kairotica is the course webspace for my Spring 2011 Rhetorical Theory course. I designed the course as cross-epochal because experience has shown me that we could never cover the major texts, theories, and theorists from antiquity to the present in one 15 week semester. So, I suggested 3 guiding concepts: 1.) the nature of "knowledge" and "truth," 2.) the nature of "public" and "private," and 3.) rhetoric for/as "affect" and action.

We would begin reading a canonical text that seemed to radiate concerns within our areas of interest, and we would organically go where the conversation would lead us. Usually, we ended up finding that current events provided us with uncanny lines of inquiry that seemed in many cases to provide ideal examples of the concepts taken up in the texts we had chosen. I found this structure liberating, and students seemed to enjoy the sense of relevance that came from studying in this way. Notably, much of the work we did was infused with multimodal texts and textmaking. 

  

Image work and digital filmmaking is pedagogically valuable. It affords students affective engagement, collaborative opportunities, production skills, and heightened sensitivity to audience concerns. Multimodal work for content courses in writing and rhetoric also creates spaces for reflecting collaboratively and copiously upon the texts that drive our shared conceptual inquiries. In my Spring 2011 Rhetorical Theory class, one group screened an impressive short “mockumentary” they had made. Their film, Japanese Tsunami as Bitzerian Rhetorical Myth was the result of a collaborative effort to think through US response to the Japanese Tsunami through explorations of the tensions between Lloyd Bitzer’s and Richard Vatz’ schematics of the rhetorical situation. One of the lead filmmakers on this project wrote in his reflective Portfolio Cover Letter that he had been horrified to recall that he had considered “the fitting response” of giving aid to the Japanese people as problematic at all but that he appreciated the breadth of Rhetorical Theory for how it created new lines of inquiry on seemingly static dispositions. I dare to imagine that our conventional explorations of canonical rhetorical theory juxtaposed with the multimodal textmaking process of generating the video made the project possible. What I have witnessed shows me, more generally, that multimodal projects are promisingly capable of helping students develop increasingly critical dispositions to the cultural texts they both consume and produce.

see our "Hacking the Classroom: A Workshop in Mobilizing Formal and Informal Learning for the Millennial Classroom" at The New School in NYC October 15, 2011.

 

Due to the capacious affordances of digital filmmaking, we can document our engagement with emergent rhetorical practices. Fortunately, such projects are increasingly viewed as valid, credentialing forms of digital scholarship. This particular film was published within a webtext (which details the theory behind and process of making the film) in Enculturation: A Journal of Writing, Rhetoric, and Culture.

Multimodal work inclusive of film is increasingly valued academically. This is good news. It is also seen as valid rhetorical work of cultural value (beyond the academy, exclusively). This is fabulous news!

I was fortunate to serve on a panel for the 2009 Conference on College Composition and Communication with Cheryl E. Ball, chief editor of Kairos: A Journal or Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy. I screened my film i'm like ... professional. Cheryl and I later discussed a possible contribution to Kairos -- a "Topoi" piece that would contextualize the film with text nodes situated within a Prezi landscape, and then a node for the film, itself. Cheryl boldly encouraged me and the Kairos team to think big and get it done; I don't have words to adequately communicate my gratitude to these fine friends, scholars, and colleagues.

So then, what follows is the first Prezi published in Kairos; here is "i'm like ... professional: notes on the film." Since it's publication, I have had one other accepted in Kairos, an "Inventio" piece (thanks to the benevolence and supreme patience of Madeleine Sorapure!) that describes the process of making the film and the earlier webtext.

 

i can't bring myself to use the "b" word, so let's just agree on "webspace," what say? great. 

so then, i have 2 main webspaces; one, kind of ..., is my main space, where i post my thoughts on rhetoric, writing, teaching, film, and, generally, representation. the other, maybe, is where i began tracking my processes of developing my short films with reflective posts (maybe is in the process of redesign, so please be patient with my store-bought templates and whatnot). 

screenshots = visual representations of my book, Beyond Words: Film-Composition's "Invisible Galleries". The book traces a history of how we have discussed and used film in the field of Rhetoric and Composition, with special emphasis upon the roles of affect in these ongoing dialogues and practices. I hope the book supports existing and inspires more, better, and increasingly sophisticated rhetorical and cultural work via film-composition (film production in comp).