into the classroom, we’re still favoring texts rather than multi media literacy. How do we move away from this? I think it’s super interesting that she said, “However, we both believe sonic literacy–the ability to identify, define, situate, construct, manipulate, and communicate our personal and cultural soundscapes–should become an integral part of any course aimed at developing students’ skills in writing and digital literacy.” I mean, I’ve been such a huge advocate for visual literacy and digital literacy these last few months, but have paid little to no attention to sound literacy as well. It makes sense that we need to fuse that into the curriculum as well. Students need to know how to use sound and their own voices as compositional tools. The way we speak represents who we are, what we stand for, and the position we take on any given subject. This article made me see just how much the ELA classroom needs to take into consideration when teaching!
“When we ask students to compose voice-over narrations and soundtracks, we are asking them to write scripts and produce sound files that function as narratives in the cinematic sense–in relation to text, photographs, graphics, and/or moving images.” It just now dawned on me that there are so many things you can do with this in a classroom! Things that would have a specific purpose, teach a valuable lesson, and still allow the students to have fun with literacy and composition. They said that students who compose in these ways, “develop a stronger, more embodied sense of audience and of our popular cultural soundscapes. When they record a voice over, for example, students develop a closer attentiveness to how their words and sentence structures resonate with their own voices and their chosen audiences, and as a result, produce better texts with more awareness of the emotional impact of tone and style.” I wish I had thought about this earlier! I kind of feel like this is a bombshell that was dropped on me that I need a few days to really think about and how I would use it in my own classroom, but it is a wonderful place to start. To be honest, I am afraid I will forget this and not end up bringing it back to my classroom. I wish I had started a journal while I was in grad school of all the cool lesson plan ideas I’ve come across. And if all us TOW students did it, the cool stuff we would have to share at the end!
