Visual Studies

•“planting seeds” we covered a broad range of topics and used a multitude of examples

•provide participants with such a rich collection of materials to take home

•explore a range of multimodal tools

The Approach

Overview• More and more today, when we think about

writing or composing, we think not only of written text on a page, but we also think of color, shape, and image on pages, screens, and other surfaces.

• This workshop will engage participants in not only thinking about visual choices in composing, but in crafting rich visual compositions. We will experiment with working with text and images in slideshow presentations and web pages, with visual arguments and digital movies, and more. We will read about the ways in which other teachers and researchers understand the “work” visuals do in compositions, and we will reflect on our own practices in selecting and integrating visuals in our compositions.

Goals

We will explore what it means to be literate, and, specifically, what it means to be “visually literate.”

We will explore definitions and theories of visual literacy from a range of fields (including Teacher Education, Rhetoric and Composition, and Graphic Design).

We will critically analyze a range of visuals; we will creatively produce a range of visuals.

We will imagine and share different approaches for integrating visual activities into our writing assignments.

We will explore a range of software and web-based tools for visual work.

Goals

We will experiment with a range of document design features, including typography and color.

We will reflect on the work we’re doing and explore different ways in which it might infuse our teaching, our practice, and our writing.

We will each share/present some of the ideas we’ve generated during the workshop.

We will hopefully return to our schools able to make reasonable technology support recommendations to support the work we want to do.

SOME ARGUMENTS

• our culture has a legacy of photographic truth—we want to believe what the camera shows us

• new technologies allow us to represent ourselves—and, more importantly—to represent others in ways that are potentially problematic

• new technologies require us to ask new questions and face new concerns about how we see and how we represent the world

• we currently live in a culture of simulation—where images are created

• father deliberately removed from the shot

• children told to tuck their heads behind mother because they were laughing

• mother’s arm posed

• reveals how intimately connected visual and verbal content is

• shows the complexity of creating new warnings for new threats

• serves as an excellent example of parody

• Forrest Gump (1994)

• created its own reality and history

• controversy = creation of events through splicing of historical footage with contemporary footage

• tyranny of the alphabet/ic

• textual information, explanation is the only privileged mode of communicating knowledge

• rules of design are prescribed and set

according to Ehses and Lupton, rhetoric is…• faculty in selecting among and applying

the available means of persuasion (Aristotle)

• a holistic approach to communication

• a set of tools to aid people in being successful orators (historically)

• a set of tools to aid people in being successful communicators—orally, textually, and visually (today)

Anne Wysocki

“If rhetoric, to turn our eyes all the way back to Aristotle, is the use of the available means of persuasion to achieve particular ends, then whenever the means of persuasion include visual strategies, there is visual rhetoric at work” (Wysocki, p. 183).

threads & issues• dominance of the verbal/textual why our culture places

textual literacies and print alphabets as higher priority than visual literacies and graphical communication

• downplay of the visual visual information relegated to “decoration” status; visual information not truly considered “content”; “the less-important and less-intellectual sidekicks of alphabetic texts” (Selfe, p. 70)

• interplay of the verbal/textual and the visual how words and images work together

• role of visuals in tandem with new technologies what happens when “anyone” can publish a web page? when different people have access to software to manipulate images?

=• writing and design are inherently connected form

cannot be separated from function

• writing, today, means more than just words on the page or screen

• as writers, we have to be aware of the multiple meaning-making tools available

• writing, today, means designing and architecting information

• designing useful, readable, audience-appropriate documents requires critical, thoughtful, and careful rhetorical consideration

Questions, Application, and More Thinking…

• How can I synthesize, condense, and then integrate this into my teaching?

• Consider context and content

• Exploring challenges posed in context and ways to still approach the work