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On Multimodality: New Media in Composition Studies
As our field of composition studies invites students to compose with new media and multimedia, we need to ask about other possibilities for communication, representation, and making
knowledge—including possibilities that may exceed those of the letter, the text based, the composed.
In this provocative look at how composition incorporates new forms of media into actual classrooms, Jonathan Alexander and Jacqueline Rhodes argue persuasively that composition’s embrace of new media and multimedia often makes those media serve the rhetorical ends of writing and composition, as opposed to exploring the rhetorical capabilities of those media. Practical employment of new media often ignores their rich contexts, which contain examples of the distinct logics and different affordances of those media, wasting the very characteristics that make them most effective and potentially revolutionary for pedagogy. On Multimodality: New Media in Composition Studies urges composition scholars and teachers to become aware of the rich histories and rhetorical capabilities of new media so that students’ work with those media is enlivened and made substantive.
knowledge—including possibilities that may exceed those of the letter, the text based, the composed.
In this provocative look at how composition incorporates new forms of media into actual classrooms, Jonathan Alexander and Jacqueline Rhodes argue persuasively that composition’s embrace of new media and multimedia often makes those media serve the rhetorical ends of writing and composition, as opposed to exploring the rhetorical capabilities of those media. Practical employment of new media often ignores their rich contexts, which contain examples of the distinct logics and different affordances of those media, wasting the very characteristics that make them most effective and potentially revolutionary for pedagogy. On Multimodality: New Media in Composition Studies urges composition scholars and teachers to become aware of the rich histories and rhetorical capabilities of new media so that students’ work with those media is enlivened and made substantive.
232 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2014
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About the author
Jonathan Alexander
20 books4 followersJonathan Alexander is a writer and podcaster living in Southern California. The author, co-author, or editor of twenty-one books, he has been called one of “our finest essayists” (Tom Lutz, award-winning writer and founding editor of LARB). Jonathan is also Chancellor’s Professor of English at the University of California, Irvine.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
March 20, 2016
This book is beautifully written. Complex ideas are clearly articulated, especially in the first two chapters.
I enjoyed the first half of the book far more thank the second. The authors argue that we must stop simply transferring the fundamentals of print genres into new mediums, such as video essays. They discuss the "excesses" of new media and encourage teachers to explore those potential spaces that don't exist in print. I expected that the second half of the book would explain what we should do instead. If we don't ask students to create video essays because the essay is a product of alphabetic text, then what do we do instead? I never found the answer to that question. The answer does not yet exist. It's easy enough to say that we should stop assigning the projects of the print world in our multimodal assignments, but it's a lot harder to actually apply that it the classroom. What will the assignment actually say? How will we grade? Will this result in poor course evaluations about teachers who write unclear assignments?
Nevertheless, the authors use a wealth of literature to make many good points about the alarm that teachers have always experienced as a result of technology, the way we always fall back on what we already know, perhaps out of fear, and how multimodal communication can occur through conversation in new mediums like video games--to name but a few. The last two chapters just didn't seem to fit with the first few though.
I enjoyed the first half of the book far more thank the second. The authors argue that we must stop simply transferring the fundamentals of print genres into new mediums, such as video essays. They discuss the "excesses" of new media and encourage teachers to explore those potential spaces that don't exist in print. I expected that the second half of the book would explain what we should do instead. If we don't ask students to create video essays because the essay is a product of alphabetic text, then what do we do instead? I never found the answer to that question. The answer does not yet exist. It's easy enough to say that we should stop assigning the projects of the print world in our multimodal assignments, but it's a lot harder to actually apply that it the classroom. What will the assignment actually say? How will we grade? Will this result in poor course evaluations about teachers who write unclear assignments?
Nevertheless, the authors use a wealth of literature to make many good points about the alarm that teachers have always experienced as a result of technology, the way we always fall back on what we already know, perhaps out of fear, and how multimodal communication can occur through conversation in new mediums like video games--to name but a few. The last two chapters just didn't seem to fit with the first few though.
April 23, 2017
Love the chapter on games and gaming. Fantastic bibliography.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews